FT 0-1 America. Club America's forwards were extremely wasteful. They could have won this game by 2-3 goals minimum. Just like the game vs Thorns they were the better team. Should they got the red card at the end of the first half God knows how would have this game finished. There shouldn't be any more unbalanced schedules + there should be VAR & goal line technology. The reason why UEFA does that with the Champions league is because they are gradually creating a Super League so they add more teams and more games gradually. I hope CONCACAF makes it 16 teams with 4 groups of 4 and balanced schedule. No more than 4 teams each from USA and Mexico and no more than 1 Canadian team. Add all the rest from Central America. At least they are somewhat competetive unlike the Carribean teams where we saw the results.
America were definitely the better team on the night, but considering they were up a player for over an hour, it would be pretty damning if they weren't the better team! I would add that it wasn't just they forwards that were wasteful. Considering the player advantage they had, they let SD get a lot more chances than they probably should have allowed - especially considering how often SD had giveaways and such. The match was a lot closer than it maybe should have been (non-red notwithstanding)
And we have it San Diego are out! All three teams on 9 points. San Diego defeated by one while Port;and won by 6.
Updating these after the group stage is over now: USA v MEX : 1-2-1 (7-6, +1) - all matches @ USA USA v other : 6-0-0 (29-1, +28) - with one exception, all matches @ other MEX v other : 6-0-0 (30-2, +28) - with one exception, all matches @ MEX If I am not mistaken the semifinals are 1 game (both in Mexico) on 22/5 and the final and the 3rd place match are on 25/5. We will see how they go.
The Mexican teams are the higher seeds, yes, but I think the finals series are going to be in a centralized location TBA considering the rounds are three days apart instead of midweeks two weeks apart. That is, it's not like the two Mexican teams earned home matches with their seeding. I would guess it's still gonna be in the US somewhere just because everything in CONCACAF usually is for attendance reasons and such. (Gold Cups, Nations League, etc.) =edit= and yeah I just checked all the official documents, the whole finals series is supposed to take place at a single location, so we'll have to see exactly which stadium CONCACAF picks that will be completely open both of those days. By results, they should at least pick a Mexican stadium between those two Mexican teams, but I would not be surprised at all to see it somewhere in the US anyway.
Updating: CAN: Vancouver Whitecaps Girls Elite repeated as 2024 Inter-Provincial League1 Champions* CRC: will be playoff between the Apertura 2024 Champions (Alajuelense) and the Clausura 2024 Champions (2wks to go before top4 playoffs; Alajuelense and Sporting assured playoffs) JAM: Frazsiers Whip also repeated as the 2023-24 Champions, as far as I can tell, but the only place I could see that was on their Instagram account - the league doesn't exist online, apparently MEX1: will be 2024 Apertura Liguilla Champions (top8 playoffs: 1UANL/8TOL - 4PAC/5JUAR - 3MTY/6GUAD - 2AME/7UNAM) MEX2: will be 2025 Clausura Liguilla Champions MEX3: will be best-Liguilla-runners-up PAN: will be* 2025 Apertura Champions SLV: will be playoff between the Apertura 2024 Champions (I assume in progress but can't find info) and the Clausura 2025 Champions USA1: will be the 2024 Playoffs Champion (top8 playoffs: 1ORL/8CHI - 4KC/5NC - 3NJY/6POR - 2WAS/7BAY) USA2: Orlando Pride have won the 2024 NWSL Shield USA3: Washington Spirit are the regular-season runners-up (NJ/NY Gotham FC are 3rd, in case ORL or WAS end up as USA1)
I think the "why" is for a similar reason that the men's Champions Cup is when it is - they want it to be played at a time both the US and Mexico are relatively "in season". WoSo doesn't go quite as year-round as BroSo does, so the bigger off-season gap means a big gap for the continental competition too. To be fair, they *probably* could have put the finals in April or maybe even late March, but maybe NWSL pushed back at that suggestion - or maybe it was just a Concacaf decision to put the women's final four matches at a time when the men's bracket was already down to fewer games (i.e. balancing the continental schedule a bit). Who knows. But it is weird And now that I think about it, there was also quite a large gap between the Summer Cup semifinals and the final, which was very much not in summer any more. Not sure why this seems to be a pattern...
Presumably that was so that the games would happen within the international match windows (outside the LMXF and NWSL regular calendars). There was no September window.
