lol stat of the game: Spain had two(!) shots on goal lol play of the game: Alex Popp playing DM sub of the game: Buehl, whose diagonal runs pulled Meseguer out of the center player of the game: Giulia Gwinn has now played: LW, LB, LW and RB
who did say Spain was going far? Their coach refused to pick for his squad two top veterans in Vero & Bermudez don't pick the Spanish League's MVP, Angela Sosa don't bring any from their WC winning u17 & just two from the their u20 finalists(but weren't starters0 pick's double amount of players from Barcelona, even though they havn't won their league championship in years btw........posted on another thread, but Iwrote Germany will be better off without the overated Marozsan....and that;s exactly what happened as the way better Dabritz took her place at AM
But in football exist 3 kind of result: win, draw and lose. If someone put 2-0 as a record, what is 0 (draws or loses)?. This is not basketball
Spain's defender should have cleared that ball on which Germany scored, obviously. Horrible mistake. Spain has very little scoring punch, and neither does Germany except for Popp's Teutonic head, which admittedly is formidable.
Not really. We lack a Villa for sure (Torres made his name for his goal in the Euro final but he did jack the rest of his career for Spain). But our Men play a bit differently than the women for sure.
Considering this is only our second tournament and we have only one win in our history, it would be a fools bet for anyone to think we would get far. I just hope we can make it to the knockout rounds
Spain wasn't especially good, for sure, but still this match could have ended 0-0 had the defender cleared that rebound promptly. That goal should not have happened.
blissett, you;ve known me as fan of international woso for the last 5 years or so. but going to give it up after this WC, maybe I believed that adage that 'the world is catching up' but as so far I've been severly disappointed. It's bad enough after the US route, that all the other faves limping into their victories, but it's other oddities as well like the half empty stadiums like GE/SP game from two countries that border France(didn't poster Shje promise this was suppose to be a sell out?) quality wise, France, who acted like they didn't seem interested in winning yesterday(Cascarino not starting/Renard scoring the world's easiest own goal/their players not really looking upset when the PK wasn't initially called) #2 Germany(who you would think would be deep enough), who played a 17, 18 ,19 year old who aren't that great(aka, their poor showing at the u20 WC last year) Jamaica, coached by volunteers, fielding a GK(who played actually quite good) but don't even start for her 2nd tier college team back in the states 2nd most ridicule game; JA-ARG, here's Japan, the 2nd most successfull team this decade, tying Argentina, a squad that lost two months ago to the #170th ranked college, UNLV. So in essence does that mean all of the rest of the higher ranked 169 college squad would be equally or more competitive at the WC? 1st most ridicule game US/THA, guess its; more of a political thing, I agree with Morgan & Rapinoe(I don't like Trump either) but why on earth turn ala Trump and cheer & destroy a squad from a poor country like Thailand? I'm sooo confused(please help me understand!)
