First: Practice is where an experiment might be tried BUT it is not a match. That is why they actually play matches. Sometimes what works in practice fails in a match and sometimes what fails in practice work in a match. In practice it is impossible to really simulate a match because often players cannot respond correctly if they know what is coming. Actually on a lot of her plays and touches she is quite delicate. It is kind of like a lion fish. Delicate appearing and concealing a painful and incapacitating sting that will be felt for weeks. But at other times she does seem to have the delicate touch of a hungry great white shark. I am not sure which "delicate touch" I would most fear if I were facing her. I guess it would be when she combines the two and you end up with a giant hole in your leg full of stinging spines. Ouch!
There was a lot of truth to this. For all their possession, I think Spain had 2 good chances. This shot that hit the woodwork, and the curler from the right side that went by the left post. I'm sure I am not 100% unbiased, but did not the refs give them a free kick on every 50-50 ball and tackle? It's ironic that we scored the game-winner on one of the few times a weak foul was called against Spain.
She was by far our most effective forward this game. I think it clinched her an Olympic spot. She should have had some assists if Lloyd properly chest traps a ball or we anticipate one of her cutbacks and get to the ball first.
Just watched the game. Figured I'd jump in on p3 to read the comments. I've got a lot to say, so I'll prolly have a bunch of posts in a row. On Ertz's scoring drought, I think that has a lot to do with Ellis designating Ertz the "near post runner" on set pieces. Julie scored a couple of incredible goals that way. But, why take her away from being the beastly target on set pieces that she is? Hopefully this was a sign that Vlatko has restored her to the being the Goddess of the Box that she is and should be on set pieces.
By your definition Heath has done as much as Williams. Heath played a ball across to Carli that was a much easier finish than the ball Williams played in. I'm a Williams fan. And, I'm going to argue that our best starting front line right now is Press-Lloyd-Williams. But, Heath played well against England.
I am positive Ertz played great today. Aside from the goal, she willed us to win. That was one of the most heroic matches I've ever seen from a player.
Actually when I said "speed" I should have said "quickness" and "acceleration" and "speed of thought." As long as they are not dead slow the real "speed" is how fast they can get from a stop to full speed or from full speed to a near stop with control of the ball. I remember I loved to watch Carlos Valderrama take MLS midfields and defenses apart virtually walking through them making little spurts of acceleration through them with the ball glued to his foot. He would make the other players look silly and never exceed a slow trot. They were afraid to foul him because his free kicks were deadly. So, no, mids do not "need" speed but it helps a LOT if their touch is not as good as Carlos' was. But, in the modern game, they really need quickness or teams will collapse on them and smother their options with bodies. There have only been a very few players that have not needed space. I remember Homare Sawa in her prime would actually intentionally draw three or four or even five players to her and then do something magical and either hit an open player or emerge from the pack leaving the pack looking at each other with that "what exactly just happened?" expressions on their respective faces. Once, I think it was against South Korea, she made a move a drew four or five players to her and made another move and left the entire group just standing around and they started arguing about who was responsible and she took a couple of more touches and placed a shot into the upper right corner of the goal. I do not believe that Sawa was a midfielder but rather a forward but she often played like an attacking mid and she did most of the midfield things. But she was not fast. She was quick and that is really what a midfielder needs. So I guess the only players that really need speed in a 4-3-3 are the outside backs and they need both speed and endurance. BTW: I wonder what Dunn's body fat ratio is? I bet she sinks when she tries to float in anything but the saltiest water. There does not look like there is any fat on her body to help her float. I, on the other hand, float like a cork. It would be nearly impossible for me to drown unless I landed face down and could not turn over.
Imo the take away from the way Spain played was not their precision. It was their physicality. They bumped, kicked ankles, arm barred, obstructed, slid hard, shoved after the pass, at every single opportunity. That was what made this a close match. They got in our heads. We were shying away from contact. We were dribbling away from pressure too zealously/frantically - not because of fear of being hurt, but fear we'd be bumped, shoved, ankle-kicked off the ball. It was their constant contact that took us out of our game. And, like the Pistons' Bad Boys, if you're constantly chipping, kicking, bumping, pushing, the ref is not going to call it. Ref's (especially in soccer) have a concern about having an over-active whistle. If you're constantly making niggling or inconsequential fouls, you're not going to get called for them. The play where Sauerbrunn came out wide to defend, and Garcia (I think) ran over and shoved Brunn away to make space ….. wtf was that? Spain will get wins against us playing that way - they took us out of our game. On the flipside, until about the last 15 minutes, we never gratuitously bumped them. If we did make any kind of contact, our body language was "oops, I'm sorry." I would like to see us match Spain's physicality. They were toooooo damn comfortable. We needed to be shouldering them, giving them a shove after the pass, kicking at their ankles a little. On another note, Ertz was frigging heroic, all game long. She put us on her shoulders and carried us. She deserves two player of the match awards. Our press was totally screwed up. There was a reference above to Spain messing up our press-triggers. Ok. But, to me it looked like defensively we were in a 4-1-4-1. That is not what it looked like against England. I'll leave it to someone who has more technical knowledge to explain to me what happened there. Another thing, imo, if we have a combo of Lloyd, Rapinoe/Heath, Ertz, Mewis/Horan on the field, it's not a surprised that we get out-quicked. Especially in midfield, if two of the three are Ertz with Mewis or Horan, the other team is going to be quicker. But, Ertz may be the best player in the world. She stays. And, Horan & Mewis are too good to sit them both. one will play. So, we're not going to be super quick down the middle. Imo, that makes it very concerning to have Lloyd + Pinoe or Heath as 2 of the three on the front line. Like FoF, I'd like to see Horan tried at CF. But Vlatko ain't going to do that. So, as much as I like Pinoe and Heath, I think we should try a forward line of Press-Carli-Williams. We've got to be a little faster/quicker than we are. Also, looks like there was some Pinoe criticizing. I don't advocate that she start anymore. But,in her defense tonight, she's coming off an injury. She took very little and created our best shot before Ertz's goal. And, late in the game, when the ladies finally decided to try to match Spain's physicality, Pinoe was one of the first players I saw for us, starting to grab, pull, do things to get into Spain's head. She deserves credit for those things.
