The tournament will be played the week finishing 15 August, 4 teams invited: Lyon, OL Reign, PSG and Juventus. No one has formally accepted the invite so far. It is close enough to Women Champions League QF, SF and final to be a top quality prep.
I can't confirm if Juventus will take part or not, but it would be quite an important chance for Italian National Team's players as Bonansea, Girelli, Gama, Giuliani, Salvai and others to get some relevant playing time at international level. Here in Italy it's been decided just two days ago that the women's league won't resume , but our NT players need to regain their fitness for the important Euro qualifier games vs Denmark that have been re-scheduled for this fall.
Yeah.. I have to agree here. It's not just Rapinoe either. It seems like many of the USWNT players are taking the same stance of Rapinoe that NWSL is a side gig to their USWNT duties..It's such a bad look for the league to have the most recognizable players either not showing up, or limiting their playing time..
For obvio For obvious reason they are inviting the club they own in the USA, it is an easy negociation.
Alana Cook signed a short term loan with the Reign. I'm surprised these aren't more common actually especially for players in the WSL. I'm glad to see we are addressing our CB shortage but I'm still uneasy with the amount of new faces in the defense.
For many years loans into the NWSL were against roster rules. I don't know when that changed but last year was the first time we saw any.
I don't think this is right. When Vero was with the Thorns, she was on loan. After that, as I recall, the Thorns decided they were not going to do any more loans -- despite that she was great: If they were going to have players on the roster, they wanted them for the full season (national team players excepted). I don't know if that became a NWSL rule or not.
Building on CPT's point: loans between NWSL and the Aussie W-League were incredibly common throughout NWSL's history, too. (And IIRC, in NWSL's first or second year, I thought there was one WNTer who only started her NWSL as a loanee since she was still on contract in Europe... Deffo not sure on that point though.)
Were they loans or short term contracts? With the W-League running from November to March and NWSL running from April to October players can move back and forth between the leagues with minimal impact to their teams and with how financially strapped women's teams largely are and player salaries being what they are, the rules around players being contracted with multiple teams tend to be a little less strict.
Definitely a mix of both. But I'd say it was at least 50% real loans. There have been repeated instances of noise made when a player gets traded in the NWSL offseason while on loan in the W-League. Plus, it's not uncommon for some of the Aussie players to be contracted with their local teams and technically on loan their entire time in NWSL.
Pretty good news. A more than honorable 2019-20 as third centerback at PSG. Only three starts (90’) plus two second halves in league but there's a steady pair in place with Paredès and Dudek. Cook didn’t just get garbage time against bottom feeders either, the starts were against Bordeaux, Guingamp and Montpellier and she also appeared against FC Paris. Also started in all 4 CL matches and 2 of 3 French Cup matches played. 8 CS in 11 matches; considering 2 OG she had nothing to do with you can say PSG allowed only one goal with her on the field. It would be a surprise if PSG let her go permanently but they’ve had a couple of more surprising roster defections recently and OL definitely has both the budget and the prestige to lure her away if she looks good this summer.
Given recent news, quarantining in Montana was certainly a blessing in disguise. Not only does it appears that the players love their hosts and the area but it prevents boneheaded decisions from players.
even w/o COVID it should be SOP. training camp needs to be like a retreat: peace and quiet, concentration on a goal, team bonding, altitude if possible... starting this year "Missoula" may have the same connotation for Reign as "Tignes" had for many years at OL.
