Canada is a good team , well coached with some interesting individuality but Germany is definitely one level above on everything, Giulia Gwinn is clearly destined to stardom, she was very tiny at Euro U17 she grew up quite quickly without losing agility and close ball control, her major assets. However, she and her teammtes are quite late in terms of developing football IQ compared to Spanish and Japanese girls, I saw England vs Nigeria and I noticed the same thing, I know these girls are still very young but I definitely was expecting more "smart" play from players of adavanced female football nations like Germany or England.
My personal theory is that nations that are very well-developed at the top level (strong NT and strong league, e.g. Germany, USA, England, etc.) also often have layers and layers of development supporting that top level, and those layers and layers are both a blessing and a curse. Blessing because it create a sort of self-sustaining system that continuously feeds talent into the top level, but curse because it leaves less impetus for talented individuals to develop rapidly (while also having more opportunities for late-bloomers to make it at the top). Thus, at the youth levels, players from highly-structured-WoSo nations haven't been pushed as much to play against professional- and senior-NT-level opponents. It's the nations that see more turnover and youth infusion at the top level (e.g. the Koreas, CAF nations, Spain and Japan to a degree) that also do well at the youth level.
Brazil 0 - 1 Korea DPR (R. Hae Yon 71') Stats Paraguay 0 - 5 Japan (Takahashi 4', Nojima 29' 39'(p) 44', Takarada 89') Stats
I can't speak for England being an advanced female football nation.., but the highlights suggest they look exactly the same athletic counter attacking team as they were during the Euro's, no? However, Germany have come to Jordan and randomly chosen to remove a key ingredient to they way they were playing during European qualification (a #10/CAM), and since doing that have struggled to play with the same offensive fluency in these WC finals. I mean for any talk of superior footballing IQ, it needs to be said Germany actually dominated Spain during their two drawn encounters at the Euro's, so maybe dominating teams without being truly ruthless enough to kill them off is just something this German side does. This a team which also had a Euro semi 4-3 win vs an England side they out shot by a huge margin too.
What's the situation for girls playing on boys teams in these nations though... I know Germany and Japan will have girls on their U-17 teams who still play with or train regularly on boys teams, meaning there's surely plenty impetus for all girls on every youth wnt to succeed at youth level, or rapidly improve outside of well run traditional playing structures. I even remember a 19/20.yo Alexandra Popp being allowed to train once a week with FC Schalke 04's U-19 boys, this being way outside the conventional norms of a well developed female football nation like Germany; so I'm not sure how well a nations wnt's program is structured, has in it's ability to succeed or underachieve at youth level.
It seems like ALL the US WNT teams have the same glaring deficiency...Poor, poor, and more poor coaching which is very sad given the talent pool available to them. All I keep seeing is..." now girls, ladies...we're going to go out there and make sure that for every forward pass, you remember to make 99 passes backwards even when it's not absolutely necessary. They keep hiring people who have no freaking clue about Football (maybe S0ccer - but not Football) I'm sad to say. Unless I hear about them bringing in real coaches for a change, I'm getting real close to turning them off for good. Some of those players have too much potential for such mediocre coaching.
Looking at the stats from all these games, the poor ratio of shots actually hit the frame of the goal might help various GK's looking quite good... Seriously though, besides the teams playing Jordan being able to produce silly numbers of attempted shots on goal, is it normal to see so few shots at this level actually making the goal keepers work? And could this be due to better defending not improved goalkeeping...?
What you're saying is not related to my post but still is really interesting and you make some good remarks. However, I can't really debate on that because I don't know Asian or Africans local football enough on that matter but for Spain I'm pretty sure the majority of their team still playing youth football on club level just like USA, Germany, England etc... but they just receive a different football education... Germany dominated Spain mostly thanks to their physical superiority, Spanish girls looked like midget in opposition to Minge and Co........but in terms of football displayed they didn't, don't get it wrong. By football IQ I was strictly talking about the decision Germans players made on and off the ball, in general I noticed that many (including Gwinn) were not able to yet take information before receiving the ball and consequently the fluidity of their offensive movement lacked cohesion and constancy. I'm not discussing German youth program at all, one of the very top worldwide no doubt about that, but I'm just a little bit surprise that this part of the game which is considered fundamental by many (me first) still missing at this point of your players development phase, surprised because these girls at 17/16 years old are very close to the end of their academical football education.
