Spring tournaments 2020

The proliferation of these spring tournaments will be the death of the spring tournaments, I feel.. If everyone has one, who will be the visiting teams? We had an insane number attempt to get organized this past spring, too, and a IIRC a couple of them simply didn't materialize.

The weird* phenomenon of WoSo's spring tournaments is the only reason, I feel, that the proposed Women's Nations League has any legs at all. And if the Nations League comes to fruition, it will truly kill off the spring tournaments, assuming they haven't done that to themselves by that point already.
*Not as weird when you consider the historical context of a general worldwide lack of club league play, but you know what I mean.

 

Brazil switching to the French tournament. Wonder who the USA will get to replace them? Australia? Spain?

 

the Dutch are putting their #3 ranking on the line as their joined a pretty decent France tourney(tough all 3 opponents)Joining the SBC would of been my prefered pick, at least a loss vs the US wouldn't hurt(their rankings) & majority of their starters should know by now England inside out(I mean, how many times we've seen Miedema beat Houghton 1v1 by now, lol).
Problem for them is the loss of usual starter Van Lunteren due to retirement Martens nowhere to be found/Beerensteyn looking painfully slow in the Bayern's back to back games vs Wolfsburg(makes you wonder if Wiegman permanently lost faith that got her on top; the 4-3-3?

Germany; nobody's done a better 'rush' job in bringing pups up than coach MVT. Plus she's the first coach in Germany this decade to figure out you need athleticism to go along with technical merits. & changes tactics as compared to the other one dimensional former coaches. But wish she of put her team into better competition than the Algarve Cup. While her pups still need some growing up to do(& honestly what else is there to do for them but wait to rule supreme again in Euro 2021) she needs to try to get some excitment going for her countrymen(despite still being #2, German woso fans these days are hard to come by)(obvious the BS forum, lol,but elsewhere as all) so why not challange US or NED instead?

France; this is about the time they show that their the best friendly team in the world, but they continuesly flops where it matters; the major summer tournies. It's tiresome to keep blaming their coaches for these failures. So this time I got to blame Aulas. Don't get me wrong, he's got it half right, (spending mucho dineros on woso) it;s the other half that's huritng them. Aulas needed to divide his wealth on the whole French League instead of the chosen few(Lyon). It might of made Lyon into a popular spectator sport, but not a participation one(where France with only 178K female woso participants in all ages, sadly lacks behind).
Aulas might be the owner of just Lyon, but he seems to want to have a greater voice in woso(obviously buying Seattle Reign), but the only way to you'll ever ended US wholesale domination of woso WC titles is through it's simplied......TITLE IX, is to build an entire pro league where all the players make an actual pro salary!(not just the chosen few of Lyon)

US; coach Vlatko is bringing bunch of newbies into winter training camp. Definitley a sharp contrast to Ellis(who would of probably forced Alex Morgan unto the pitch while pushing a baby carrriage, if she was still coach!)

 

Nope, never gonna happen!
J-Michel Aulas is neither a charity man nor Santa Claus. Common sense says he is always right to make his brand profitable. Besides OL is not that wealthy. OL is far less wealthy than Premier League or La Liga clubs.
How about we blame bigger powerhouses not to bring their money to the table.
At least PSG is doing it but the path to getting closer to Lyon is long and perilous. May be it will take the same time OL took to get where they are now. IDK
To make sure all the D1F teams become professional is the matter of the French Federation of Football.

 

Poland will not participate in any March tournaments. It's Euro qualifiers time for White-and-Reds with matches against Moldavia and Azerbaijan.

 

Cyprus Cup is scheduled from "2 - 12 March 2020". Not sure which teams are in it yet, but let's say "Vamós Ísland".

Apart from Poland being busy in the March qualifiers for Euro 2021, there's also Ireland involved, and Serbia (ranked 41st in the world).

 

sad part is that Aulas wants Megan Rapinoe once again(with whatever salary she'll demand). Nobody like her & vice versa, she didn't like anybody so her team chemistry sucked when she played for Lyon in 2013-14(the two year when Lyon didn't win the CL)
From what I've read, only 3 of the 12 div one/French league teams pay full time salaries & then a lot of them even on the richer c;ibs still live, dorm style, on their club's campus(intsead of being able to afford their own home with the meager salaries the make
This in turn stops a typical girl from wanting go through the bust & grind of spending her youth learning soccer via pro soccer club academies, if there's no pot of gold waiting at the end of the rainbow(accept for the chose few of Lyon)

 

There are (only) 4 teams now. That does not stop some american players to come over France and play in D1F though. Maybe we should move this conversation into another topic.

