It's all set for another agonizing year of Soccerway.com dividing every game into the arbitrary lists of FRIENDLIES 1 and bitter rival, FRIENDLIES 2. So, just to be clear: Switzerland v Northern Ireland = 1, whereas of course, Switzerland v Austria = 2. https://int.women.soccerway.com/international/world/friendly-women/2022/friendlies-1/r67445/ https://int.women.soccerway.com/international/world/friendly-women/2022/friendlies-2/r67446/ At Fifa, on the other hand, they treat every match equally, as long as they get paid. July is the biggest month for many national teams, with their warm-up games leading up to that date, in preparation for a bonanza of continental championship finals: the African Women's Cup of Nations, Euro 2022, the Copa América, the Concacaf and OFC championships. Last time: Switzerland-Austria at Euro 2017 - (img: Ailura, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT)
#Womensinternationals@raffacarolina @DiarioFFeminino @rflalvesScorers Suriname 🇸🇷 1 Barbados 🇧🇧 1Riley Orthea. Marissa King— Wosoworld (@karlyboy71) January 28, 2022
Upcoming friendlies. Jan. 30 Barbados vs. Suriname Feb. 3 Anguila vs. St. Kitts & Nevis Feb. 5 Sudan vs. South Sudan Feb. 12 Zambia vs. South Africa Feb. 16 Andorra vs. Gibraltar Feb. 17 Northern Ireland vs. Faroe Islands Feb. 20 Austria vs. Romania Colombia vs. Argentina Gibraltar vs. Faroe Islands Northern Ireland vs. Switzerland Feb. 23 Colombia vs. Argentina Romania vs. Northern Ireland Switzerland vs. Austria
Not an error; Luxembourg and Tahiti will play a pair of friendlies on Feb. 16 & 19. 1489510374319734785 is not a valid tweet id The first match will be played in Mamer on February 16 at 5 p.m., the second on February 19 at 7 p.m. in Molsheim in Alsace, just outside of Strasbourg. The Tahiti national team is currently on a European tour and is stationed in Molsheim.
A chance to find out if the ranking of the OFC teams is accurate. Luxembourg is No 118 with 1138,94 points and Tahiti No 104 with 1196 points.
Fantastic! Hope they're able to hold those matches. Luxembourg had its own very faraway trip to the International Women's Quadrangular in late 2018, which they won against Singapore, Maldives and Indonesia: Final: Singapore 0 - 4 Luxembourg Match report: FA Singapore (Archive) Videos: Women's Quadrangular - (ElevenSports) (From the mid-Asia thread, sorry4oldquoting) Really sad story about that game's matchwinner, Karen Marin (1st-half hattrick), a winger who was often voted the country's No.1 player. She picked up a dreadful knee injury that was only noticed after she returned home from Singapore, and it put her football career in jeopardy. - [Football] "Karen Marin, a broken career?" [French / English] Wort.lu, paywalled, reported in 2021 that she was still unable to play soccer, and presumably painting became her new passion. Tahiti is certainly putting more money and coaching into the women's team since 2019, like most Pacific nations, though the Tahitian league is still only 9-a-side AFAIK. The wider population of French Polynesia is spread across 67 islands, which makes it harder to co-ordinate. Several diaspora players are with them in France, mentioned in their tour preview - the effort is undoubtedly there and will keep growing, but it could take a long time to see results. European countries are equally pushing women's football forward: Luxembourg isn't a football force but has organizational experience, at least: women's Ligue 1 there has played for 30-odd seasons in 50 years now. I'd expect the Grand Duchy to win these games, but... ? ..It'll be interesting anyway. - "Déplacement sélection A (Vahine Ura) en métropole !" - (FTF) Tahiti in training - (FTF 2022)
#WomensinternationalsFebruary fífa break so far, some Friendlies still to be confirmed in different categoriesConcacaf U 20F from Feb 25 schedule tba pic.twitter.com/40h6kDY5Al— Wosoworld (@karlyboy71) February 7, 2022
#Womensinternationals@MundialesyCopas @JueganEllas @WSoccerPlayers @WorldWSoccer @Lechus79 @raffacarolina @DiarioFFeminino @rflalves @AfricaUnitedFUT Result Zambia 🇿🇲 3 South Africa 🇿🇦 0Barbara Banda 6 36Avell Chitundu 30— Wosoworld (@karlyboy71) February 12, 2022
Additional friendlies. https://en.uaf.ua/article/44389 Match fixtures of Turkish Women's Cup 2022 (UKR time) 16.02. Bulgaria - Latvia (10.00) 16.02. Uzbekistan - Lithuania (14.00) 16.02 Ukraine - Venezuela (17.30) 19.02. Venezuela - Latvia (10.00) 19.02. Bulgaria - Lithuania (14.00) 19.02 Ukraine - Uzbekistan (17.30) 22.02. Lithuania - Latvia (10.00) 22.02 Ukraine - Bulgaria (13.30) 22.02. Uzbekistan - Venezuela (17.30) Uzbekistan was eliminated in AFC pre-qualifiers (09/23/21). Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine will be eliminated in UEFA qualifiers, during next FIFA date (March 2022). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_FIFA_Women's_World_Cup_qualification#Group_stage Venezuela will start its qualification process in July 2022.
