there should be a mercy rule. Also, the ref adding 3 mins of stoppage time? Come on. Just end that thing at 90.
But gOaL DiFfErEnTiAL!!! I laughed when Aly Wagner said that, as if goal differential will ever come into play when the U.S. drops a +13 in their first game.
sure, and now thanks to the US everyone is going to go after them like a fat kid at Chuck-a-Rama. The spirit of the game is broken in that situation. After like the 5th goal the US should have just played elaborate keep away.
“As a coach, I don’t find it my job to harness my players and rein them in, because this is what they’ve dreamed about, and this is a world championship. When you have a deluge of goals like that, it’s important.” - Jill Ellis [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/world/asia/thailand-world-cup-soccer.html]
I don't think it is good either way: keep away or rack up goals. It's sad that there is such a HUGE disparity in talent and organization. Although this is a bit devastating for the Thai players, at least they have some sort of team and got to play in the World Cup in France. That's pretty cool. If Thailand scores a goal in the tournament, I hope the whole thing shuts down and they celebrate for 10minutes. Bust out the champagne!
My club team always played a year up. We would win 2-4games/year in non-tournament league play. We got beat by 10goals on occasion. It's more infuriating to get toyed with by keep away than to lose. I'd rather they kept coming at me, so I could learn something.
Me too. Also: Thailand was on the other end of these scores less than a year ago - 11-0 over Cambodia in July - and has to understand what transpired.
yeah I stumbled on a thread over in the national team forum about it and saw some of the Thailand scorelines. That was interesting to see. Speaking of which, how is it that the women's national team is the one we have to qualify (i.e. putting "women" before it) but the men's national team is commonly referred to as just the "national team". The historical sexism in that, yes, I get. But right now, especially with how poor our men's team is and how good the women are/have been? The additional distinction belongs on the men's side
We already know what she and the rest of the WNT would say. Just go back to their reactions after being beaten in 1995 by Norway in the semifinal, 2003 by Germany in the semifinals, 2007 by Brazil in the semifinals (0-4!) or 2011 by Japan in the final after penalties. They would cry about how the other team celebrates after a goal or how the other team played. I'm hoping that karma bites them in the ass and they get beaten in the knock-out round by another team who runs up the score so we can hear them cry about how it's unfair to run up the score.
Its a tough position to be in, how do you show merci without humliating them more. From Thailand's side, after 7 goals I'm not learning anything new from you posting another 6 on me, so I get it, you're better than me, you dont need to keep scoring to prove it. However, playing keepaway is worse, now you want me to run around with no hope of even touching the ball? From the US side, I get it, the coach shouldn't be telling players to try hard. Some of these players might not score again in this or other world cups. I'd be pushing myself to get a goal too, just so I could say I scored in a world cup. What I think the US should have done is what my coach did when I was 10 or 11 and we ran into that one team that we always crush. Defenders move forward get a chance to score, and then he'd start pulling players. We'd finish those games with 7-8 players. No its not perfect, but you still tell the players playing to give it their all, not playing keep away, while giving the other team a half chance to try and score.
The US should be thankful that Thailand doesn't have any hot heads who, after the 7th, 8th, 9th goal, just gets sick and tired of the US goal celebrations and decides that if the US wants to celebrate something, let them celebrate Alex Morgan going down with a tournament-ending injury after a studs-up tackle. I know that if I had been on that pitch, after 7 goals and multiple in-your-face goal celebrations, I would have for sure picked up a red card and expulsion from the tournament but Alex Morgan or some other important player on the US team would have been going home with a cast on her leg. Maybe someone should caution the US that next time they want to run up the score, they should keep the celebrations in check since teams like Thailand really don't have anything to play for and being dicks after scoring a goal is a quick way to end a promising soccer career.
What's wrong with scoring 13 goals? I genuinely don't understand why that's a problem. I also definitely don't remember this reaction when Portugal put 7 on North Korea in the 2010 Men's World Cup... [emoji848]
That’s because everyone hated NK (and still do). My only issue in the Thailand game, and it’s not a big issue to me, was the huge celebration after every goal, even the 13th. In the big picture of being THE example for the nation’s young women, they showed that it’s ok to be competitive and to do your best until the final whistle. At the same time they seemed to show that it’s ok to rub the opponent’s face in it.
This is masking the fact that, honestly, the national team has not looked all that amazing leading up to this tournament. In some ways, this game was likely therapeutic for the team. Remember, they only won one game in the hosted She Believes tournament, which was right after losing 3-1 to France. Sure, the team ran through some weak opponents as they tuned up to the tournament. But against real competition in 2019, the national team honestly hasn't looked like the juggernaut that they have in tournaments past.
This was my only problem with it as well. As long as goal differential matters, this sort of thing is going to happen. Chile is almost as bad as Thailand, but Sweden could easily bang in 10 goals. If we draw with Sweden, then the 13 goals actually matter. But a few of the celebrations were over the top and maybe a bit classless, given the context. Rapinoe's dance at goal #9 was completely unnecessary, as was Alex Morgan waving four fingers at the USA bench. I do think the Twitter storm was (per usual) a huge overreaction. The US players weren't taunting Thailand. I think 15 to 32 is right, the game was probably therapeutic for a team that really hasn't been performing all that well, given their lofty standards.
If I scored in a World Cup, I'd celebrate whether it was the thirteenth goal or the first. I don't think there was any disrepesct meant towards Thailand at all, just a passion for the game. But that's just my two cents.
Agreed. It's the moment they've been working toward since they were kids. They just scored IN THE WORLD CUP. On a scale from douchy to saintly, it falls solidly in the middle. [emoji2368]
We all need to remember that the Gods of Soccer are fickle beings and although the US seems to be on the top of the world, it only takes one game where the team falls apart and they are on the wrong end of a 10-0 thrashing. You might think that this will never happen, but then I'm sure that the Brazilian national team didn't think that they would ever lose a World Cup game 7-1 at home to Germany. As for being therapeutic, I would think it would be more therapeutic to score goals against teams that provide some real competition instead of this tournament's version of the Long John Silver Impersonators. If scoring goals against toekn resistance is therapeutic, then why doesn't the USWNT just play a team of 5-year olds. I'm sure they would score many more goals which would be much more therapeutic than only 13.
Point taken. But I wonder whether the USWNT realized how truly awful Thailand was going to be when they started the match. I'm sure the US players expected to control the game, and to win. But Thailand did make it to the semifinals of the Asian Cup, where they held a top-10 team (Australia) to a 2-2 draw. I think they expected more than token resistance.