It didn’t mean much at the time either tbf. These quarters were always going to be tight and could have gone either way.
Some very interesting lists above and I wanted to add mine. It was a privilege to live close enough to the WNY Flash to be able to attend as many games as I could and see the team during pre-season as well, before they moved to North Carolina. I watched eleven players on the four teams left in the Olympics play for the Flash. Here is the list with the number of games each player played with the Flash: Sweden Caroline Seger (13) Canada Christine Sinclair (15), Adriana Leon (10) Australia Sam Kerr (41), Lydia Williams (14), Emily Van Egmond (14) USA Abby Dahlkemper (40) Sam Mewis (34) Alex Morgan (13) Carli Lloyd (34) Lynn Williams (36) -CJ
I think the three best teams in the tournament are Netherlands, USA and Sweden. Then there is a bit of a gap between them and the rest. Would be a bit of a shock if it is not Sweden v USA. Main issue is seeing how USA look physically because they looked shattered.
It's official. Group G was the Group of Death. All 3 teams advanced to the Semifinal (Sweden, USA, Australia). Group F is done (Netherlands, Brazil) And Group E only has Canada left (as Japan and Great Britain are eliminated). This is the best Sweden team we've ever seen. This is the best Australia team we've ever seen (in a major tournament at least). This is not the best USA team we've ever seen (not even close). But it's still USA. Always favored to at least win a medal in every tournament. That's quite the Group. And if New Zealand had a different coach than Sermanni, they would have been by far the best 4th place team here of all the groups, as talent wise they have better talent than Chile and of course Zambia. You could make the argument that this was the best group we've ever seen at the Olympics. 3 teams all to the Semifinals. We'll have to go back in the record books and see if that's ever been done before in the Olympics or World Cup. The best group I've ever seen at the youth level, was at the 2012 U-17 Women's WC. France, North Korea, and USA. They were the Top 3 teams in the entire competition, and USA didn't even make the knockout stage. France and North Korea ended up playing in the Final. USA scored a draw against France and North Korea in their group, and were eliminated on goal difference. It is very rare to see a team with 5 points not get out of their group. What a group that was.
... I remember watching a USA/Canada at Sahlen's long ago. A young Lauren Cheney playing up top, Carolina Morace, Kara Lang on her comeback. Good memories.
Again with the Sermanni. Sweden were pretty good in the early 90s and if not for Norway might have won the World Cup. And again in 2003 when they lost the final on a golden goal to Germany. But I digress, saying teams are better or worse than others in the past is grasping at straws. Some things can never be meted.
We can be pretty sure it is the best Swedish WNT since at least 2005, since Seger (as pretty much all players) said it is the best WNT she played in and she been in it since 2005. But Seger did not play in 2003 or the 90s.
I can objectively say, for a loose definition of objective, that the best WNT featured Hanna Ljungberg, Malin Moström, Hanna Marklund. That was the golden generation that only ever produced silver. Now the ghost of this generation may finally have been exorcised and the Linköping centric dynasty can erase all traces of the old just like the aforementioned generation finally washed away the Jitex heritage.
We can't actually say that these extended highlights in German (1st Half) and in English (2nd Half and extra-time) are "high quality" and it's quite likely that they won't last for long. Anyway, at least, they have all of the actions from the extra-time that I couldn't seen live (because I was watching other matches) nor in highlights (because, as you well know, guys, there are too few sparse highlights from this tournament): in particular the PK missed by Weir and the two Australian goals (including Kerr's aggressive mug after the one she scored), so I won't complain for sure (last GB's goal by White is missing, but on the other hand it was visible in the previous highlights, the ones with the inexplicable black screen) :
I guess we can now safely say that, as I had figured, the change from 18-players rosters to 22-players rosters favoured the NTs having more depth, in particular USA. Without that change, USWNT wouldn't have been able to play Lynn Williams, who was instrumental in both goals vs Netherlands. It's a fact that any bending of the rules doesn't equally reward all teams.
Sorry for the off-topic, but I just can't wrap my head around the fact that a countryman of mine, an Italian (although with an American father), just won the gold in the 100 m dash. What did exactly happen? And it happened mere minutes after another Italian had won the gold in the high jump. The geography of the world is shaken by Tamberi and Jacobs.
Great to see a 100m gold go to a nation that has I assume never won it. More off topic talk but I’m absolutely gutted to see Jordan Nobbs stretchered off in a pre-season friendly today. Looks a bad one. She should have been at the Olympics but now she will probably be out for months again.
To cheer me up a little I’m going to post this. Reanna Blades looks ready for a breakout season. Frightening pace running with the ball. What a moment for Academy player Reanna Blades! 🤩👏#CFCW pic.twitter.com/4GgIns2PDX— Chelsea FC Women (@ChelseaFCW) August 1, 2021
It has me wondering if Sweden could've been better in 2015. The players on this roster aren't all that young (obviously some exceptions like the 18 year old Hanna Bennison). One criticism occasionally floated at Pia Sundhage was that she loves them veterans and, perhaps, sticks with them too long rather than turn things over to a younger generation. Are there players on the Swedish team today who should have been on it in 2015? (Blackstenius seems an obvious candidate as she made it to the 2016 Olympics roster) Here is Wikipedia's page on the 2016 Swedish World Cup roster.
Continuing the Sweden train of thought, after the 2019 world cup, I posted a clip showing the Swedish Air Force escorting the Sweden Women's airplane home. Should they win gold, I wouldn't be sad. And here is a 10-year old clip with Flash captain Caroline Seger (great personality!); she says she is "old." [KK is Karina LeBlanc, Canadian goalkeeper and currently Head of Women's Football at CONCACAF] Attendance was 10,461, a record for the WPS league at the time.
Yeah, I'm with you; I too would not be upset if they win gold. Feel like it's a long time coming, and they certainly have the team to do it.
Why is it possible that high jumpers can decide that they don`t want to jump-off? Next time all 12 jumpers will agree that they will take the gold medal if they clear the first height on the first attempt. That reminds me of the former rule in football at Olympic Games that allowed East Germany and the Soviet Union both to get a bronze medal in 1972 when the result was still a draw after extra time.
I don't think it works like that, tut I'm surprised they gave them the option. I suspect most people don't want to share a medal.