I greatly admire your restraint for waiting so long. This little series of friendlies are good as they, probably, are as close to a meaningful match as the ladies will have before the Olympics. It will be good to see some play against quality opposition. At least I hope the teams turn out to be as good as it looks they will be. The US has several players that really need to play VERY good to actually make the Olympic roster. They need to prune the field players down to 16, at least in the coach's mind, fairly soon so that the last few friendlies can serve to solidify the team. I would like to see the practices the US has during the next few months. In the lead up to the '99 WWC I remember one of the US players saying that the most competitive matches were being played at the practices. I would not be surprised if the current set of practices are even more intense because the final roster is smaller and the talent pool is, I believe, even deeper and, mostly, more competitive.
An asymmetric contest. the USWNT will see this as a tuneup to finalize the Olympic roster. it’s the biggest match of the year for England.
Zero. ... all USWNT players must play in NWSL More seriously, none of our college players are in our current top 23 (or top ~40). Not even Stanford's Sophia Smith, who just left early to join Portland as the #1 pick. She might be in our top #100. The closest we have to college kids on this roster are Lavelle, Sullivan, and Davidson, each of whom recently graduated. SheBelieves in a year modulo 4 is a warmup for the Olympic roster, so we don't have room for thought-experiments. 2021 and 2022 might be freer in bringing in 1-2 college stars, such as Stanford's Catarina Macario if she's still in school and finishes her switch to USA. USA's top players tend to stay in our player pool for years, and get even better. England's WNT is probably big enough to do that, too, but their 2020 goals are different.
I do not think that it will effect the SBC but, if it is not contained, it may well strongly effect the Olympics. Japan is quite aggressive in containment protocols, they have already closed all schools, (My granddaughters are VERY unhappy about that, they are already bored) and Japan is taking other aggressive measures that may well contain the outbreak there. I do wonder if there will be any problem with airline travel for the Japanese coming to the US. There are a bunch of cancellations and delays of flights out of the whole area. If they have not already gotten out of Japan they may have trouble getting a direct flight to the US. I do also wonder about our President closing borders soon. You never know which way he or his minions might jump. The Olympics are far enough away so anything is possible from a full blown global pandemic to an effective vaccine to it being found that the novel coronavirus is seasonal, like the flu, and giving time for better containment. There are so many ways this could go that I do not think any really accurate predictions can be made. The novel coronavirus is apparently very contagious but not particularly deadly and that makes it hard to contain as there are even some reports that a patient can be contagious while they do not have symptoms. I have also found descriptions where it is said to be close to the perfect virus. It kills so few of its victims that it has maximized its opportunities for spread. It is closer in form to the common cold than it is to the flu or most other more common viruses and most everyone knows how hard the cold is to control. The one thing we do not want to see is something as trivial in the broad view as the SBC or even the Olympics contributing to a world wide pandemic. Remember there was a Women's World Cup moved from China to the US because of a virus that is much less contagious than the novel coronavirus. I do not think the Olympics can be moved because of the number of diverse sports and the short time involved. Even the US would be hideously pressed to find and reserve enough venues and hotel rooms and, in this case, the US has not avoided the outbreak. So the only advantage the Olympics have, at this time, is that there is still some time before a decision has to be made unless that decision is to move them to another country and, for that, it may already be too late. BTW: Japan has already made serious alterations to the Olympic Torch Relay to keep people from gathering in large groups so they are not adverse to taking pretty extreme measures to help contain the outbreak in there country.
A little more on the above issue: https://www.forbes.com/sites/willia...pics-that-could-be-a-good-thing/#1849716629a6 https://www.npr.org/2020/02/27/8101...on-that-coronavirus-could-disrupt-tokyo-games https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/sports/olympics/tokyo-coronavirus.html
judging from the google hits, that must be a thing for Shiba owners. The name does translate as “small red brushwood dog”
In the part of Italy where I live (Milan), where there was a spread of coronavirus contagion, schools (and about everything else) are closed too, since a week. Since I am a teacher, you can imagine how much it does affect me (it's not only your granddaughters being unhappy). You post was quite a good sum up of where we're at with this crisis. I just hope Tokyo Olympics are far away enough down the road to avoid the peak of the contagion and of the containment measures. Apart from any other consideration, for us, women's football's fans, Olympic Games are the second big event after the WWC and it would be very sad for us to miss it.
