You don't get lucky with THREE goals! lol. Besides using your argument the fact is that Gotham only scored from a Chelsea defensive mistake! FACT is it wasn't Chelsea's first team AND it was their FIRST game together! If playing in pre-season makes you 'fresh' then clubs wouldn't bloody bother with them would they! Think about it! Two could play the 'lets suppose' game - lets suppose Chelsea actually had their first team strike force playing..........then they 'probably' would have scored six no?............well quite that is just wishful thinking too! Your suppositions are ridiculous and just smack of denial, lets look at the FACTS, 1) The game was WON by Chelsea 2) Chelsea controlled most of the game 3) Gotham had very few clear cut chances 4) Chelsea didn't play their first team and played two experimental sides (one each half) 5) It was Chelsea's FIRST game together for 3 MONTHS 6) They were obviously pre-season rusty. Here is the only relevant fact though - The Chelsea ladies team won the game on the day and they deserved to win the game on the day, your posts just make you come across as a sore loser blowing off steam so why not do the grown up thing - accept that you lost, congratulate the winners in a sporting manner and strive to do better next time. Oh and as for the Olympics.....a competition with only a tiny handful of teams taking part - ask yourself why Great Britain didn't compete despite being the European U21 Champions? Think about it.
Relax buddy. It was a friendly. I never said you got lucky. I said you were playing Gotham's B-C squad and they outshot you (fact) and the possession was 51-49 Chelsea (another fact). You claim Chelsea controlled most to the game. Stats show otherwise. But keep yelling into a void. No one here is stupid. Why are you even on this thread? Go pump your chest about beating our 4th place B-C squad with players signed off the street in the Chelsea thread. Maybe you will get the serotonin you are looking for there. I am not a sore loser. No one here cared about the game, most especially Gotham. That is why they were signing players off the street. You came into an NWSL thread pushing your false narrative. No one asked you to stop by.
Ah the old 'no one cared' thing now is it! lol! You seem to care enough to be 'salty' over it! Outshot? What you mean 30 yard potshots from nowhere? The fact is Gotham lost and the game was over after only 20 minutes! I remember ONE real chance for Gotham.....a missed header, they were supposed to be at home for gawds sake! You're B-C squad claim is just sour grapes!! You lost, your team deserved to lose and that is a simple fact. I'm not 'beating my chest' why would I? I'd never even heard of 'Gotham'! (I thought it was a made up place in Batman films). I'm just laughing at your sourness and your attempts to try and justify the fact that your team was well and truly beaten. Your players were not 'signed off the street' what a bloody ridiculous thing to say.....why are you so salty at losing?
Breathe. It was a friendly. B-C squad is a fact. Outshooting you is a fact. Your posts are so filled with emotion you cannot see straight. Truly why are you in this thread? Why are you caring so much about a meaningless friendly? You are embarrassing Chelsea and the WSL. Not even a congratulations to our gold medalists? Who is salty? Gotham is a women's club that does not rely on a men's club to prop it up and pay its bills.
6435 posts, 2663 reps. He's in the thread to troll for attention for as long as people will give it to him.
Depends strongly on how you define a "top league". Top to bottom, NWSL is best in the world. Defined by the best five teams, it's second only to WSL. Top three teams, it's behind Europe's top four, but not by much. The big "issue" with NWSL in those latter rankings is that NWSL's best teams change from season to season, some the big Europe leagues have the same top three every season.
My posts!? Lol YOU were the one that started all the nonsense over a friendly! You lost, you deserved to lose get over it! All this 'we weren't trying' business just comes across as childish sour grapes. Go on do the 'grown up' thing and congratulate the winners on being the better team on the day, I dare you!
WSL really just reduced to just three top teams now as some of Man U’s best been bought.off as well. Fair to say though that the three top(Arsenal Chelsea & Man City) have enough legit talent to have two, Div One squads. This year, the NWSL buying power has been stupendous, easily out spending every other league in the world(including the WSL). But in another way, I fear we’re creating a monster ala Walmart & Amazon, while hurting neighbors like Mexico, Australia & Canada’s upcoming pro leagues, as well as domestically, taken away important talent from the proposed USL to go along with college & even ECNL/select & high school(I mean they all need some talent in order to strive more successfully)
Considering the absolutely massive talent pool in NCAA and youth ranks in the US, I don't think taking a dozen or so of the top teens will hurt either group. USLSL shouldn't be a concern in the first place because it's ridiculous for a nation to have multiple D1 pro leagues, USLSL should stay as effective D2 and get the talent there as appropriate. Mexico, Canada, and Australia might be concerns, but it honestly looks like we're pulling more from Europe than from other leagues - especially as Mexico in particular is also starting to pull talent from Europe... Not quite like NWSL is, but enough to prove that they're a legitimate league and don't have to worry too much about rank and file players. (Remember also the Mia Fischel thing) And for Canada, it's likely going to be an effective D2 versus NWSL in the same was the CPL is an effective D2 to MLS.
Man United and lets say Real Madrid womens teams under perform hugely because they don't get the same support from the clubs as say the Arsenal womens team, football has only really been a 'thing' in most of Europe for a handful of years, I think its on a 'tipping point', its either going to continue to grow or plateau as a 'curiosity'. If the big European institutions decide to put some financial might behind their womens teams then they will become very powerful in the womens game. So far (I believe) Manchester United, Manchester City & Madrid are failing to capture the public's imagination all playing in front of fairly paltry attendances while bizarrley Arsenal and Barcelona (vile club) are starting to get some proper sized crowds for selected games.