Disclaimer: if the mod feels like this post and the previous one actually belong to the thread: "General discussions", feel free to move. This is not the moment to give up. First of all, this is just the first round of matches at group stage + 3 matches of the second round: it's way too early to draw conclusions and, especially, to indiscriminately apply the transitive property, that could lead to all kind of nonsense-loops (for instance: Jamaica has beaten Chile in a friendly match by 3-2 this March, but Chile had beaten Australia by 3-2 in a late 2018 friendly match: is this any indication that Jamaica will win by 3-2 the upcoming match vs Australia at the end of Group C? New Zealand winning 1-0 vs England last week and subsequently losing to Wales by 1-0 means that Wales would have deserved to qualify to the WWC instead of England in the UEFA group they both had been placed in?). In other words: I wouldn't read too much into friendly matches, that can go right or wrong for a boatload of different reasons not having anything to do with what the teams will do in a competitive setting. Women's fooball fandom, at least in Europe, is still in its infancy, there's no denying. And anyway, any 10K/20K crowds, even without actuall sell out, are a success in my eyes, especially if they involve countries that can't even manage to draw 1K crowds for their national league average matches. Yes, I've seen it my eyes, Parc de Prices in Paris wasn't sold out for Argentina-Japan (neither it was announced to, to be honest), but what I've seen between the respectable 25.000 fans in the standings was genuine enthousiasm. You maybe will want to count out the host nation, but in the France's games the roar of the crowd was as impressive as you would expect for a World Cup, men or women alike (and I guess France drew about 30k/40k). I admit I couldn't follow live the New Zealand-Netherlands match: was really the attendance so poor? Consider it was the afternoon of a week-day: you know what's been the greatest mistake of the organization of this World Cup in my opinion? Having it start at the beginning of June, instead of moving it deeper into June and July: most people can have their holidays only a month/half-month later than the dates of the competition: for my part, for instance, I would have had a long two/three weeks holiday in France, if the World Cup had hit a little later, instead of having to be content (for work reasons) with just 1 or 2 short one-day trips. You're not fair to France: - Issue 1 (Cascarino not starting): as good as Cascarino can be (and she is! I even have her start in my fantasy football WWC team! ), she wasn't supposed to be a starter in the first place; as it was repeatedly said, Gauvin lost her starting place in the first game as a punishment by Diacre for being late twice to the training sessions. You could argue Cascarino should be a starter anyway (over which other player? Thiney, maybe? Not Diani for sure, I'd say), but anyway her absence vs Norway had a clear history, it wasn't a question of France "not being interested". - Issue 2: Renard's blunder was unexcusable, we all agree. It happens. Happens more often and more glaringly in women's football? Maybe, it's also a question of full professionalism not having hit women's football yet in most countries and for most clubs. On the other hand, Renard is one of the few players who live on football with a top team and a good contract, so no excuses for her. But, hey, it's the same Wendie Renard who almost single-handedly destroyed South Korea a few days ago, so a bad day at the office is not enough to question her as an overall top-player. I agree, seeing a supposed top-player making such mistakes make people cringe, but I wouldn't read it anyway as a condemnation to all women's football and its level. - Issue 3: the fact that the players didn't react to the PK initial non-call is a good sign that probably it was a penalty for the eye of the VAR only... But, in general, even if maybe you won't believe me, the fact that the women use to move on and keep playing, instead of constantly whining to the referee, is actually seen as a positive by a lot of fans. Many Italian supporters discovered women's football just this week and a lot of the reactions I read in media were commending the general atmosphere (both on the field and on the standings) as refreshing and surprisingly nice, compared to the usual antics of men's football. We, old-time women's football followers, already know that, but this kind of attitude on the pitch actually wins more fans to women's football than you could imagine. I liked a lot Oberdorf, Gwinn and Bühl! Of course they're not polite yet (it's normal at under 20), but the level of last U-20 WWC was extremely high (as shown but the number of players that, one year later, already made the senior team for various countries: not only the Germans, but also Guijarro and Aitana for Spain, Endo, Minami and Takarada for Japan, Stanway for England, Pelova for Netherlands...). I guess having so many good young players is an healthy thing, not an unhealthy one: Homare Sawa debuted at the World Cup ay 18, Formiga at 17. Where their records would be now, if the coaches hadn't dared to play these players despite their age? Young talent has to be given chances early on. And about the fact Gwinn & Co. exited the U-20 WWC in the quarters last year, it was mainly because they met eventual champions