Sydney Lohmann can be the first player that plays a World Cup match in a city that has the same name as herself.
That's priceless! On the other hand, it was probably much more difficult to call a poor little girl Nice or Vancouver or, let's say, Mönchengladbach. She's currently injured, isn't she? Nothing serious, I hope.
Knee injury. Bayern said that she will be out for some weeks. Any chance that Sydney Leroux will make it to the World Cup? (USA would play the round of 16 in Sydney if they win their group)
Yeah... She hasn't been capped since 2017. And even then, she played just a single game in the 2017 ToN, after having not been capped since the 2015 WC - she had ankle surgery not long after the WC and then had her first kid. Hard to be away from the NT for so long when the US has such depth up front.
Those names are still much better than X Æ A-12 Musk which is the name given by billionaire Elon Musk to one of his sons or his only daughter Exa Dark Sideræl Musk. "Æ" is a character used in some languages, including Danish and Norwegian. It's often pronounced "ash" which is how Musk pronounces the name.
Norwegians and Danes use it for the same sound that Swedes, Finns and German use Ä for, I would not pronounce it "ash"
That is how Musk explained his son's unique name pronouncing it as X Ash A12 which along with his daughter he says was his wife's idea. https://www.cnet.com/culture/internet/how-elon-musk-pronounces-x-ae-a-12-his-new-sons-name/
With the men's WC now in swing, I thought it would be fun to find some other fun facts for the women's WC if I could. We'll start off with seeing some group stage results! Teams that have never advanced from the group stage: --Argentina (3,Q) --Chile (1,P) --Costa Rica (1,Q) --Ecuador (1,X) --Equ.Guinea (1,X) --Ghana (3,X) --Jamaica (1,Q) --Mexico (3,X) --New Zealand (5,Q) --Scotland (1,X) --South Africa (1,Q) --Thailand (2,P) Team that have always advanced from the group stage: --Cameroon (2,P) --China (7,Q) --Chinese Taipei (1,P) --England (5,Q) --Germany (8,Q) --Netherlands (2,Q) --Russia (2,X) --Switzerland (1,Q) --United States (8,Q)
How about some seed stats? Since the expansion to 16 teams in the third WC in 1999: --No seed has been eliminated in the group stage, even when tournaments were drawn geographically (i.e. much higher chance of a "group of death" occurring) --Seeds that didn't win their group: GER'99 (5pts to BRA 7pts), NOR'03 (6pts to BRA 7pts), CHN'07 (6pts to BRA 9pts), JPN'11 (6pts to ENG 7pts), USA'11 (6pts to SWE 9pts), CAN'19 (6pts to NED 9pts), and AUS'19 (6pts tiebreak vs ITA+BRA) --A seeded team has always won the world cup. Non-seeded runners-up include SWE'03, BRA'07, and NED'19. In all three cases, the non-seeded runner-up was 1 spot out from being a seeded team. --Before 2023, BRA'15 was the only seeded team ever (including hosts) that would not have been seeded by a pure ranking or was at most one-away from such a seed, with two other teams (SWE+ENG) ahead of them in the rankings at the time.
Is there any coincidence out there in terms of another team's appearance/performance in helping predict the champion? Nothing obvious, though I'm sure if people dig a bit, there might be some interesting tidbits out there. Still, with so many top teams often playing each other, especially through the early years, here are a few things to chew on: --2019 was the first tournament ever that the champion wasn't GER nor beat GER along the way --2007 is the only tournament so far that the champion wasn't USA nor faced USA along the way =edit= the only way for both of these records to stand this year is if the 2023 final is USAvGER, as they are guaranteed to be on opposite halves of the bracket --ITA & KOR are tied for the most appearances (3) without ever facing the eventual champion --CHN (7!!) and FRA (4) have the most appearances without ever sharing a group with the eventual champion
Eventually, by reading, it was clear what your Q (qualified), P (made Play-offs, so far) and X (out of this edition) were meaning, but you could have anyway added a key. This last stats you posted were all in terms of single National Teams: anything relevant or anyway worth telling in terms of confederations? Only 3 confederations (and only 4 different National Teams! ) have won the WWC so far, CONCACAF, UEFA and AFC; CONMEBOL at least made the final with Brazil. What about CAF and OFC's best results? Of course, the play-offs pending, we don't even know how many teams each confederation will actually have in this World Cup, but can any prediction be made based on the bracket, on the historical results or combining both? I could do some research myself, but I just wanted to give some food for though.
