Coaches and captains. And it was my understanding that they couldn't vote for someone in their own country.
The World Cup and the Olympics are definitely the top 2 for everyone. For my money, the next most important event in women's soccer is the U19 World Championships. The importance of the Algarve Cup depends on your perspective. The UEFA Cup may be important to Europeans but it's still a regional championship. Algarve and the 4NT both have the potential of pitting the world's elite teams against one another and that's why North American's are so interested in them.
Cafan nice to see there are those who are fair and objective of the knowledge of the game of women's soccer. your post have been able to drive the point I was trying to get across to Jan Balk more clearly than I myself could have done. thanks for your contribution to the argument.
I think it's fairly safe to say that different tournaments are valued differently in different countries. It is for instance not surprising that for a canadian fan the U19 is very important, while my own reaction is more like "c'mon, it's a youth tournament for christ's sake" (I could go on a long rant here with loads of statistics on the significance and unsignificance of performance on youth level for later senior level success, but I won't). You just have to compare Sweden's and Canada's different level of success at U19 level to understand that. So I can gather why americans rate the Algarve Cup highly (they keep winning it) while we in Sweden don't care that much about it. But there is more to it than that. Algarve Cup differs from regular competitions in several ways. It is an invitational, there is no qualification process. It is scheduled in what is the preseason upbuild period for several of the european countries (swedish and norwegian leagues start in mid April, Denmark late March). Neither tournament format nor match rules follow the usual FIFA standard. When you try to value the significance of the competition, I think it is important to see how the national teams involved look at it. I can only talk for Sweden here, but I think a lot of it goes for other european countries as well. Sweden's head coach Marika Domanski Lyfors calls Algarve Cup unique, the only annual tournament where you get to play against (most of) the top sides of the world. Besides the World Cup, the European Championships and the Olympics this is the best tournament in the world, she says. But she has also in no uncertain terms stated that winning the Algarve Cup is not a major goal for the season and it is important to use the cup to give international experience to as many players on the squad as possible. When you go into a major championship you prepare the team. You take the players to camp a couple of weeks before, you play a few friendlies to sharpen the team. Sweden does nothing of this before the Algarve. In Algarve 2004 Sweden swapped almost the entire starting 11 from one match to another, changed between 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 tactics every other match and made 4 or 5 substitutions per match. All in all much like training and preparation, not much like a major competition. I can imagine there are other national teams with an entirely different approach to Algarve, but I don't think Sweden is the only one that use it as it was originally designed, as preparation for bigger things to come.
Yah I notice you and Jan Balk live in sweden perhap's citizens I assume? that natural for both of you to have such opinions of the Algarve and euporean cup? especially the importance's of the european cup to european? you quote the sweden national coach as saying the Algarve cup is(unique) check your dictionary for the meaning of unique?
I just can give my estimation for Germany, but I think Dandals post contains lots of true facts. Of course no team of the AC takes part in the tournament to loose. So regadless which place the team will be placed - the German coach uses the Algarve Cup as a preparation for the EC, which will take place 3 months later. I suppose she will test different positions and systems with her team, she will test some players which have the routine our "vets" have. So this tournament gives the possibility, to get international experience, even in games with really good teams, but it doesn't have a deep importance to us. If we would have to create such a Top-3-List, it would contain: 1.WCC, 2.Olympics, 3. EC. The AC is a nice tournament, as two of our national players told me they also like it especially because of nice hotel (on the beach) and vicinity (d'you use this word to describe this?). They think, it's a tournament w/ a couple really good teams, you have great weather and accomodation, so probably you'll have a good time there. On the other hand they also told me, that they just have about 30, 40 visitors/game per average. As you know womensoccer in Portugal is really unpopular (since they only have about 3000 women-soccer-player in Portugal itself and have to deal w/ lots of trouble, problems und no acceptance. So can anybody tell me, why this tournament takes place just in Portugal?
No sane person would have a soccer tournament in Scandinavia in March given any other alternative . And I guess that Portugal was more accomendating for womens soccer than Cyprus where the Scandinavian WNT used to have their pree-seasson training before 1994.
The question wasn't stupid. Sorry if my answer made it appear so. I have been told that my writing style in English makes me seem very arrogant, unlike real life where I am only slightly so
She said it was unique in the way that you can meet some of the best teams from around the world. BUT, like DanDal says, she still doesn't schedule friendlies or additional camps to prepare for the AC. She may think the AC nice in lots of ways, but she doesn't rate it very highly, judging by her, and the Swedish FA's actions.