So I'm watching in Spanish on Telemundo right now and I gotta say how cool it is that they've got Deyna Castellanos (VEN team striker (and captain?)) on the commentary team.
Sorry if this has been asked but is there any full match replay sites that anyone knows of? Three of the games didn’t record on my tv Spain v South Africa and Australia v Italy, and Brazil v Jamaica Trying to avoid spoilers! I was on vacation. World Cup started for me today
This World Cup has had only two full days of competition and it's already VAR-A-Blooza. I've always supported VAR, but I had no idea that we'd see so much video replay involvement as we've already seen. There have been, what, six or more goals called back--nearly all for having a naval or kneecap an inch past the last defender and two PKs called after VAR officials noticed a ball grazing a defender's arm. It's tough to sneak anything past the Eye in the Sky now!
VAR is necessary and I'm confident it's going to hopefully be more consistent and swifter but boy does it put the matches at an absolute standstill for several minutes at times. That in my opinion can affect the momentum of whatever team is hot at the moment. Also the change in the rules regarding handballs where players have to hope and pray the ball doesn't hit their arms in an "unnatural position"(whatever that means) the box otherwise it's automatic PK no matter if how well they tried to tuck their arms must be a bit of an adjustment for the players now. It just offers too many possibilities of abusing the rule where an offensive player will intentionally kick the ball at a defenders arm in the box just to draw a PK now.
Kika van Nes is back as full squad member. The sub in case Kika would drop out, has been sent home. https://www.ad.nl/wk-vrouwenvoetbal...electie-nouwen-moet-terug-naar-huis~ac5b6754/ Kika van Es © BSR Agency Van Es definitief bij Oranje-selectie, Nouwen moet terug naar huis Kika van Es zit definitief bij de Oranje selectie. De verdedigster liep een week geleden een gebroken middenhandsbeentje op en het was lange tijd onzeker of ze het WK ging halen. Vanmiddag viel het verlossende woord: ze is fit genoeg voor het WK. Van Es kan morgen tegen Nieuw-Zeeland in actie komen. Sportredactie 10-06-19, 15:35 Laatste update: 16:55
That looks like a very manageable cast for Van Es--and she's had a few days to get used to it while training. My question is, how much pain will there be if and when she plays and that hand is making contact with the arms and bodies of opponents? I would think contact would produce pain, unless the trainers numb it before a match, which is possible. My guess is that Van Dongen starts in her place tomorrow and maybe also against Cameroon and so Van Es gets a few more days of (partial) healing time. We'll see....
I was surprised that Heather O'Reilly was chosen to be an analyst on FOX for the World Cup -- but she has been good. As a broadcaster she has depth and personality. Go HAO! I miss her on the soccer pitch.
I believe the latest rule change was made to address that problem, but yeah the VAR use does seem to make it harder for defenders who need to make sure their arm stay tight to their bodies...
Orange Lionesses perform a rain dance during their practice. https://www.ad.nl/video/oranje-leeuwinnen-doen-regendansje-tijdens-laatste-training~p85363 Bench:
Changing up my predictions due to Japan & Brazil looking not that good. KNOCKOUT ROUND Australia def. Norway England def. Cameroon France def. Brazil United States def. Spain Italy def. China Netherlands def. Scotland Germany def. Nigeria Sweden def. Canada QUARTERFINALS England def. Australia France def. United States Italy def. Netherlands Germany def. Sweden SEMIFINALS France def. England Germany def. Italy THIRD PLACE England def. Italy FINAL France def. Germany
So, one of the reasons I've heard supporting the US running up the score on the Thais was goal differential. Of course this matters. I'm not being snarky here at all. I said my piece in the PBP thread, but I wanted to talk about goal differential with perhaps others who have a better memory than myself. Over a three-game group stage, has there ever been a team that had a five or six or seven goal blowout int he first round that still suffered adversely due to goal differential? I can't remember. But we've certainly seen several 6-0 games before, usually the first game in the group stage, and it's usually been pretty clear sailing for the winner. Any team ever stumbled after such a game and getting a worse seeding or failing to advance based on their 6-0 game not having been turned into a 9-0 game?