 

Took me a moment to realize that "Pays-Bas" was Netherlands Had to go back and check which was supposed to be the 4th country involved.

I know "nieder landes" in Dutch translates to "low countries" in English, and even though I don't know French, I can see the connection thanks to Spanish, where I know the literal translation would be "paises bajos"

 

Pinatar Cup, March 2 - 10. Scotland, N. Ireland, Iceland & Ukraine.

#PinatarCupFem@lawson_sv @RichJLaverty @JWsports1 @sam4wigan @Lechus79 @TeamBelgica @WOFLIB @WSUasa1 @WWFShow @rflalves

To be played in March 2020

Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
Iceland 🇮🇸
N Ireland
Ukraine 🇺🇦

— Wosoworld (@karlyboy71) December 21, 2019

 

It is commom in Italy also to call the country "Paesi Bassi", although they are more commonly (although uncorrectly) referred to as "Olanda" ("Holland").

 

1. USA: SheBelieves Cup
2. Germany: Algarve Cup
3. Netherlands: Tournoi de France
4. France: Tournoi de France
5. Sweden: Algarve Cup
6. England: SheBelieves Cup
7. Australia: AFC Olympics playoffs?
8. Canada: Tournoi de France
9. Brazil: Tournoi de France
10. Japan: SheBelieves Cup

11. Korea DPR: AFC Olympics playoffs?
12. Norway: Algarve Cup
13. Spain
14. Italy: Algarve Cup
15. China: AFC Olympics playoffs?
16. Denmark: Algarve Cup
17. Belgium
18. Iceland: Pinatar Cup
19. Switzerland
20. Korea Republic: AFC Olympics playoffs?

21. Austria
22. Scotland: Pinatar Cup
23. New Zealand: Algarve Cup
24. Russia
25. Colombia
26. Ukraine: Pinatar Cup
27. Mexico
28. The Czech Republic
29. Finland
30. Poland: EURO qualifiers

31. Portugal: Algarve Cup
32. Vietnam: AFC Olympics playoffs?
32. Ireland: EURO qualifiers
34. Wales
34. Argentina
36. Chile
37. Costa Rica
38. Thailand: AFC Olympics playoffs?
39. Nigeria
40. Chinese Taipei: AFC Olympics playoffs?

 

I'll guess and say Spain does the SheBelieves Cup as they're the highest remaining ranked team not in a tournament yet. Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Mexico, Finland, Wales and possibly Nigeria do the Cyprus Cup.

 

#Womensinternationals March tournaments so far @JueganEllas @SilkFennec @WWFShow @WOFLIB @scparametro2016 @Lechus79 @TeamBelgica @rflalves @JWsports1 @BassoHannah @thegoalkeeper

No room for the SBC 😂 😂 😂 pic.twitter.com/r1VztMgysX

— Wosoworld (@karlyboy71) December 21, 2019

Cyprus Cup has 6 confirmed teams.

 

Sounds like the SBC committee got the fourth team we all thought they would want:

Can confirm overnight reports that Spain will make their debut at the upcoming #SheBelievesCup, joining hosts USA, England and Japan.
First two matches will be in Orlando and New Jersey, with third TBC. Official announcement due fairly soon.

— Kieran Theivamanoharan (@KiersTheivam) January 7, 2020

 

There was not much else they could have chosen.

 

I kinda expected that, if they didn't get Spain, their next best option would've been an NWSL team that could use more preseason matches. Which, from an NWSL fan's perspective, could've been pretty awesome on its own, but maybe not from the perspective of SBC organizers/teams. Could you imagine NCC vs Japan? Or HOU vs USA?

 

I'm sure the shrinking window definitely factors in when seeing the shrinking of fields for tournaments... But unless the limit on matches was talked about two, three years ago too, I'm not sure it's a cause-effect thing.

Also, I read that FIFA is cutting out the January window for women. Really strikes me as odd to be cutting playing time for NTs when they keep espousing that they're growing the game.

 

I seem to be one of only a few people who thinks female players can/should be able to handle the same load as the male players (similar to 4 games in 10 days at various points in the season), and many had/are having long breaks coming into 2020. I also don't think the men are that overworked either, but again, I might be alone there. Pointing out the huge pay discrepancy as a reason to not be worked up about how long of a break women's football teams get midseason after not that many games is fair enough, but I'm struggling a bit to see how such a break is greatly needed for fitness reasons.