I've got the feeling that Austria tonight played better than Germany did vs Spain. And Austria already reached the semi-finals in 2017, while Germany didn't.
So Austria is your favourite team when Italy is out of the tournament? Good choice but which team will you choose for semifinal?
I think this Norway failure is worse than 2017. Now there was a more favourable group, no injuries or recent retirements on major players, star players in prime age and no covid cases either. 2022 was a true Sjögren moulded team. The 2017 failure had inherited problems from before his reign. Fiasko is the most common word in the Norwegian coverage of tonight's match. That word appears in pretty much every article in the major news outlets. NFF president Klaveness nearly in tears in mixed zone. She looked both sad and angry at the same time. Last year she extended Sjögren's contract to end after the World Cup. What now?
Cut your losses and move on from Martin Sjögren. There's no universe in which a Norway with that much talent loses in group play. They look directionless out there with no plan B. There were signs in 2017 that were ignored, Sjögren's true self was shown this tournament.
I'm not suggesting that the Norway coach should not be sacked--but what's the talent level in the midfield and in the back? Neither group was very good at all.
A midfield of Reiten, Maanum, Engen, and Risa would surely be expected to get out of group play. This is a managerial disaster piece for me. Formations can be overblown and have too much importance placed on them, but why play such a defensive 4-4-2 with no commitment towards counter attacking? Martin Sjögren insisted on playing out of the back against England when that's the weakest part of the team, makes no sense.
True, but when the whole set-up and formation of the team is wrong and players are used out of position, even the greatest players can look very average and bewildered. Case in point: Caro Hansen in the last two matches. That being said, Ingrid Engen had a rubbish tournament. I've never seen her this bad. Engen was at her best in Wolfsburg in a very deep midfield role just in front of the back four sweeping up loose balls and breaking up play. She is a destroyer more than a creator. In Sjögren's Norway, she is asked to play the role of a creative midfielder dictating play with passes, something she can't do at this level. Her first touch is not good enough for that. Again, Sjögren's choice.
Just a little question for the Norway folks: I seem to remember a similar type of problem after they won the WWC in Sweden back in 1995? There just was very little news that I saw as I traveled. But my old brain thinks there was some kind of issue involving stagnation of development in Norway. The time was quite a while ago and my old brain has probably killed quite a few cells in the intervening years but I do remember some kind of story about problems in the Norwegian soccer community. But my old brain might be having memory issues. That all has kind of blended in my memory with the complaints about the US coach at the time coming under fire for not having a good replacement for Akers. Looking back on that it was a MUCH worse problem for the US than not having a good backup for Ertz is in the current situation.
Totally unacceptable. Norway didn't look eager enough to want to score two goals. No high pressing or anything just let Austria kick the ball around the whole time and take advantage of the inexperienced goal keeper. Then magically at around the 80th minute, Norway kicked into high gear and substitutions were made. They even got a couple of shots off. Unfortunately too little too late. Just imagine, you have probably the best offensive front in the tournament and it took until the last 10 minutes to high press, get a couple of set piece opportunities and take shots? Really?
Probably because after they won the 95 WWC and bronze in the 96 OLY, coach Even Pellerud left, and they hired Per-Mathias Høgmo. The team then bombed out of the 97 Euros in the group stage, which IIRC, was their first big tourney screw up. I'm sure there were some 'sack the coach' articles. Høgmo came into a highly decorated team who was starting to go through a massive generational shift. The 1995 and 2000 finals rosters share just four players - Nordby, Espeseth, Riise and Pettersen. And in just three years he took the team from getting KO'd at the Euros to winning OLY gold, so ...
In some ways I think this is a test of how seriously the NFF will take women's football. Obviously a men's coach would be sacked after this kind of tournament, and its not like Norway had such great results in 2019 that it is worth keeping a coach after a disastrous performance.
I am pretty sure that any coach that managed to take the Norwegian MWT to Euros or MWC would be kept regardless of the results in the actual Championship.
Fair, but Norway's MNT is not ranked #11 in the world and talked up as a dark horse contender in some (uninformed) outlets before the tournament. This would be like Germany's men getting beaten 8-0 by the Dutch and then failing to advance out of the group at the Euros. Nor have Norway's men won the World Cup or Olympics.