Good point! And that brings up an interesting point in how that timing really hurt Gotham much more than it hurt KC. 5/22-25/25 is not during an international window, so presumably (and reasonably) C'CAF wants the participating teams to be at full strength. It looks like last year, the end of May was the end of the Clausura Liguilla (which went from 5/9-27/24), so the CWCC knockouts will be either right before or right after the Liguilla top-two final. Either way, the Mexican teams will be in their top form of the season for the month or two leading up to the finals, so I'm sure they more or less like that timing. For the US teams, they'll at least have had a month or two of the season so far - any earlier and they probably wouldn't have truly started gelling yet.
With the KC Current defeated in their semifinal match today, NJ/NY Gotham FC have qualified* to next year's CWCC as USA3. They are the first of this year's CWCC semifinalists to be returning next year. (Portland have already been eliminated from contention.) *assuming the same access list as this year
With the NWSL championship done, we can now say (assuming the same access list as last year - c'mon CONCACAF, announce what's going on!) that USA1 is Orlando as double winners, then USA2 is Washington and USA3 is Gotham (both as hand-me-downs through the standings). With Washington's relative youth and the fact that they were even missing some of their best players down the stretch here, I think they'll still be a strong team next fall; not as sure about Orlando and Gotham. (The blessing of NWSL parity turns into a curse for continental competition.) Also, unless someone can surprise as LMXF's Clausura champions next May, it's looking like last year's three participants will be next year's three participants, as all three are a shoulder above the rest in the table so far (only Pachuca really looks like they might have a shot at challenging) and the Apertura final will be decided tomorrow with UANL Tigres on a 1-0 first-leg lead over Monterrey.
Based on the lineups the NWSL teams played in this year's games, it looks to me like the NWSL at this point does not look at this as a major competition, especially as compared to the NWSL competition itself. I'm wondering, STT, if you think this is the case?
Well, based on the Summer Cup a few months prior, I bet most NWSL teams thought this would be an easy competition to win. With both groups ultimately won by Mexican teams and one NWSL team simply eliminated, I bet there will be a readjustment of how seriously they take the competition. Essentially, this is a reverse of what's happened in the CMCC where Mexico had a longstanding advantage and only recently realized that they need to use full-strength lineups against MLS teams in order to keep winning. Also, there's the fact that this competition's group stage is occurring at the same time as the NWSL playoff push, so that creates a bit of scheduling competition for when NWSL teams want to roll out their best lineups and when they want to rest players. Initially, when it was announced that we'd have five-team groups, I postulated that NWSL teams would have their byes later in the group stage to accommodate the playoff push - but that didn't actually happen. Similarly, if the CWCC was in-year instead of cross-year and the group stage was thus in the spring, I'd bet NWSL teams would've tried harder in the group stage.
I would have thought with this year tournament being the qualifier for the first ever club women world cup, all the teams would have been motivated to do well and qualify.
That's what I thought and hoped, going into the Tournament, but I don't think the NWSL clubs looked at it that way.
I wouldn't be surprised if we're seeing a hint of insular-ness from NWSL that we've also seen in MLS. With "American sports culture" being highly influenced by the Big Four leagues in the country, there's the idea that the domestic league is the only thing that matters because it's the best league of its sport in the world, and any "extra" games are just that - extra. Of course, MLS was never in discussion as the best men's soccer league in the world, but that American sports culture still has a huge influence over the league (e.g. playoffs > Shield, conferences, and generally having NFL-experienced owners and league FO staff) and it's been tough getting MLS teams to care about the CMCC or even the USOC since those aren't where most fans (or sponsorship/TV money) are. NWSL and its two predecessors have had legitimate claims to being the best WoSo league in the world, though it's nowhere near as runaway as the Big Four leagues are; either way, that American sports culture is hard to un-train.
Was the performance of NWSL teams all that bad? The only one to get eliminated was San Diego, which had a terrible year overall, and even they lost out only by a three-way tiebreaker. For Gotham it would have been bad business to sacrifice their playoff push for the chance to play a four-team tournament next May, and still they fought out a wild 4-4 draw to advance on the last day.
It wasn't significantly bad but it was definitely worse than I think most people expected. I mean, just based on the net performance in the Summer Cup a few months prior, the 1-2-1 head to head record is a definite downgrade. And just based on rosters, you would also expect NWSL to be a step above LMXF too. So not winning either group and having a team eliminated is definitely at least somewhat bad.