CAF has been represented in the QFs once, though that was back in the 16-team days, (NGA in 1999,) so you could potentially argue that CAF getting two teams out of the groups in 2019 was "better". OFC has never advanced from the group stage, with the obv. asterisk of AUS regularly advancing out of the groups after "moving continents". Not particularly? In the men's WC, there's usually a noticeable "home field advantage" not just for the host team but for all the teams from their confederation. Conversely, while UEFA certainly had a banner 2019 tournament in France, there really hasn't been a big hosting benefit on the women's side. In fact, you could say the opposite: AFC has never had a semifinalist in AFC-hosted tournaments but usually does otherwise, UEFA tournaments have been won by non-UEFA teams more often than not, etc. The one thing I might venture is that UEFA is still queen: if a UEFA team gets eliminated, it's usually by another UEFA team, and there are only two occasions (1999 and 2007) that UEFA had more than one team eliminated in the group stage.
Ex-US national teamer Aly Wagner was the color analyst for the Portugal-Ghana Men's World Cup game today. Good for her -- a woman breaking into the man's game. Ally didn't hold back on criticizing Portugal for its idiotic play during the last 10 minutes of the game. Go, Aly!
She was a commentator for the 2018 WC, too, and that was when she actually made history as the first woman to commentate a men's World Cup match. Now it's old news.
Almost forgot a fun fact for today: Well, less a fact today and more general stats... All in honor of the first round of the men's WC now being complete! --Winning your first game put you into the top two 47/56 times --Finishing 3rd after winning your first game has happened 8 times - roughly once per year, but it was effectively way more common earlier on, happening three times in the first 6 groups (1991 & 1995) versus five times in the last 24 groups (2003-2019) --Drawing your first game is definitely better than losing your first game, landing in the top two 8/24 times versus 13/56 times - but since an opening draw only has you in the top two 33% of the time, you're more likely to advance from an opening loss than fail after an opening win, with 13 opening-loss-top-twos versus 9 opening-win-bottom-twos. --Despite this, no team that lost their opening match has ever finished first in their group. Conversely, one team (BRA'95) has won their opening game but finished last.
Unfortunately some women TV pioneers also experienced some sad news while broadcasting in the World Cup. Denmark's national team player Dr. Nadia Nadim was broadcasting the Denmark Men's World Cup game for ITV when she suddenly left the broadcast booth after finding out her mother was just killed in a vehicular accident. https://news.yahoo.com/itv-pundit-nadia-nadim-leaves-173927548.html
Last one for a while! (Unless I get inspired by something that happens in Qatar tomorrow) More group stage advancement stats. There have been 34 four-team groups at all WWCs to date. Using the modern 3-1-0 point structure: --One of the 34 groups has been won with 5pts (CAN'15). While possible, no groups have yet been won with 4pts or 3pts. 7pts will *almost* guarantee 1st, except having the top two teams tie on 7pts has happened twice before (CHN'95, NOR'15). --The most common points-placement combo is 6pts earning 2nd place, with 23 occurrences. (Followed by 0pts earning 4th place 22 times.) --It's possible to get 2nd place on 3pts or even 2pts, but this hasn't happened in the WWC yet. 4pts has occurred 6 times, and 5pts 3 times. --With the 3-way tie on 6pts last tournament between ITA, AUS, & BRA, we've seen the full range of possible point values for 3rd place (6pts, BRA'19, to 1pt, 4 occurrences). We haven't, though, seen a three-way tie on 5pts. All in all, 5pts essentially guarantees a top 2 finish. --While it's possible to still land in 4th place even with 4pts, it hasn't happened yet. But we have seen 4th place with 3pts (BRA'95) and 2pts (NZL'15).
This reminds me that once (many years ago, when I was still following men's football) I had written down all of the possible combinations of final rankings at group stage to figure out which ones had never happened before despite being technically possible. I don't remember how many possible combinations there were, nor which ones had never happened in a World Cup, and I don't think I ever tried to apply that to women's football, when I started following it instead of men's football.
Okay I guess I really need to dig around and do a comparison of "upsets" at both the men's and women's WCs, after all the action in Qatar today! (I'm away from home for the weekend so no laptop right now for proper research)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/fi...world-cup-berths-ghana-coach-says/ar-AA14Nc7p A lot of African teams have been doing well in the FIFA Men's World Cup despite their lower FIFA rankings with many qualifying or in contention to qualify out of the group stage many at the expense of UEFA teams. Frankly I think there are too many UEFA slots in the World Cup and some of those should be allocated to CAF(and other confed) teams not to mention that a lot of UEFA sides unabashedly recruit from their recent African immigrant base helping them to compete in this WC. UEFA will always be the deepest confederation because of it's better football infrastructure, stable administrative organizations(particularly for the stronger sides) and professional leagues but many of it's weaker sides in this World Cup are no better than those from other confederations.