Emphatically disagree; Spain didn't get into our heads. In fact I admired our reaction. Pretty much as soon as it became clear that Spain wasn't going to get called for their fouls, and we were going to get called for their fouls, they started playing away from what were obviously no-win situations. That's keeping your head, not letting them into it. We played with patience and caution and set ourselves to play for a goal and a clean sheet, and got just that. Ertz is, to my eyes, as great a beauty as Bacall or Bisset-- but she isn't at all delicate (although some of her actions are.) I have hopes that this is as obvious to others as to me and will influence the future of this aspect of our overall culture way for the better. As if she didn't have enough pressure on her already. Don't anybody tell her I'm adding that to her responsibilities, okay?
Does anyone do xG for women's games? I'd be more than curious. Foudy on the telecast was saying that Spain just needed a, "World Class finisher" and they would be a serious WC contender. I think they just need someone that can put the ball on frame. They had two shots, iirc, from around the 6 yard box that missed the goal by 20 yards. In fact, it would not surprise me to learn they had 5 open shots, inside our 18, that missed the target by a combined 100 yards. All in the first half! Last year, Spain ran the game for 45' then ran out of gas. This time they made it about 60'. It was unusual seeing the USWNT totally dominated. It is interesting that Vladko said that the starters didn't understand the pressing triggers. Pressing is going to be important in the future. Watching the last fee U20s and this team, I don't think we can go toe to toe with Spain technically in the foreseeable future. We saw last night that we couldn't get near the ball. We did outlast them physically, like in the WC and the friendly before that. That will change and Spain can't possibly keep missing open looks at goal so horribly. We are going to have to press them harder and better. Spain not being at the Olympics; or rather, UEFA's dumb after thought of qualification for Women, is a serious boost to the USWNT chances of winning gold.
Lavelle will look like the best player in the world for 5 minutes then completely disappear for 30, then have another 5 minutes. She needs to stay healthy, play an entire season of NWSL (as much as that is possible with NT breaks) and learn how to boss games for 90 minutes.
Chris Henderson publishes stats for games like this on his Twitter feed, including XG. It usually takes him a couple of days. He might get them from InStat, not sure.
Your comment about Spain being physical but not the U.S. is comical. Lavelle should have been carded in the first half for two bad late fouls on the same sequence of play when Spain had the ball--and she committed another foul 5 minutes later. Are you suggesting that Ertz and Horan don't foul? They are bruisers! The U.S. ended up with more fouls than Spain. If Spain got into the heads of the U.S. players, it was because they were bossing us in the first half and nothing to do with fouling.
Dumb because they can't find a way to put a couple of extra months into their calendar without getting out of step with the rest of the world?
Not sure what you are talking about. Dumb is making Olympic qualification your WC result. Dumb is Spain, France, England, and the Netherlands all losing to the USA but the luck of the draw gets you into the Olympics. If CONCACAF can organize a qualification tournament, I'm sure UEFA can. That they choose to do so is in line with their general feelings, to date, about women's soccer. Calendar has nothing to do with it.
There may be a little validity to this in the practices of, say scholastic teams, where the level of play of multiple teams is similar-- though it does not match my experience of same. But I simply do not believe this is true in a context where your practices are more competitive than half your games at least...
You ever look at the duration of their WC qualifying? Which teams do you think they should leave out in order to shorten a qualifying tournament for the Olympics? And do you expect those teams to be good with that? It is nice for you that you are sure, but calendar has everything to do with why they went to this; I don't think anybody was real happy about it.
Well, rather than have teams eliminated by World Cup results, against non-European teams, perhaps they could have a smaller qualifying tournament for the Olympics, using only the teams that qualified for the World Cup, instead of all of Europe... This seems fair, since the tournaments are only a year apart.