Both Japan and Italy have well developed and quite good health care system as do virtually every country that has fairly large numbers of novel coronavirus cases. However I have more concern about what happens if the virus gets into the nations with poor health care or large numbers of the extremely poor and disenfranchised. Countries like N. Korea or Cambodia or Vietnam are very vulnerable to nearly nation wide outbreaks. Also, on this side of the world many of the central American countries are very vulnerable. That is all not to mention South America and Africa. there are many countries that in the group I mentioned that have no reported cases or very very few and the concern is that they are not detecting what is really there or that, in some cases, they are intentionally under reporting. The way all that effects soccer is that soccer matches draws large crowds and it becomes easy for the virus to infect many from a single source and many of those countries have a lot of soccer matches. So far it seems that the novel coronavirus may be transmitted as easily as the common cold. Of course all major indoor sports are even better venues for transmission. If the outbreak is still active come July, even if it is contained in Japan, they may feel the need to cancel the Olympics because of the crowds involved. It is well to remember however that the Olympics has been canceled only three times since their revival. Those times were all due to war. The Olympics are the most important sporting event world wide due to the diverse number of different sports and the number of participants. and that makes the decision to cancel them much more difficult. Lastly one of the links I posted earlier discusses in some detail why it is nearly impossible to move the Olympics. There are too many other events that would be impacted by a move and other times of the year are not really available due to many participants not being available to compete. For soccer it is obvious how reluctant teams would be to release players during the main part of the season but basketball is also quite unlikely to provide the stars if the Olympics gets moved to winter or next spring. So far much of the third world ha been spared from the outbreak but, as I said earlier, that could be due to misreporting or failure to diagnose correctly. If the outbreak is still active at all then Olympics could provide the vector to infect many previously uninfected countries. That is another reason that might cancel the Olympics. Also it can work the other way where it is mostly contained but just a few infected people attend the events and infect many others who then go home and reintroduce the virus to countries that had the outbreak contained.
wouldn't England's(disguised as Great Britain) priorities be the same in 2020?)like, uh, winning gold at the Olympics), I mean, their probably only going to add Kim Little to the squad(as Jesse Fishlock s still injured) looking forward to see the ironically named Beth England making her debut vs the US at SBC, she's outscored her team mate Sam Kerr, 8-1, ever since Kerr joined Chelsea. Now just got to wonder if the usual, slow plotting, Phil Neville will play her and then as well, Alessa Russo, who was such a speedster for North Carolina Tarr Heels
I read in the Economist that the corona virus (as do flu viruses) flourishes in cold, wet conditions and will probably decline during the warmer months -- an return next winter.
Despite the fact that Trump keeps spouting this theory (the same guy who had to be told that the flu vaccine will not have an effect on COVID-19), the CDC says that its too early to tell what impact the weather will have on COVID-19. From the CDC website: "At this time, it is not known whether the spread of COVID-19 will decrease when weather becomes warmer. There is much more to learn about the transmissibility, severity, and other features associated with COVID-19 and investigations are ongoing." The weather could have an effect, but no one knows yet.
There are quite a lot of unknowns about the novel coronavirus but one thing that is known is that it behaves more like the common cold than the flu. In fact the coronavirus family includes the common cold but the flu is in a completely different virus group. (That is why Trump was displaying his ignorance when he said that the flu vaccine could be effective against the flu.) Also it is well to remember that, so far, there is really no treatment or vaccine for the cold and that would mean that it is less likely that anything will be found to really help with the novel coronavirus. Also studies have shown that the flu is truly seasonal, it thrives better in cool to almost cold weather, but the cold only appears to be due to the fact that people tend to gather in closed close environments much more in the winter than the summer. It may turn out to be that the novel coronavirus is truly seasonal but the jury is still out and there have been cases of it in areas that are currently in summer, like Australia. It is much too early to say much of anything about the spread except that it spreads better with physical contact and even close contact without touching. Right now it would be good to, in areas of outbreaks, for people to avoid each other in group situations. Any "authority" that, at this time, tries to tie the novel coronavirus to any preference for time of year or weather is simply making stuff up. It should be noted that the CDC, USAMRIID, WHO and every other disease control group I have heard of has not said more than they are "looking" at the possibility that the novel coronavirus might be seasonal. That is the problem with today's news, it is very often that the jump from "maybe" to "is" gets made all too often. And when you add in the ability of people to only read or hear the part of any news they agree with or even understand the misinformation. This should be the information age but it really is the misinformation age. In this country it is still fairly safe to hold and attend events with crowds so the "She Believes Cup" will continue. But I do have continuing doubts about tournaments like the Olympics. Should the novel coronavirus turn out to not be seasonal and the rate of infection does not drop as the weather warms then Japan and the Olympic committee may have little choice but to cancel the games. As I said in another post moving or delaying the games involve too many problems to make it reasonably possible (unless the move is put into place right now and even now may be too late) so the only real options are going on or canceling. Personally I think the games will go on but it would not surprise me to have the games canceled or played behind closed doors with no fans in attendance and heavy screening for all the participants and media involved. That screening, in itself, might cause several countries to withdraw. But it does us all well to remember that the games are just that games and therefore very unimportant when set against all the sickness and death the novel coronavirus is causing.