France WWC is played on smaller stadiums. The attendance will not be higher. Canada: Total attendance: 1,353,506 (these numbers are skewed by double headers) · Average attendance: 26,029 · Biggest attendance: 54,027 for the Canada vs. England quarter-final in Vancouver · Seven matches had over 50,000 spectators in attendance France (before final and 3rd place match) Total attendance ca. 1,054,000 (no double headers) Average attendance: ca. 21,000
The men have one, but I’ve never payed much attention to it, despite loving the idea in concept. Best club teams from around the world, like a Champions League except for the globe...actually, why isn’t this a bigger thing? One thing 32 does is give you a cleaner tournament structure. Top two advance, no 3rd place awkwardness. Not sure we could have wrung another 8 teams out of this year’s pool, but maybe in 4 or 8 years.
The 2015 World Cup in Canada had 15 doubleheaders by my count. Removing the double-counted games, I came up with an attendance of about 972,000. If France has sold more than 1 million, then they've surpassed Canada's actual ticket sales
As long as 4 or 5 of the new teams are from Europe, it doesn't seem a problem. The next five European teams which missed out are all rated 1800 and over: Denmark/Switzerland/Iceland/Belgium/Austria (the exception is Austria I think with a rating of 1797) Keep a team like Jamaica and add Costa Rica or Mexico Add Colombia from South America. Seems doable.
I think for the men it can be a bit much, as they have saturated the market with tournaments. However, I think it's an excellent idea for the women's club teams. Talk about bragging rights for the winner.
The TSG press conference before the main one was attended by 15 media... I even managed to squeeze one question in about the defensive blocks positioning during the tourney. FIFA will do a full tourney review 22nd September in Milano, the day before the FIFA best awards.
I don't like the idea of a club World Cup. Certainly not at this stage with domestic leagues struggling to attract spectators. I don't think going global is the way forward for the club game now. Club football is supposed to be local. Each country needs to be successful at building up their domestic leagues first and foremost because this is the foundation of all football. A commercially successful domestic league is so much more important than yet another global tournament you might qualify for with your club may be once a decade or less.
Because it's a big laugh compared to the Euro CL. In the nations World Cup the tournement is about bringing countries from different confederations together to compete. Countries from a confederation have to bring to the table what they produce. Clubs arenot restricted to what they (their academies) produce. So the ones with money buy around the globe the best players. Europe is the dominant continent in soccer, both in nations as in club soccer. But in the nations WC at least there's Brasil and Argentina to compete with the Euro countries. In club soccer there's none. No one in Europe is interested in that shit Clubs world cup. It used to be a battle between the Euro champion and the South Am. champion for the clubs world title. Those battles already had lost their lustre. A whole competition for a Euro club with their already cluttered year schedule for their players for club and national teams is ridiculous. Because the South Am. clubs donot stirr the imagination of fans in Europe anymore even these confrontations are a waste of time from Euro pov, let alone against clubs nobody ever heared of.
The men play entirely too many games. Yes, they are paid lavishly, but the owners and FIFA want to constantly add more games--it's greed. Completely agree. FIFA is trying to rush things with the women across the board. Same with expanding the WC tournament. It's just greed.
Maybe the European Union should set a maximum of 50 matches a year for EU professional player. That would curb the parasiting confederation associations and FIFA in their bleeding outthe players.
That could be too low of a maximum for European players on the top, elite teams. For the Premier League, let's say 35 league matches, 3 Carabao cup games, 3 FA Cup games, and 10 Champions League matches. That's not unreasonable to me for a Liverpool/Manchester City next season, and that's already 51 matches. You can't get rid of all international friendlies/qualifiers.
Hey, you can play healty football 6 times at month, maybe 7; multiple by 12 and you get more that 50. Football is football, not rugby, not basketball.
The goalkeepers in women's soccer get a lot of criticism but the goalkeeping in this World Cup has been mainly excellent. I'd love to see more of these goalkeeper highlights circulating around in the news and social media. No need for smaller nets! Goalkeeper appreciation post! @karinaleblanc and @ayyy_west react to the Top 5 saves of the #FIFAWWC so far. pic.twitter.com/W0ne8wK9eX— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 7, 2019
It's been discussed here on BigSoccer and elsewhere before, but I'd disagree... First, highlights don't make an overall good year for goalkeepers. And most of the best full-game performances came in the group stage from minnow-country keepers. A lot of the KO performances have been pretty pedestrian.
Of course there are some goalkeepers in the World Cup who inevitably embark on ill-advised adventures (Hedvig, you there? or is that Bronze Medal serving as a magic amulet to protect you from all but the most positive comments?! tee-hee!), but I'm struggling to think of goals in the knockout stage that were given up cheaply by the 'keeper. Meanwhile they've come up with big saves. I think this is a good time to be positive and show the world the good side of women's goalkeeping. I worried that without a Hope Solo or Nadine Angerer, the goalkeeping would be marked by mediocrity. It hasn't. It's been very good.