When the nation is the size of the EU, in both geography and population, why is it ridiculous for more than one D1 league?
Just from an organizational perspective, competing leagues will always cannibalize and hurt each other. If NWSL already had 20+ clubs, which it's in the way toward already, coverage wouldn't even be a conversation. Besides, it's not like China or Brazil has multiple top leagues either, and they're huge nations too.
My biggest question about Europe is whether the money will catch up with the number of fans there. What do you think will happen?
Arsenal had an average attendance of 30K, but that’s probably more than double of any other club(and that’s in all of Europe). Ticket prices are well below NWSL. I’ve also read something thot this last season WSL attendance was up by 43%, probably boosted though by England making into the 2023 World Cup finals. The WSL has the highest per ratio rate of foreigners—two international’s to every one English player(so don’t even know if they’re playing English style soccer anymore). A lot of countries have their best currently in the WSL. It feels like only 2-3 pro paying clubs in the rest of Europe woso league’s Reading that some NWSL clubs spent $30-40 mill is way more than the annual biggest than Euro clubs(even bigwigs Barca & Chelsea budget only about $15 mill) but then NWSL had to build from the ground up like upgrading done of its stadiums whereas Euro clubs had their infrastructure already in place. The interesting thing with woso it’s ever evolving, your really don’t know what the next big thing going to be—-Europe was at the top of the world in the last WC with 7 out of 8 of their NT’s making it into the quarterfinals. This year shifted a bit with the ‘rest of the world’ getting the better of it, but then, a bit unfairly that only 3 Euro teams allowed in the Olympics. big game coming up when England hosts US on Nov 30th. I’m sure both sides will take it way more seriously than just a friendly. I hope that posters will allow their ‘passions to flow’ without other fuddy duddy mods or posters interfering.
To be honest I don't know, the actual number of fans is still very low, Europe is a football mad place but the women still get an awful lot of ridicule, sometimes abuse. If it really takes off here then the clubs will put their financial muscle into the game. My kids are not old (20's) and they did NOT have the opportunity to play the game, even now girls teams are a rarity BUT at least there are now some clubs open to girls (there were literally none in my day) obviously if girls are given a chance and they show interest clubs (and in theory National teams will get better) and at the end of the day success breeds success and the game will be an ever increasing circle, alternatively the game could stall and forever be a niche sport but at least there will be something there for women.
It's much easier to grow the women's side of this sport than let's say in the US. That is because people in those countries like England and Spain already like the sport. In the US soccer or football ( whatever you want to call it. it's a dumb argument) is still a growing sport and I don't know where this sport is heading. Time will tell, look at the WNBA it's very popular because people already like the NBA.
I think the sport will improve but I don't know what is the ceiling of how good players could get. An issue with the women's side of soccer or football is that people still see them as cookers, cleaners, basically housewives. This happens around the world. Unless players could get paid millions and millions of dollars I don't see socially changing their minds on how they view girls. Maybe it will change a little but always have a ceiling
The WNBA had a slow and fairly steady decline in attendance for two decades from 1997 (when there was a competing league) through at least 2019. At this particular moment there are exciting players and it feels like there's an inflection point that we' may have passed for women's sports in general. I don't think the majority of WNBA fans spend a lot of time at NBA games, though they are probably more likely to watch than NBA than I am.
Yes you'd think that would be the case, but the opposite has been true, in the US the game has long been seen as a sport for women whereas it's the opposite here, in fact women were actually BANNED from playing by the FA for most of the 20th Century! :-O. There is still a huge stigma around women playing football here HOWEVER it is FAR more popular than it's ever been, attendances are still (in the main) very small usually a couple of thousand but 10 years ago you would have probably been able to count the attendees with your fingers on one hand! In other words the game has come an incredibly long way in a very short period of time BUT there is a very long wat to go still
Didn't think it's been mentioned in this thread yet but Barcelona will visit Bay FC next Thursday (8/27)
the WNBA spike in popularity is for one reason only; Catlin Clark. Her Indiana Fever team saw attendance jump up by nearly 400%. League overall attendance jumped by over 60%—home or away, practically every game she’s played been a sell out. The WNBA All/Star game had an 300% TV increase over last year’s game. But that’s nothing compared what Catlin did at the NCAA level; her Iowa vs LSU quarterfinals showdown was the highest viewed basketball game ever on ESPN(men or women. college or pro), her NCAA final on ABC drew 19 million viewers, 4,mill more then the men’s finals, 3 mill more than the average for the NBA finals actually the opposite, women’s soccer is popular here, doesn’t seem to grow as much in other countries. In terms of participation; we got the highest ratio in the world(55% male/45% female). Dunno the overall figures but it’s 410K boys compete in high school soccer every year vs 390K girls, it’s reversed in college as it’s 36K men vs 39K women(there more college female teams than men’s) women’s soccer helped out because in this country it’s an middle to upper class sport, this basically means more money will be spend per average then most other sports. So the NWSL doesn’t need mass appeal to succeed or draw investors, as it still got an fan base that’s more college educated, professional types Dunno what exactly what Europe’s problem is , they might be hurting cuz of traditional chauvinism towards females playing soccer(just like we kinda frown if girls want to play our fave football). You would think billion dollar clubs like Barca or PSG would teach an superior kind of soccer to their youth, but decent salaries are still hard to find for potential good female players, so they do lack at the participation level
I was talking about 90% of countries where soccer is the number one sport. In the US, the growth of soccer goes hand in hand with Men and Women. Unless players start to get transfers worth 3+ million dollars I don't see big academies spending millions and millions of dollars per year. A lot of teams just spend the minimum amount of money.