The people arguing to pile on don’t really know what they are talking about. It makes abstract sense — though I think it is classless — and it’s not practically true in this case. Look at the knockout brackets. The reward for winning Group F (where we are) is a bracket where you likely play the Group A winner in the quarters (France). That would basically be the final right there and if you lose you are out at the round of 8. The runnerup in Group F goes other half of the bracket from France — paired in the final only — and likely faces Germany/Spain, Brazil, and/or Canada on the way there. A smart team in our place actually has every incentive to play hard for two wins, rest the starters and lose to Sweden in what would be an unnecessarily difficult last group contest, and come up the other half of the bracket. Unless we tie Sweden goal difference is inconsequential, and IMO it is actually more taxing to run the score up than to play keepaway and preserve the game at that point. You save your legs by taking your result and getting the stars off the field. The goal difference argument is kind of a loser’s argument. Setting aside my theory on how this should be practically approached to save France for last, my club team that won a fair amount of stuff always shut down and made subs and played keepaway and saved itself for the rest of the tournament, chasing a win each time and nothing more. It’s the classy thing and it hews to the big picture as opposed to how bad can I bludgeon someone today. If you win each time then goal difference doesn’t matter. The goal difference argument is actually kind of insecure. What if I tie? What if I lose? Exception of the above argument, "I don't plan on losing." And to me sometimes in a multigame tournament situation you want to moderate the effort past the point of winning to save gas in the tank for the rest of the trip. The USMNT beat up on Panama — in my opinion a little excessively — a few days before being out of gas for TnT. In a few years the score is a footnote and what people remember are wins and losses. A team that runs hard to run up the score now gets something now at the loss of something later on.
Its not always clear sailing for winners of high-scoring games, but usually its for other reasons. First, I'll say that this question is a bit difficult to answer because obviously if you run up the score in the last game, its a different thing. But if you're running it up in the first game, you don't know yet if you need to. Its basically protection. Also there haven't been that many times in WWC's that we've needed to go to goal differential as the tiebreaker. Most of the time, its been on points. Cameroon would be an example of a team that put in 6 on Ecuador in 2015, but still didn't win the group. They couldn't manage to beat Japan. They did advance though, but had to play China and lost. Another lopsided score in 2015 was Switzlerand's 10-1 score against Ecuador. They lost their other 2 group games, but with that score against Ecuador managed to come in 3rd in the group and advance (where they met Canada and lost). (Japan, who won the group, only scored 1 on Ecuador, but it was in the final group game and they knew they just had to win.) Also in the case of "not quite the same but related," in 2015, France won their group, coming in over England, based on goal differential by "running up the score" against Mexico in their last group game, 5-0 (but by that time, they pretty much knew what they needed to win the group). Germany also won their group based on goal differential in 2015 after drawing Norway. They won the group BECAUSE they had put in 10 on the Ivory Coast whereas Norway only managed to beat the Ivory Coast 3-1, and only managed to put in four on Thailand. Norway probably wished they had put in more, and they then had to play England in the R16 and lost. Another example of winning the group (or getting through) based on goal differential was the 1995 WWC. US won the group (in the last group game) based on goal differential by continuing to score against Australia (the final score was 4-1 though so not the same); they were getting real-time updates on the other group game, and knew they had to keep scoring. Their last two goals came in the 90+2 and 90+4' minute. Sweden in 1991 would be an example of scoring a bunch of goals but it not helping them win the group (8-0 in their 2nd game), but they had already lost to the US 2-3 so its not the same either. They knew they were probably going for 2nd in the group at that point, if the US won all of their group games (which they did). For context, the other very high scoring game was Germany-Argentina in 2007 when Germany beat Argentina 11-0. They ended up winning the group despite tying England in the 2nd game because England already had a draw (from their first game) and only managed to put in 6 on Argentina. But being the very first game of their group, Germany had to do what they MIGHT need...they didn't know what would happen in the 2nd and 3rd group games (and didn't know that England would draw Japan in their first game since that game happened the next day.) This also seems like a good place to point out, just because of the tenor of the question and various other convos happening, that the WC game in which Akers scored 5 goals in 1991 (and the record that Morgan tied) was in the quarterfinal. It was not for goal differential. (Akers also scored all 5 goals within the 8' and 48'. ) Okay, history lesson over...but probably not quite helpful nor answering your question!