Just been discussing some of this in the German thread, and your not saying anything controversial here at all. For whatever reason, Germany no longer pay that much attention in developing their U-15/17 teams in the same way they do their U-19/20's. Ideas of Germany having a larger U-15/17 player pool right now, creating a scenario where more names will come in and out of the U-17 side could be a major contributing factor to this; but this being Germany's most athletic collection of U-17 talent hasn't gone unnoticed either, with a very possible shift in youth development directives coming down from the restructure taking place within the senior coaching staff... I still feel much of the current German U-17 WC sides issues stem from their coach messing around with a mid-field trio that completely dominated the Euro tournament, seeing a CM playing Minge singled out for individual praise, at it's very best keeping a technically shrewd wnt like Spain completely dormant in the final too. So moving forward at U-19 level, many of these girls will improve under Meinert, but I don't think people should be surprised anymore about Germany underachieving at the U-17 WC. They don't play friendlies as pre tournament prep, they experiment with their team at the finals, and at a time the new senior coach is using a variation 4-3-3, it's clear a defined system of play hasn't been ingrained into them just yet either.
They don't play friendlies are you sure ? 2016/17 http://www.dfb.de/u-17-juniorinnen/spiele-termine/spiele/?no_cache=1 2015/16 http://www.dfb.de/u-17-juniorinnen/spiele-termine/spiele/?spieledb_path=/teams/76968/seasonplan/118 There is also a tri nations tournament that was "unofficial" against England and France
Spain 1 - 1 Mexico (E. Navarro 58' - D. Espinosa 56') Stats Very good game. In 1st half Spain had 70% of possesion but only 3 shots and none of them on goal, mostly cuz of Mexico high pressing game and solid defence. In 2nd half game was more open with Spain still pushing for a winner and Mexico playing very dangerous counters. With this tie Mexico top the group. (Ethiopian ref - another poor match officiated by her along with previous one PRK - CAN) New Zealand 5 - 0 Jordan (Tawharu 5' 90', Blake 28' 76' 90+2') Stats
Don't have another tantrum, but the more recent Four Nations tournament didn't even feature a single player from the last Euro's winning team, with the other friendlies vs France hardly speaking volumes for the supposed equal attention Germany provide their U-17 WC prep, as these games took place prior to the 2015-16 Euro's taking place; you know, the Euro's that saw Germany qualify for the current U-17 WC...
Canada 0 - 2 Venezuela (Castellanos 30', Moreno 74') Stats Venezuela has won it playing from 37min with 10 women and in spite of some poor officiating at times. Castellanos again proved herself an outstanding prospect for the future. Germany 2 - 0 Cameroon (Gwinn 15', Oberdorf 72') Stats
Wow, it's the second Red Card in three matches for Venezuela! Are they really a little rough as a team, or it's all on the referees they met? Castellanos was impressive two years ago in Costa Rica, I am not surprised she is even more. Canada has a story of successfull young teams, and they had players that had been tested even at Senior Level, as Olympic bronze-medal-match scorer Deanna Rose, but I am not surprised with the result at all: I had said long before the beginning of this tournament that Venezuela is a solid team and that I expected great things from them at this WWC. Also, Kenneth Szeremeta is surely a wise and prepared coach. I see that Daniuska Rodriguez, who was recently miracoulously back from a bad injury, didn't play yet. Probably, bringing her in Jordan was sort of a gamble, to have her at ready as a super-sub after group-stage?
2nd yellow for Gonzales was valid, but first one was totally bogus - Kats pushed Gonzalez unsportingly without the ball, Gonzalez did make a gesture - I'd say "take your hands off" and went on her way without argument, ref wasn't aware of it at all, but was noticed by 4th official that smth occured and so gave both players a yellow. All and all some poor calls in this match. I guess so.
Good job, Venezuela. I expect them to also field a quality senior team in the near future. Germany really need to work on their finishing, even though I think ending up as runners-up actually would have been better for them. Facing Spain who know Germany very well and potentially Japan seems more difficult than Mexico and not-Japan.
I expect that too. The general structure of the team is good, Szeremeta (that i expect to take over Senior Team, if he doesn't already) is an excellent coach and Deyna Castellanos could actually became an international star of the game. Considering the general low-level of CONMEBOL's teams, emerging shouldn't be a problem in the future for them. If I think about Colombia and, especially, Ecuador at 2015 WWC, I am confident that Venezuela can deploy a much better team to qualify for next World Cup in 2019.
yeah, if CONMEBOL is granted 3 slots for the 2019 WWC, the three qualifiers should be: Brazil, Colombia & Venezuela.
Chile was in the raising, in the last few years, but I am not sure they can catch up with Colombia or Venezuela.