Aw cripes...yet another thread to discuss who April (or whoever else) should bring into the mix for Athens and beyond....blah blah blah Just kidding.... A quick GOOGLE search and I came up with zilch. Will there be a 2004 Four Nations Tourney? The 2003 version was held in January in good ol' China. The last Algarve Cup was held in mid-March of last year. Oh hell...I'll throw out a lil' "young players need to be developed now cuz Mia is too old" crack to satisfy the masses that somehow appeared after Sunday night.... If April or whoever is at the helm next year decides to bring in young players...may as well start with these tourneys.
According to this German website it's from Feb 27th to March 5th but I'm not sure http://www.dfb.de/dfb-info/pinnwand/kalender03/e_right.php
Funny, I was doing a search for Algarve Cup in 2004 and one of the results was this thread! Another result was the link above and I think the "(evtl.)" after the dates on the German page must be something like 'tentative.' The 2003 dates were a week or two after the 2002 dates, so maybe they moved it back? That would be great since I have to use my unused ticket to Portugal from this year's event within a year. Haven't seen anything yet about Four Nations.
Conflict of Schedules If the Algarve is held Feb 25 - Mar 5, the U.S. and Canada won't be there as the Olympic Qualifiers are going on Feb 27 - Mar 7. Most of us calendar watchers probably knew this, but I just wanted to point it out for newbies and potential travelers. The dates could be FIFA international match dates so no coincidence the two tournaments end up on similar dates. I got lazy trying to find the FIFA International play dates. A Four Nations Tourney in late January/late February wouldn't hurt for training. I always thought China hosted and put on the Four Nations? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Sent an email to the Portuguese Football Association about Algarve Cup and haven't heard anything back... not surprised.
Algarve Official Dates Algarve 2004 (Mundialito as the FPF calls it) March 14-20 (Sun-Sat) I actually received an email back from FPF and then checked out http://www.fpf.pt/actividades2/docs/fem_0304.pdf to verify the dates. Maybe this is old news already, but thought I'd post it anyway. I would think the U.S. will be invited and compete, even though it's just one week after the Oly Qualifiers. This could be the tournament that decides the Olympic team and might show a glimpse of any new approach April wants to work on.
GREAT!! That's great! Good detective job boingo! I'm planning on going. I was so excited to see the world cup here and can't wait to see other national teams competitions! And the weather should be better late march! Now our job is to try to figure out which team are planning on playing!
http://www.fifa.com/en/news/fixtures/women,-1.html Here's the USWNT's schedule for the Four Nations Tourney: January 30 - Sweden February 1 - China February 3 - Canada
So Canada has replaced Germany? I won't complain about the opponents but sure would be nice to have more than a couple of weeks of practice before January 30. Aren't they supposed to start training around January 17? Hope they didn't eat too much turkey.
http://www.fifa.com/en/news/fixtures/women,-1.html Here's the USWNT's schedule for the Algarve Cup: 3/14: France 3/18: Denmark (maybe the date on this was suppose to be the 16th instead of the 18th?) 3/18: Sweden