#Womensinternationals@MundialesyCopas @JueganEllas @WSoccerPlayers @WorldWSoccer@donviktor15 @DiarioFFeminino @raffacarolina ResultMaldives 🇲🇻 1 Seychelles 🇸🇨 0Mariyam Noora 10— Wosoworld (@karlyboy71) February 15, 2022
Results from yesterday: Luxembourg 5 - Tahiti 0 Andorra 4 - Gibraltar 1 South Sudan 6 - Sudan 0 Feb. 18 Maldives vs. Seychelles Feb, 19 Luxembourg vs. Tahiti Chile vs. Ecuador Greece vs. Israel Croatia vs. Slovenia Paraguay vs. Uruguay Feb. 20 Austria vs. Romania Switzerland vs. Northern Ireland Azerbaijan vs. United Arab Emirates Sudan vs. South Sudan Gibraltar vs. Faroe Islands Saudi Arabia vs. Seychelles Colombia vs. Argentina
We often complain that we seldom have inter-federation clashes outside of the top teams playing at big international tournament (thus not having a chance to gauge the accuracy of FIFA rankings below top-positions). So, it seems to me that the Luxembourg-Tahiti matches are the most interesting ones of the week by an inter-federational comparison's point of view.
Tahiti plays Andorra next week, so it'll be interesting to see that score as Andorra really hasn't played any good even from UEFA.
One of the five goals went missing in the fog and in the rain? (As the player correctly noticed in the post-game interview, the weather wasn't exactly "Tahitian" and "the girls weren't used to the cold"). Anyway, apparently this is as "direct football" as it gets: most of the goals consist in a player racing on a straight line with the ball at her feet, runs, runs, runs, ignores any possible team-mate around her, shoots right in front of herself and scores. Football is not complicated.
#Womensinternationals@MundialesyCopas @JueganEllas @WSoccerPlayers @WorldWSoccer@donviktor15 @DiarioFFeminino ResultMaldives 🇲🇻 0 Seychelles 🇸🇨 4— Wosoworld (@karlyboy71) February 18, 2022
#Womensinternationals@MundialesyCopas @JueganEllas @WSoccerPlayers @WorldWSoccer@donviktor15 Result Tahiti 0 Luxembourg 🇱🇺 11Joana Lourenco 14 39 41 60 69Amy Thompson 35Julie Marques Abreu 45+2 70Nathalie Ludwig 46Kimberley Dos Santos 57Gabriela De Lemos 77 pic.twitter.com/jaaJizuh7W— Wosoworld (@karlyboy71) February 19, 2022
Jesus. Oh, well. More results: Greece 1 - 0 Israel - (Shahar Nakav OG 35') https://www.epo.gr/News.aspx?a_id=51092&NewsType=22 Slovenia 1 - 0 Croatia - (Lara Prašnikar 80') https://www.nzs.si/novica/V_Porecu_boljse_od_Hrvaske?id=53917&id_landing=&id_objekta=3 Full match: youtube.com/watch?v=dc0FX2kwsus ⬤ Coming up today are Paraguay v Uruguay (game 1 of 2), and also the first in the double-header of Chile v Ecuador (22:00 CLST, 01:00 GMT) - that will be live on Chilevisión, which often streams the games on its Youtube channel.
Tahiti is currently ranked 104, Luxembourg is 118 and Andorra is 170. A team ranked 118 should not easily defeat and team ranked 104. Goes to show that associations need to play games outside of the federations to show their true ranking. That Andorra-Tahiti match in a few days is going to be interesting.
Bad news in Chile before today's game, their star goalkeeper Endler of Lyon may be out for a while: - "¡Terrible! - Christiane Endler must undergo surgery on her knee a few months before Copa América" - (DaleAlbo.cl) / "Christiane Endler, OL goalkeeper, seriously injured with the Chilean selection" - (L'Équipe) Their lineup today (Natalia Campos is GK for Universidad de Chile): La Tri of Ecuador: And the live match stream from Viña del Mar, at the Estadio Sausalito: CHILE vs ECUADOR | Partido Amistoso ⚽️ EN VIVO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks2UoqtHjRM
By the way, this is very interesting for statistical geeks like me: doesn't happen often that a team has two back-to-back wins by 5-0 and 11-0 against another team sitting 14 positions ahead! I am going to ask on the FIFA rankings thread how many points is Luxembourg supposed to gain from that. If it's a lot, we could soon seen a batch of intercontinental tours by minor European NTs who want to shore up their rankings for the next qualifier event!
Ugh. Come back, Guardian's Flop 100, all is forgiven... Since it's a topic this week, here are previous matches of Pacific nations vs teams outside the OFC, not involving New Zealand. There have been a few opponents - mainly from Asia or the Pacific itself - some games at least, just the ones I could find: 2003 Guam (AFC), W2, D2, L1, vs OFC teams 2011 Cook Islands 1 - 1 Guam Guam 1 - 2 Fiji Tonga 0 - 0 Guam 2015 Singapore 0 - 0 Papua New Guinea Singapore 0 - 5 Papua New Guinea Thailand 11 - 1 Papua New Guinea Thailand 7 - 0 Papua New Guinea 2019 Vanuatu 2 - 0 Singapore Fiji 3 - 1 Singapore 2022 Australia 18 - 0 Indonesia Australia 0 - 1 Korea Republic Luxembourg 5 - 0 Tahiti Tahiti 0 - 11 Luxembourg Tahiti - Andorra ...sorry, I'm not sure how those Australia games got in there. Or, how PNG came to be No.49 in Fifa, 8 places below the champions of Africa. But please, please, nobody try to explain it to me.