Women's World Cup 2019

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, Teng Ai Hui said:

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.

Strategically yes it would have been smarter to lose, but I like the fact that we kept a clean sheet in the group stages and that our defense finally got tested. They looked pretty solid from the 30 mins or so I got to watch.

[ljkeane]

It’s good to get to the knockout rounds after a slightly underwhelming group stages. The stand out ties for me in the round of 16 are Norway - Australia tonight and Holland - Japan on Tuesday. I’d expect both the USA and France to win but they should both be tested more than they have been so far so that’ll be interesting.

 I like this German shirt.

ETA: VAR is really getting on my nerves. I actually agree with that decision, the German player hasn’t had much of an impact, but it all just takes too long.

And another VAR decision as I’m typing. Penalty given.

[Corvinus85]

Norway-Australia has lived to the expectations. A tough fight, with Norway being slightly more dominant, though it helped having superior numbers in the extra time. Australia deserved to come back after the pace they had in the 2nd half.

I've been silently rooting for Australia, but Norway has been great to watch. Penalty kicks!!!

Edit: Well that was some horrendous penalty taking by the Aussies.

[ljkeane]

Going into the game I had Australia as slight favourites but I have to say I thought Norway were fairly comfortably the better team, Graham-Hansen's a really good player. It looked like the Australian 'keeper had been over thinking all the penalty save controversy with the weird shuffling to the side thing she was doing at the start of the shoot out, it just made it easy for the first 2 Norwegian penalty takers. Anyway, good game.

Continuing my series of sartorial reviews the Australian shirt is horrendous.

[Joey Crows]

Poor Sam Kerr. She was a monster in the group stage. Sad to see her miss that penalty.

[ljkeane]

I’m not entirely sure how what looked a pretty clear deliberate elbow to the face isn’t a red card.

ETA: Bizarre scenes with Cameroon absolutely losing their shit over correct decisions. It's understandable they'd be disappointed but to lose it to that degree was odd. On top of that the decisions that VAR got wrong in my opinion were in not giving England a penalty and Cameroon a couple of red cards.

From an England point of view they were clearly the technically superior side and they deserved the win but they do have a bit of a worrying tendency to play themselves into trouble. I think, considering how much they're trying to play out from the back, pushing Scott and Kirby so far forward when they have the ball leaves Walsh very isolated in midfield.

[ljkeane]

France made very hard work of that. They look like the weight of expectation is really getting to them.

It's getting to be a bit of a theme but the officials, in whatever combination, bottled a couple of big decisions again. Renard raking her studs down Debinha's shin is pretty clear red card and the Brazilian centre back piling in Gauvin's back in the box was a nailed on penalty.

[Altherion]

I was surprised by the Cameroonian players' conduct in the game with England. In the past, women's soccer was a bit less violent than that of the men, but here they shoved the referee and, at the end of that ridiculously long stoppage time with the score 3-0, the Cameroonian pretty clearly kicked the Englishwoman's leg when the ball was already gone. I don't recall the men's team from Cameroon being this aggressive.

[ljkeane]

Good game so far. Spain have clearly identified some weaknesses in the USA team and they're well worth being level.

The US remind me quite a bit of the Liverpool side the first couple of years Klopp was manager with the aggressive press and throwing players forward looking really good when it works but they do look vulnerable if teams pass through the press or they lose the ball. There's also a noticeable drop off in intensity as the half goes on. The US is still comfortably the more talented team though so they should come through this but it's good to see them really getting pushed.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Good game so far. Spain have clearly identified some weaknesses in the USA team and they're well worth being level.

The US remind me quite a bit of the Liverpool side the first couple of years Klopp was manager with the aggressive press and throwing players forward looking really good when it works but they do look vulnerable if teams pass through the press or they lose the ball. There's also a noticeable drop off in intensity as the half goes on. The US is still comfortably the more talented team though so they should come through this but it's good to see them really getting pushed.

I’m at work and can’t watch, but it sounds like the difference in the game is that our goalie made a horrifically bad play and basically gave them a goal.

[Maithanet]

25 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I’m at work and can’t watch, but it sounds like the difference in the game is that our goalie made a horrifically bad play and basically gave them a goal.

The goalie made a terrible play, but the Spanish striker still needed to make a good play to finish the opportunity, and she nailed it. 

The penalty the US got was pretty soft too.  The defender had her leg out, and Heath decided tripping and falling was a better opportunity than just going and getting the ball, which should could have done.  She got the call, so I suppose she was right, but it felt very soft (and I'm rooting for the US).

[ljkeane]

44 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I’m at work and can’t watch, but it sounds like the difference in the game is that our goalie made a horrifically bad play and basically gave them a goal.