I was planning to write my post match ramble but was busy, anyway here goes: - Right of the bat I was not impressed with the lineup. If there is one thing I hate in sports is coaches who play players out of position for no good reason so Benstiti is already starting on the wrong foot for me. Whats even worse is with the roster we have, the are multiple starting players in each position so there's really no need to play anyone out of position. - My biggest issue was obviously Steph Cox at RB. I'm not sure what the thought process was on that but that experiment did not work. During most of the game, Cox was so far infield that she was a 4th midfielder. That left the right side and poor Alana Cook completely exposed and Onumonu took advantage all game. I don't understand why he did this and not just play Taylor who looked good in her brief cameo. - Then there's the issue with playing Balcer on the wing when that is clearly not her best position. What is even more infuriating is that this decision was made in order to accommodate Taylor at CF when in my opinion Balcer is the better player in that position. We have maybe 3 or 4 players on the bench that are better players on the right so this decision is even more baffling. - On the bright side, the woman of the match was definitely Quinn. I wasn't too sure of her in that position but I was really impressed with what I saw. It must be the height but she reminded me a bit of Keelin Winters. It'll certainly be interesting to see her and Fishlock on the pitch together. - I also thought Jenkins had a really good game and she was pretty much our only source of offense. She needs to work on her headers though as she had several that should have at least been on target. Long was great as always and so Murphy. - To be a bit harsh, I expected more from Cruz but I'll cut her some slack as she's brand new to the league. She did looked gassed to me in the first half though. All that been said, it was good to have the team back. Hopefully in the next match the coach don't sabotage the team again.
I didn't watch the whole match, but @Lechus7, who did, wrote on Nadeshiko Japan thread that Momiki, who substituted Cruz at 75', did more in 15 minutes than Cruz had done in the rest of the game. Of course, they play different positions, but do you think you could agree with that statement?
I though the 4-3-3 without any attacking midfielders was too defensive and lacked creativity. It got better when subs came in. A midfield of Quinn + Cruz+ Long means no reall passing quality. Fishlock is needed there.
I would tend to agree. For the first 70 minutes the only offensive outlet was to Jenkins on the left. Once she got tired/figured out the team ran out of ideas. However that changed when Taylor, Spencer and Momiki was subbed on. Spencer and Momiki were pretty tenacious on the right side and did have a lot of opportunities. For the next match if Cruz is to start I would rather like to see Taylor at RB, Balcer at CB and Momiki at RF.
I thought Cruz was a more attack minded midfielder? I agree that the team lacked creativity especially in the middle of the park. Quinn did a good job winning tackles and advancing the ball but once it got to the final third we were out of ideas.
Do you think not having Rapinoe is hurting the Reign? It's not like NWSL can necessarily afford to have significant depth at all positions and missing out on one of your best attacking players is a pretty big loss. Also, is Fishlock going to be available for the next game? I seem to recall she was going to be.
Cruz was always a defensive midfielder with Lyon. When you have Necib and Abily alongside you, you leave it to them to create. Although she might have changed role later, but with Lyon and PSG more of a 6 or 8 than positioned as a 10 on the pitch. Obviously Rapinoe would add much more in attack, but she does not turn up very often these days for Reign.
my question to myself was : "Farid is going to play a possession game with this?" mke no mistake, i like all tree players and there's more to soccer than ball skills. but unless you have a whole lot more of them on the field than we saw here, possession is just square passes. and Fishlock is an awesome player but i never saw her as someone who's going to unravel a defense in the last 30. and a "jeu de position" requires several participants. Benstiti needs to take a hard look at his roster and reinvent himself. he's got a good group but they're never going to play like the teams he's coached up to now.
Another game, another failure to score. And the team perofrmance level decreased from the first game imo. Passing was not as precise, movement off the ball was less prominent. Technical ability from certain players was very limited. What was really missing was leadership on the pitch. When things go wrong, you expect somebody to take the ball and also to energize the whole team. None of this yesterday. To be fair, new team new coach, short pre-season, new playing style, really looked square peg in a round hole at time. You can see what type of football they try to achieve, but it is a long road with a lot of work to do.
Agree with all of this. I watched about 70 minutes of this match and fell to sleep. Can't find the image right now but there was one showing the Reign passing in this match and I think we completed 3 or 4 passes in the opponents 18-yard box. That says it all about the performance. I think the only positive I can take right now is I know that this team have quality players to compete with every opponent in this league but for some reason every player out there was tentative. What we really need is for these guys to actually throw caution to the wind in just shoot and quite all the square passes that leads no where. I'm happy that today's match is at noon so I can finally watch and partake in the live discussion