So, it is too hard so don't do it for the women? Kind of shocking for someone on this forum. The validation of misogyny is something I usually only find in Yahoo forums after articles about the USWNT lawsuit. They really can't find two weeks to have a tournament? CONCACAF has more teams, with a fraction of the money, and they somehow have one. How hard would it be to have all the teams that qualify for the Euros have a two week tournament to qualify for the Olympics? Or every UEFA WC team have a two week round robin to see who qualifies? Simply taking the two teams that go furthest, in a non-UEFA tournament, a year before the Olympics, is lazy and misogynistic.
Well, choosing Olympic participants based on team performance at the WC isn't ideal, to be sure--but keep in mind that a lot of European teams are playing a lot of matches already. They've all been taking part in qualifying for Euro 21, which is extensive, and many of the players were/are playing in Champions League, FA Cup (for Euros playing in the FA WSL), Continental Cup (same), etc. I'm not too put out about how UEFA picks its Olympics teams because I, for one, don't attach much importance to soccer at the Olympics, even though "winning a gold medal" remains a big deal for athletes. I don't think soccer should be an OG event, nor should tennis. The IOC has essentially decided that EVERYTHING should be part of the Olympics--including a bunch of youthful activities that aren't sports at all.
Than UEFA??? I hear places like Monaco and San Marino are building programs now-- can Vatican City be far behind? And, no, I'm not validating misogyny at all. That's a pretty feeble claim. But Euros don't happen/ finish soon enough for the deadline and having a tournament of WC qualifiers to pick Olympics teams, and either taking the better teams out of Euros or making them play three major tournaments in one year( to the detriment of their bodies and their clubs) seems wildly impractical whether they are loaded up with misogyny or not.
So far he's only posted this (more to come): Full stats later, but WOTM for the USA-Spain match was (again) Julie Ertz.Statistical sidenote, the USA only completed 299 passes, lowest amount since the WWC vs England.— Chris Henderson (@chris_awk) March 9, 2020 And yes, his data is from InStat.
The stats from US Soccer (on the app; I'll point out that their stats usually don't line up exactly with InStat): US - Spain Possession: 40% - 60% Shots: 9 - 9 Shots on Target: 4 - 3 Passes: 336 - 524 Pass accuracy: 72% - 81% Corners: 7 - 4 Offsides: 3 - 1 Fouls: 15 - 14 Below are individual player stats (Spain's players are also on the app if you're interested): US Players' shots (on target): Sam Mewis: 2 (1) Lloyd: 2 (1) Dahlkemper: 1 (1) Ertz: 1 (1) Rapinoe: 1 (1) Lavelle: 1 (0) Williams: 1 (1) US Player's defending (not sure on the definitions here; but it says a lot for Williams' defending): Williams: 3 int, 3 tackles, 12 duels Sonnett: 2 int, 0 tackles, 1 duel Ertz: 1 int, 2 tackles, 14 duels Rapinoe: 1 int, 3 tackles, 5 duels Mewis: 1 int, 1 tackle, 2 duels Lavelle: 1 int, 3 tackle, 8 duels Sauerbrunn: 0 int, 1 tackle, 1 duel Dahlkemper: 0 int, 1 tackle, 3 duels Lloyd: 0 int, 2 tackles, 7 duels US players' passing (key passes in parenthesis): Sauerbrunn: 52 passes (0); 91% accuracy Dahlkemper: 52 passes (0); 82% Ertz: 42 passes (2); 61% Dunn: 41 passes (1); 65% Sonnett: 26 passes (0); 76% Mewis: 23 passes (0); 56% Naeher: 18 passes (0); 72% Williams: 18 passes (0); 55% Lavelle: 17 passes (0); 58% Lloyd: 14 passes (0); 57% Rapinoe: 12 passes (3); 66%
Re-watch the match. Regarding Rose, the first play where the opponent went flying, Rose got all ball, no body. The 2nd was a foul. Yes, Ertz and Horan are big strong ladies. But, no, they are not constantly putting their bodies on someone, like Spain did. You seem to be misinterpreting my post as a criticism of Spain. Maybe it's a language thing. It's respect. I'm saying we should play like that. There were 2 plays by Spain that disgusted me. One was when Paredes could easily have broken Lloyd's leg. That was criminal. And, the other was when Dunn was dribbling toward our own endline and the Spanish player shoved Dunn down and then accused Dunn of diving. I hate that sh*t. By the way. A thing that I love about women's soccer is that it isn't immersed in the bs gamesmanship that is baked into the men's game. It's coming. Lastly, they were bossing us partly because we were too deferential. I think Klinsmann is kind of an idiot, but one thing he said resonates here. We play too nice. You've got to step on some feet. Make the other team uncomfortable. If you haven't erased the game, go back and watch how many times Spain initiates contact compared to how many times we do.
Again, wow. Saying a claim of misogyny is feeble doesn't make it so. England and Spain are literally playing a tournament now. You are arguing that there is not time in 12 months to have some kind of qualifying tournament. Why, because the women can't handle that kind of grind? Most of these UEFA teams don't play half the matches the US Women do and their league play is a joke most weeks. Should we go back to 80 minute matches to protect the fragile females? All the relevant teams are playing in tournaments this week; which kinda shows there was room for a small qualifying tournament. There was certainly room for a full qualifying tournament, but UEFA has a grudge with the Olympics stemming from their big money maker, the men's club game.