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Women's World Cup 2019


ljkeane

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32 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Any team that loses 13-0 has no business being in the tournament. 

In principle I agree, 24 teams at this stage are probably too many. I would have preferred a mode with 16 teams where only the group winner qualifies and then proceeds to the semi-finals. You may expect to see worse and more often with Infantinos plans of a 48 team-WC in 2022.

But you also have to consider that in terms of revenue, women's football is still in the early developing stages and big discrepancies in terms of professionalization are to be expected. And understandbly, they need a stage to make womens football more attractive. Also the US are fielding a spectacular team. They've been amongst the top 3 teams every time since the start of the womens wc and even then their team this year is probably one of the best, maybe even the best they've ever had.

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The Spanish striker Garcia is fast and seems to be pretty good at getting herself into goal scoring positions. On the downside she doesn’t seem to be particularly good at putting away the resulting chances. Nahikari is a cool name though.

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Sweden was euro-shoving people off the ball a lot from behind, etc., against.... Chile?   So it was tough to like their dominant performance.   NED scored in injury time to win.   Then the US went up by more than 6, which seemed like bad karma.  Then I remembered that total goals scored is one of the wacky tiebreakers for determining who gets out of group play in these tourneys, huh?   So you have to try to murder Thailand worse than you think the next team will.  That's kind of sick.   I guess you gotta do what you gotta do....  but then at 12- 0 they showed a Thai baby crying from the constant goal scoring celebrations, and it went back to being bad mojo again.  You ladies just made a baby cry!    But on the plus side there was that moment when (Alex?) held up her hand like, "I've scored a goal for every finger."

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I really can't make my mind up as to whether the VAR-assisted penalty in the Norway-France game was a penalty or not. 

Well, obviously, it was a penalty given, but I thought it was less than clear cut - and I don't know what the rules say about such a situation. Syrstad Engen tries to clear, hits the ball (but badly and barely), it is cleared, but on the follow-through her studs hits the French player. 

I'm obviously not neutral - so did anyone else see the situation?

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Apart from that, the Norwegian team looks better than expected for me. We struggle at left back, and Hjelmset in goal needs to be more assured when coming from her line, but all in all it looks good.

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I don't usually enjoy football like at all, but the women's world cup has been on at work and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. 

I have nothing more substantive to add unfortunately but i have really loved watching

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3 hours ago, Rorshach said:

I'm obviously not neutral - so did anyone else see the situation?

It’s the kind of thing refs sometimes use as an excuse not to give a penalty but it’s a nailed on foul and card outside the box so it should be given.

 

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2 hours ago, ljkeane said:

It’s the kind of thing refs sometimes use as an excuse not to give a penalty but it’s a nailed on foul and card outside the box so it should be given.

 

Good point. 

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Scotland have been screwed over a bit with the penalty decisions in this World Cup. They’ve had 2 penalties awarded against them, one for England and one for Japan, which didn’t look like penalties to me and the VAR has just ignored what looked like a stonewall penalty for them.

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24 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Did you see what our all backups team did?

:P

They beat a team drawn from a playing population of 727 players and probably the second weakest side in the tournament after Thailand?

Being serious that was more impressive performance than the win over Thailand for me. Chile didn't offer much of a threat but they kept going and didn't collapse in a heap like Thailand did. And Endler was really good.

The US does have a very good attack and good depth but I'm not sure we've learned a lot from these two games. The concerns about them going into the tournament were that their defence doesn't look that impressive on paper and in attack they tend be very good at putting sides outside the top 10 or so to the sword but the goals dry up quite a bit against the stronger sides. Comfortably beating two of the worst 3 or 4 sides in the tournament doesn't really show much either way.

Anyway, Germany are comfortably beating South Africa and Spain and China are drawing so they should both go through.

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Fell in love with team France.  (In the 2nd half Vs. Nigeria).   The precision passing lifts airmailing it right on target, sometimes in the middle of chaotic situations.  Passing triangles that swirl and move without the ball intuitively, exactly when the ball handler needed an outlet.  Attack concepts applied so naturally, frequently, not requiring just the right circumstances.  It was artful.  None of it was going in the net, but Damn nonetheless.  Now i understand how scoreless ties can fascinate people.   It sucked that the goal came off a penalty kick do-over.  Not how you want to win or lose.   High stakes, as allowing a second goal would have been tragic for Nigeria's hopes of getting to the next round, and they had to play with 10.

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This retaking penalties because the goalkeeper is inches off the line is so tedious. Is this what we’re wasting all this time with VAR for?

Still, great comeback from Argentina to draw the game after being 3 down. Brutal for Scotland though.

A real mixed bag for England, they were comfortably the better side in the first half and Japan were all over them in the second half. They managed to find a second goal on the break though and that’s a good win.

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Strategically speaking, I was hoping for USA to lose against Sweden. The bottom half of the bracket looks easier than the top half. Now they will probably face France in the quarterfinals and England in the semifinals.

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