of Japan. I am confident that they could have done better otherwise: being among the top 4 teams in the world or among the top 8 can sometimes depend mostly on the bracket (see this World Cup itself: should USA and France meet in the quarter, would you assume that the loser is worse than all of the semifinals' teams? Current FIFA rankings would make this assumption doubtful). Jamaica is the worst ranked team at this WWC: they're decent, entertaining, they fought their way to this World Cup with all of their hearts (they had to win a penalty shootout with Panama to be here, though, so it wasn't for sure a smooth qualification), but, at the moment, nothing suggests that they won't lose all of their matches and go home early. Should this happen, there's no embarassment for the women's football in general; on the contrary, rankings-wise Jamaica were anyway supposed already to be just an hopeful team, suffering at the max level of that lack of professionalism we talked about earlier, that hits even the top nations (go figure how it can affect Jamaica). I'd dare to say that the decent display vs Brazil was anyway a good sign, not a bad one. You could have expected a very lopsided score, maybe not in the USA-Thai territory, but anyway more than just 3-0. Let's not forget that minnows like Ecuador and Ivory Coast, in 2015, were losing by 10-1 or 10-0. As I said above, friendlies don't mean anything. There's no doubt that Japan is one of the biggest let down at this World Cup so far. Decent players in Argentina NT, as James and Banini, are not enough to justify this result. Again, you correctly depict Japan as "the 2nd most successful team of this decade", but let's not forget that it doesn't enter the tournament with this exact label: they're current AFC Champions, but at the same time they weren't even seeded because they entered the competition as 7th-placed in FIFA rankings and they're in a phase of re-building, with the third yougest roster of the whole WC. I anyway admit you have a point here. Thailand being at this WWC is an outlier, due to the way AFC qualifier was set: North Korea was supposed to be at their place. Anyway, it's not like, in previous editions of the World Cup we didn't have similar scores, especially at the first match of group stage, when teams still don't know which kind of goal difference they will need: Germany-Ivory Coast 10-0 and Switzerland-Ecuador 10-1 (2015), Germany-Argentina 11-0 (2007), Germany-Russia 7-1 (in the quarters! 2003). As sad as it can be, these kind of result happen: statistically, it happens 0 to 2 times per World Cup. Having just one so far is perfectly in line with what's expected and not a sign of regress from women's football. Should these kinds of scores become 3 or 4 or more at the end of the WWC, I'd admit there could be something wrong, but frankly I can't see no team taking such a beating at this World Cup except Thailand themselves in the next matches (and I doubt it will happen even for them). And, finally, if it's true that such results basically don't happen anymore in men's football, they could be still seen in the '70s-'80s, when the cup hadn't been expanded to 24 teams yet (or had just been) and the level of professionalism was already uncomparably higher than it is in women's football right now, although generally these results were posted against countries that hadn't been reach yet by such professionalism (Yugoslavija-Zaire 9-0 in 1974; Hungary-El Salvador 10-1 in 1982). There have been games and teams that have been very far from disappointing: how about Australia-Italy? Or England-Scotland? Despite the PK that kinda ruined the fun and Renard's awkward own-goal, France-Norway had been a very good match overall, at least until the beginning of second half. Not saying this is being the best Women's World Cup ever, so far, but it is less disappointing than you depict it. And we're just at the begininning: let's wait, before having harsh judgements! Not sure why you address to me to be explained, but anyway I did my best to help you! So, please, don't give up with women's football (no-one should, actually in my opinion ).
Why do the announcer say the Group F winner would face Group B runner up? For the effort, care, and time put into this post.
Because that's exactly what the bracket was set up as? A2vC2, D1vx3, A1vx3, B2vF1 ; C1vx3, E1vD2, B1vx3, E2vF2
Yeah, I got confused thinking we would face France in the first knockout game. The funny thing is that I wasn't going to post that question because I had figured it out. Unfortunately, it was unknowingly saved and added onto the post I sent to @blissett . LOL! I hate that about this board, wish the editing time was 24 hours.
I had figured that, actually, because of the unusual position of that comment and of how unrelated it was to your appreciation for my post.
Not to get too far on a tangent, but why? Why would you make the winner of a group play a second place team that gets 3 more days of rest? It's horsecrap.
Thats usually common when the one team has a bigger distance but thats not the case here as both will have to travel from Le Havre to Reims. But then again, 3 days more rest could be a disadvantage as the team in question could lose their playing rhythm. B2 has 1 travel day and 5 rest days. Usually, you would want to stay in a 1 travel / 2 rest days mode. It's not a coincidence national leagues and CL are played on a Saturday/Wednesday rhythm.