Because nobody demanded it...my favorite (non-US) XI. Every four years the WWC re-invigorates my interest in the women’s game, then the difficulty watching and following anything other than the USWNT games slowly erodes it. These players have me excited to make the effort again: Keeper: Schneider (JAM) At 19, she was among the youngest players at the tournament, but she was fearless, with some early hero-making moments (VAR be damned). Defense: Bronze (ENG) Fischer (SWE) Thorisdottir (NOR) Majri (FRA) Bronze was one of the best overall players I saw at the WC. She was exciting every time she touched the ball. Majri might not have been a stellar defender, but she was fun going forward. Fischer just for that clearance in the 3rd place game. Epic. Midfield: Kirby (ENG) Henry (FRA) van de Donk (NED) Asllani (SWE) So hard to pick just four. vdD has been a huge part of NED’s success. Asllani has to be on anyone’s top XI. Wish I could have seen so much more of Kirby at her best. Henry was a great captain and leader for France. Forwards: Hansen (NOR), Blackstenius (SWE) Miedema and White May have been better, but I enjoyed these two more. You couldn’t take your eyes off Hansen with the ball and Blackstenius was like the flash...and she’s got the name of a super-villain. Super subs: Cascarino (FRA), Beerensteyn, Roord (NED) Huitema (CAN) Honorable mention: Reiten, Engen (NOR), Diani, Le Sommer, Gauvin (FRA), Lucia Garcia (SPA), Raso, Kerr (AUS), Giacinti, Bonansea (ITA), Martens, Miedema (NED), Iwabuchi (JAP), Cuthbert (SCO), Prince, Beckie (CAN), Endler (CHI), Ericsson, Lindahl (SWE), Erceg (NEW) It was a great few weeks. Sorry to see it end tomorrow...but hopefully a fourth star for the US will ease my pain.
I guess I maybe should have watched France more closely because I thought Le Sommer failed to live up to her potential/the hype often associated with her name. I would actually probably put Iwabuchi in your front two setup in place of Blackstenius. (I don't really think of Graham Hansen as a support striker in a front two, but I wouldn't replace her with Iwabuchi.) Haven't been all that impressed by Miedema for large sections of matches, but she has shown her ability and talent at times. I've been more impressed by Groenen over the whole course of the tournament, but van de Donk has been great on both sides of the ball in the last two matches. Agreed on Asllani. Not as impressed with her as others have been, and she should have done better on two of the goals against Italy. She did have a strong performance against Brazil though. Van Veenandaal is my keeper of the tournament even with the mistake against Cameroon.
Yeah, to be clear, I would agree that others were better, my list was the players that caught my attention.
Club soccer has become a primarily commercial thing and this socalled Club World Cup is as useless and as uninteresting to European clubs as it can get from a commercial pov. Nobody watches it in Europe and given it has to be played somewhere in the world you also get the time zones differences that has to make those outside of the time zone of the playing site to go watch it at awkward times. The nations World Cup at least has in the group stages countries playing people all over the world are willing for to lose sleep for to see them play. Anyone in Europe or the States wanting to lose sleep to watch the Asian champions fight the Oceanic champion? Or the Asian champion fighting the African champion? Donot think so.
I am in Europe and I'll always lose sleep to watch the Asian Champion club. It always gutted me that, at the time when INAC Kone Leonessa was one of the strongest sides in the world, there was nothing similar to a Champions' league in Asia and, at the world level, we had to be content with Mobcast Cup.
I'm ok with moving to a 32 team Women's World Cup. The only continents that I would worry about giving extra spots to are Oceania and Asia. There is a big drop-off behind Australia/China/Japan/North Korea/South Korea and then there is another big drop after Myanmar/Taiwan/Thailand/Vietnam. We already know that second group isn't good enough and only Taiwan really has the social and economic conditions to rapidly improve their women's team. However, I don't think they have a willingness to actually do so. Obviously Europe has a more teams that could respectably compete at the WWC. CONMEBOL has improved recently and this year could have easily added another competitive team. CONMEBOL's double round-robin qualification system almost guarantees that the best South American teams qualify. If CONMEBOL got to qualify 3.5 teams, and FIFA gives out more money for women's soccer, then CONMEBOL could move to a full home and away round robin like in men's qualifying, further guaranteeing quality participants. CAF could probably put forward a couple more competitive teams in any given WWC cycle. However, I'm not convinced their qualifying system is rigorous to consistently qualify the best teams, particularly if you give them 4 or 5 spots. CONCACAF has clear depth issues. However, in recent cycles Haiti, Panama and T & T have all produced teams that are at least as good as Thailand was this year...and that's to say nothing of Costa Rica and Mexico. I wonder what CONCACAF qualifying would look like if CONCACAF got 4.5 slots. Would it stay at 2 groups of 4 or would they open up the final tournament to more teams?