She probably shouldn’t have given the ball to the centre back under pressure but it’s pretty much what the US have been doing all tournament. The difference was Spain had clearly prepared well and they pressed high as a unit when they saw a slightly lax pass.

 I think the more impressive thing Spain have done though is as the US pressure has fallen off a bit they’re really passing the ball well through midfield.

ETA: Good game.

Spain were quite a lot better than I expected them to be. The USA didn't do a great deal to earn their second goal but they controlled the game quite well once they'd gone in front, Rapinoe in particular did well. Morgan doesn't look fully fit to me so it might be worth going with Lloyd for the France game.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

44 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

The goalie made a terrible play, but the Spanish striker still needed to make a good play to finish the opportunity, and she nailed it. 

The penalty the US got was pretty soft too.  The defender had her leg out, and Heath decided tripping and falling was a better opportunity than just going and getting the ball, which should could have done.  She got the call, so I suppose she was right, but it felt very soft (and I'm rooting for the US).

What was the second PK for?

Anyways, a win is a win, but it doesn’t feel too good to only get by on penalties. Both France and the US seem shaky going into their match. That said, I think the winner of takes the tournament.  

[Mexal]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

What was the second PK for?

Anyways, a win is a win, but it doesn’t feel too good to only get by on penalties. Both France and the US seem shaky going into their match. That said, I think the winner of takes the tournament.  

Kicking Lavelle when she went for the ball. It was pretty soft too but there was still contact.

[The Mother of The Others]

Heading into the Friday matchup , France did actual goal scoring while the U.S. was stymied.   Hmmm.  Viva la France?   Like, this offense today wouldn't beat Germany, cuz they wouldn't need to foul in the penalty box.  The ref seemed okay with Morgan getting mugged on the field for a while, which was funny.   'You can take it!'    'You put the world on notice, remember?'    Bad news is it worked for Spain so that's the sort of thing that gets repeated.

[ljkeane]

Interesting game tonight. I thought the Dutch were really good to start the game, they were all over Japan, but after they went in front they over did trying to take the sting out of the game and let the Japanese back into the game. Since then Japan have been the better side.

Japan are a bit of an odd team. They’re a good technical passing side but there’s no real suggestion anyone is going to beat a defender or score from distance or do anything individual. It’s all just short passing triangles trying to walk the ball into the net. You have to admire the commitment to their philosophy.

ETA: That’s an incredibly harsh penalty.

[Philokles]

7/8 of the remaining teams are European - and Spain only missing out due to a dodgy American penalty. Crazy how quickly they have taken over now Women’s football is recieving some attention over here (at least in the UK).

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

On 6/24/2019 at 12:24 PM, ljkeane said:

Morgan doesn't look fully fit to me so it might be worth going with Lloyd for the France game.

She was reportedly banged up at the start of the tournament, so it's no surprise that she's showing it a bit the more they play. That said, I have a hard time thinking it would be wise to take out our best purer striker and replacing her with our super sub, who is really just supposed to play in the second half. If they go that route, I suspect it would have more to do with the heat than the fact that Morgan isn't 100%. It's going to get as high as 45c this week.

[ljkeane]

On 6/25/2019 at 11:00 PM, Tywin et al. said:

That said, I have a hard time thinking it would be wise to take out our best purer striker and replacing her with our super sub, who is really just supposed to play in the second half. If they go that route, I suspect it would have more to do with the heat than the fact that Morgan isn't 100%. It's going to get as high as 45c this week.

I don't know, Morgan was a complete passenger against Spain. If she's 100% then, yeah, she should play but if you're going to get another performance of that level against France they should go with Lloyd. It's not like Lloyd's a huge step down from Morgan even at her best.

It's been a bit overshadowed by the fact that they conceded a soft goal but overall the defence didn't do that badly against Spain but the attack really wasn't great. They didn't really create another chance of note after Heath won the first penalty. Here's a pretty good article on it. France have a better defence than Spain and the US are going to need to be better. Some of that will probably come from bringing Horan back in but they can't really afford to be carrying anyone.

I'm not particularly confident about England's chances tonight, especially if Houghton's out. England have been pretty inconsistent with their performances and I think they'll need to be at their best for 90 minutes to win. The Norwegians look solid at the back and I was really impressed with Graham-Hansen against Australia. I can see here picking England off on the break against the weaker left side of their defence.

[Rorshach]

I'd expect us to be well organized, to have Herlovsen run her socks off, and hopefully to see Reiten and Graham Hansen use their magic. 

Graham Hansen is absolutely wonderful on the ball. I just wish she'd get the final ball right more often.