Maybe the expansion draft could shake things a little bit? Although I'll admit I don't know exactly how it works: we have nothing of the kind here in Europe.
I would like to give Chicago Local 134 a huge Thank You for BRINGING IT. In my mind the Davidson injury prevented Dames from moving Ertz up to midfield. While Colaprico, Brian, DiBernardo and McCaskill are very good, Debinha, Dunn, Mewis, and O'Sullivan are better, pretty much any time they might happen to line up. P.S. If this was the Patriots, I might guess that the Courage intentionally walked Short through a smoke cloud on the way to the pregame lineup. P.P.S. This adds to the Ripley's Believe It or Not! list of championship games won by HAO. NoonBall here she comes.
the game was won in the 1st half---the left side defence of CRS was simply atrocious(Short, Brian, Naughton), as both McDonald & Dunn kept making obscene amounts of runs down that side. Debinha was listed as left, outside mid. But it was obviously that she kept veering to the middle. Whoever was suppose to originally mark her, didn't want to leave their post & the CRS coach failed to find someone to swtich over guarding her
I'm hard-pressed to think of a single Chicago player that was better than "meh" today. Maybe Ertz, but she also loses points for running into Naeher on multiple occasions. McCaskill was awful (and rightly got yanked at halftime), Colaprico wasn't much better, Nagasato was quiet almost the entire game, and neither DiBernardo nor Brian did much of note. If Dames is so insistent on running his offense through a single focal point, he needs that focal point to not have a habit of underperforming in big games.
North Carolina now has an impressive title that they share with only one other team in this league's history, a team that tragically no longer even exists. I hope that, this time, they can get the inscription right the first time.
Your statement is based on this one game. During the regular season, CRS beat NCC twice and tied the third game. Indeed, CRS was no match in this particular game for NCC. And yes, the NWSL IS the most competitive league in the world. Certainly the French league is NOT.
As you have noticed, I am not in the mood for Chicago bashing this morning. I am sad that CRS lost and that it was not a competitive game. However, I am very proud of this team! Towards the end of the season, we won five straight, lost three, then won six straight. Pretty good, I say. Here are my general observations: 1) It was NCC's day, no doubt. They are a great team and rose to the occasion. 2) Was Chicago overwhelmed by the occasion and plus the game being in NC? 3) Great CRS fan presence in NC was great to see! 4) Hope the SAM Kerr stays but nervous about it! 5) We need more quality goal scorers - NCC has and the numbers to show it. NCC really has a lot of speed, too. 6) Wondering what the impact would've been with Mautz, Vasconselos and Wright healthy/available? Always the million dollar question in sports. 7) Davidson's last minute injury threw the team off, no doubt 8) Kerr, Yuki, Gorden, Short, especially, had great seasons
We did at one point - one of my favorite players that ever played for CRS - but had a bad injury and did not return : Zakiya Bywaters
2019 Shield NCC 2019 Champions NCC 2018 Shield NCC 2018 Champions NCC 2017 Shield NCC (They lost the championship in final by 1-0) On 5 titles put in play, they won 4 and lost 1 final. Where do you see competitiveness ? The FA Super League is by far more competitive and interesting.
There are multiple measures of competitiveness. Titles is certainly one way, but it masks several other measures of competitiveness. Titles will be won whether one team is utterly dominating against everyone else *or* if one team is just a hair better than everyone else. In 2018, the Courage were far and away dominating everyone else. (Also, the teams who sucked *really* sucked; the table that year was massively spread out.) However, in 2017 and 2019, the league was much more even, both at the top (the Courage regularly dropped points for the first 2/3 of the season this year) and at the bottom (the weakest team this year was nearly 2x stronger than last year, and both of last year's bottom two more than doubled their points total). In general, it's not unusual for teams to "upset" each other across the season. As such, the table in NWSL is also generally very evenly spaced out - no gigantic gaps. That's not the case in most leagues across Europe - including the FA WSL - where there's regularly a "top tier" and then a *huge* gap down to the middle of the table. Maybe you don't know which of the top two or three or four teams will actually win the title, but you do know that it's incredibly rare for them to drop points to someone not in that top tier. I don't find that interesting at all, and it's certainty not a sign of top-to-bottom competitive leagues. So yes, NCC are good - not utterly dominant, but not just a hair better either - as they've proven they know how to go into clutch mode when they want/need to. However, you can't ignore the majority of the regular season either. You can't ignore the many times where all the NWSL playoff teams (somewhat regularly) drop points.
So, according to you, Premier League and La Liga are less competitive than MLS ? That's nonsense. Of course there are favourites, what's the problem with that ? It's just how football works. NCC almost always wins, it's a fact, it's how it ends. No matter that randoms teams drop points to others random teams. In FASL, there's suspens for the title, that's the most important.
They won two titles in a row and you assumed they are like Lyon now? Sometimes some teams are good enough to win 2 titles straight but that don’t mean they always dominate the league. Look at Portland. One of the top teams but lost.
Premier League and La Liga have objectively stronger teams than those in MLS, and they play better football. So they're more interesting in that sense. But are they as or more competitive than MLS is? I'd still say no, by far no. Unless you're talking about international competition, only the internal parity determines what "competitiveness" should be. MLS and NWSL have that in stride above anything in Europe. I watch games week to week. The title is the most important, yes, but as a fan I want any game I watch to actually be interesting too.
They're more interesting at all. The interest of a championship lies in game quality and suspens, not in an artificial equity. And that's the same thing with NWSL and FASL.
Cmon its a sports forum and its a reasonable debate to have on both sides. In sports you will always have debates like this. If anything its a sign people care enougj to have strong opinions
if you compare NCC to Lyon in league goals it was this last season; NCC 54 for, 23 against in 24 league games for an average of 2.25 goals vs1(opposing team) per matchup Lyon 89 for, only 6 against in 22 league games fo an average of 4 vs 0.25 keep in mind too that the last place team this season in the NWSL, Orlando, had a roster that not just included Marta & Alex Morgan, but about 4 other USWNT members as well another 5 internationals from top 10 FIFA ranked NT's to be fair, France's league can go 5-6 teams deep(Bordeaux beat NWSL/Spirit in an friendly earlier this year),but it seems that everybody 'parks the bus' when having to play a monster squad like Lyon(even NCC did in their encounters with Lyon) Belonging on a monster team, with most of the action happening on only one half side ot the field(since the opposing usually is bunkering), hasn't helped the Lyon players when it come to the world stage, as many of them flopped during the last major competitions(obviously the French NT, but as well Hegerberg, Marozsan & van de Sanden loosing her starter dduring the Dutch later stage in their WC campaign) the FA is the most balanced league in Europe, but they used ot have only 8 teams, so keep adding might start to hurt them.. Besides, their loosing their English identity, with all their buying power, Arsenal, Chelsea & Man U are reduce to just starting 2-3 English players a game & now, ironically their NT seems like to be in a major skid as they've ony won 1 of their last 6 games)
I never compared NCC and Lyon... Who cares, we're talking about clubs, not national teams. And again...who cares of that ? Why does it always come down to the NT ?
This year Lyon beat NCC by 1 goal. Last year NCC beat Lyon by 1 goal so it tells where the competitiveness is at. Instead of seeing Lyon scoring 5 to 8 goals a game in their league they should play against NWSL champs each year. Even Lucy Bronze a player from Lyon wants to play against them in her tweet after NCC won the championship. Bet she is bored in her league.