I don't believe scouting and developing is enough to maximize a player's potential. The players must play against top level talent on a weekly basis in order to sharpen their talents. Could the U.S. system be better, of course I'd agree, but to say it isn't producing world class players is silly. Ultimately, without saying it, I believe that Footyfan was referring to (and I could be wrong here) "style" and "flair", which IMO doesn't win matches.
All the big countries in Europe either have got serious about women's football--or are getting serious. Some nations (Italy) have lagged, but the genie is out of the bottle and the women's game will grow. Italy's success at this WWC will almost certainly boost interest in soccer among girls, young women, clubs and corporate sponsors in that country. The various pro leagues in Europe are top-heavy and will likely remain so for a while. As the excellent article below on women's soccer in Spain notes, only about four of the women's clubs in that country are truly professional right now; most simply do not have enough money to be truly competitive. That also holds true in Germany and France with a lot of clubs in the big league--they play but they don't have enough money to be truly competitive. England has the most competitive pro league in Europe and it will surely get even more competitive in the years ahead. The upshot is that UEFA teams will become increasingly formidable. In Asia, Japan will remain top-notch, and China and Korea need to better harness their considerable potential. That of course is even more true in the few African countries that take women's football even halfway seriously. CONMEBOL is way behind: It has Brazil, which should always be good but seems to regularly underachieve, and Argentina may come on, albeit slowly. That's about it. As for the United States, we will remain very strong: As others have noted, we have a big talent pool, commitment to the national team, a tradition of winning. We will probably win more World Cups in the years ahead, but it will be more difficult to do so. This year's Elite Eight--all UEFA except for the United States--may be the model for a while. I don't expect 7 European teams to make it this far every WC--Japan is going to have its years, and maybe China too--but I think we could be seeing the U.S. battling European teams for supremacy for a while. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/...tion=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Brazil often underachieved, but they were anyway able to make top 4 (or even top 2) from time to time in the last two decades. I am afraid, though, that when the generation of Marta, Formiga, Cristiane will retire, they could regress instead of progressing. Marta is aware and already rang the alarm call at the end of the France-Brazil game.
Quite off-topic, here, but I wonder if, after this WWC, some of the high-profile players from Italian NT will receive offers from big European clubs (France, Germany, England) or even from NWSL. I am aware that it could damage the growth of Italian league, but on the other hand it would benefit Italian NT: it was quite handy to have Elena Linari, coming from a seson in top Spanish club Atletico Madrid, ready to replace our starting CB Cecilia Selvai when this one had an ACL injury just months ahead of the World Cup!
Unless NWSL expands, I don't see the league picking up many breakout stars of the WWC except maybe for some from Western hemisphere. International slots are at a premium, on top of the fact that top UEFA clubs can offer more money. NWSL is more likely to pick up AFC talent and other American talent (and maybe CAF talent) than to pick up UEFA talent at this point. If they can maximize those pickups, the league (and those players) will be fine. But yeah, I'd bet that Italian players start shipping around Europe before they ship overseas. That said, with Serie A heavy-hitters now investing in WoSo, you could potentially see those top players staying in the league, especially if the club game gets that second continental competition and a third team from many top leagues gets to play.
On the contrary, player transfer is a good measurement of league strength and future development of the WoSo. Nice point that I had overlooked.
Completely off-topic, does anyone knows how to estimate probability of Europe and US winning? If you go by (the proxy) formula of (Number of favorable outcomes) / (Total number of possible outcomes). US prob is 1/4 and Europe 3/4. But is there a way to include the level of play or any other qualitative data into probability? Just curious on how to measure an "adjusted" probability in this case.
I think the Italian clubs need all the help they can get from Italian players. Juventus won the Italian league in 2018, and I saw them play Arsenal in a preseason match this past season, and Arsenal played them off the pitch and won 5-0. Juventus was pretty poor for a league winner.
According to 538, the current win probabilities are 29% for the USA and thus 71% for the rest of the field, led by 22% from France. That is, whoever wins the USA/FRA game has about a 50% chance of winning both of their remaining games. 538 bases these on the "Soccer Power Index", which is a dynamic measure of teams strength based on opponent strength, offensive output, and defensive force.
Side note: even if a more generalized view would say that there were several (admittedly fairly close) upsets in the R16, it's worth pointing out that no group winners were eliminated and no group 3rd-placers advanced.
Actually, is this a proven model on the women's side? That's where I would want to see numbers. I'm not sure what works best for the men will work best for the women.
I would argue that this isn't the case for the WoSo game yeat. But it will eventually (sooner or later) develop into that.
Sorry I meant to say "footballers" instead of football players. I meant to say that what Id consider the archetype of a footballer with focus on skills and knowledge of the game as opposite to a an athletics focused "player" the US tends to mainly field due to the system and background. I'd say Tobin Heath could come closest to this description of a footballer as of now. Horan is ok but not a world class footballer. But even if I give you Horan, she would be pretty much be alone in the desert with Heath when there should droves given the vast player pool. Also: Maroszan is 27, I dont think you can call her "a talent" anymore.
#FIFAWWCDoing 🇮🇹 proud 👏Huge numbers tuned in to watch the #Azzurre yesterday 📈The article ➡ https://t.co/0lgpRMGuNN#RagazzeMondiali pic.twitter.com/4nrbbgUcO4— Italy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@Azzurri_En) June 26, 2019
Well, it worked for the Dutch as due to a lack of teams for all girls matches, the current Dutch team players were playing in their youth alongside/against boys. Only just the last few years since the rise of the Lionesses we see an upsurge of girls joining soccer clubs to make it possible to have all girl teams.
Not the first time, to qualify for Athens in 2004 UEFA teams had to take silver in WWC 2003 (or be Greece).
Question: How come the broadcasts in this WWC don't show coaches' reactions and bench reactions when a scoring chance has not been converted? In men's World Cups and in many other matches on TV, it shows the range of emotions in the game.
Yes, you were correct in assuming that I was bringing up the men's successes. I'm genuinely curious why you would consider that it might not work for the women?
IIRC, we were talking about this regression in 2015 seeing how there was nobody coming through the Brasilian youth ranks that looked even remotely close to Marta, or any of the others.
There will never be another Marta and that’s ok. However, there is an immense wealth of talent in Brazil but the CBF is uninterested in nurturing it. That’s why Vadao is still in charge. They don’t care.
That might work for Europe where there is more competition for high level sports, but not in the US. There are limited options when it comes to high level women's sports (as I've mentioned elsewhere) and football was amongst the first to make a huge, widespread impact. And I speak form experience in that the females from my high school (in the late 1980s) were talking about the national team, whilst the males were talking about football or baseball or something else. As far as I can tell, this still is the case that football for women in the US is still the main draw, which means that competition for the places will be more fierce and better players, on comparison to the rest of the world, will be present.
That's what I mean by "even remotely close." CFB is just not interested, and that really is stupid. And with the new President, I don't expect things to change.
Have the NCAA adopt FIFA rules , allow more matches over a spring and fall season, and place no limit on allowable practice seasons. Or have schools just stop playing NCAA and become club programs.
To limit the comparison to NCAA, I think, to narrow. While there are NCAA rules which are certainly different form FIFA rules, the women who play at the top level know how to play with international rules. They have played club football from the time they were youths, and most if not all were on youth/junior national teams. To me, the NCAA rules are a trivial aspect to development of a player, and in reality largely don't effect training or tactics or skill development. The hindrance is the number of matches played, but even that is not much of an issue with the substantial number of international matches the US Women play.