As an history teacher myself, I much appreciate history lessons! Thumbs up! A lot of the details you mentioned, I didn't know or I didn't remember, but this one I remember very well: Japan drew England 2-2 with two wonderful Aya Miyama's Free Kicks!
It is a first time for everything. And no team has been outclassed enough to be beaten by 13 goals and to assume that they can't be beaten by 8,9 or more goals by Sweden would be taking a completely unneeded risk.
This is an excellent piece on what the Argentine women have had to overcome to get to the WC. The country did not even have a national team between 2015 and 2017, because the Argentine Football Association has never liked the idea of women playing what it perceives as a man's sport and has treated female footballers with a mix of disdain and indifference for many years. Funding, training facilities, salaries, general working conditions have been terrible, at best, for years. This really points up the rampant misogyny that has existed in LatAm for a long time. It is a backward cultural thing. Women generally are treated badly. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/jun/13/argentina-womens-world-cup-sexism-england
The ruthlessness argument is strained. I played on a good club team that won state twice in club. We thought about getting wins and scoring nice goals. Winners don't think about tie breaks. We lived for the tough contests. 13-0 is not a contest. Those 13 goals are not likely to go down in memory as some great goal you scored. As such, to me, it's get your result and get off the field to rest. The other day, that required 45 minutes of ruthless play, not 90. I have advocated playing hard for 2 games and then running out the B team for Sweden, rest the A team for knockouts, get a better bracket. But even if you want to run the table -- which to be honest I always did -- if you are looking at the bigger picture you want to get the people you will need for Sweden and after off the field to rest, and to preserve the energy of the people on the field. Going for goals 7-13 is overkill that may run off your legs you need later. Last, given that the 2nd place finish is probably the friendlier bracket, the pile on approach takes too seriously the notion of winning the tiebreak. We don't go home if we stop at 7 and Sweden pops in 8 and we play to a tie. Sorry but to me as a competitive person the time we beat a league rival 15-0 and I practically dribbled into the net for a goal, it was a farce, where by halftime we were throwing a nerf football on the sideline, not something to celebrate that much. I felt sorry for them. Goals are often some sort of tiebreak but who plays that way? If you plan on running the table who cares, and it's kind of a lame thing to chase. Be real, the usual idea of goal difference as tiebreak is positive versus negative, or a modest number. Like we're going to go for +20 to your +19 is lame. This feels to me like arguments like "participation trophies" that serious athletes don't make. Serious athletes don't argue about the value of their first year in kindergarten and whether it needed to be more aggression charged and only winners trophies. The people who quit by age 10 make that argument. Ditto this. To me the people who actually won some school or travel team games by these scores know they were kind of sad games. Like, this is not what I live for. You live for the winner in a 2-1 back and forth contest between evenly matched teams. Or maybe you upset a better team. But at a certain point the ease of this should have tempered further effort or celebration. This is not a game, this is practice. People who have played in tournaments know the wiser course of action past a point is play keepaway, conserve energy, and take your easy W. You have several more games and you don't win the title with 13 goals the first game.
I think the running up the score was a non-issue. You play the game at full tilt. That's respectful. What I didn't like was the celebrations when it was like 9-0. Really? Not the worst thing in the world, but wasn't my favorite either.
Whatever one's feelings, that fact that some people are hating a team is a good sign for women's futbol.