I think what you have to do is just view it as a different sport from men’s soccer. If you do nothing but evaluate the skill and speed and accuracy of play as if it were the men’s game, you will be disappointed.
Two MASSIVE surprises brewing in group B…
…in that Germany and Norway are both only leading by 1 goal at halftime, rather than the 3 to 5 goals one might have expected.
Upsets looking unlikely… German up 4-0 over Thailand, Norway up 3-1 over Cote D’Ivoire (although CIV’s goal was pretty amazing).
Why doesn’t the Women’s World Cup expand to 32 teams, like the men’s? Would be a simpler format.
This is the first year they’ve gone from 16 up to 24.
I think the quick answer is… because there aren’t 32 teams in the world good enough to avoid a bunch of early-round 10-0 embarrassments.
Because no one really wants to see 8 more teams getting 10+ goal thrashings?
Drat, beaten by a minute
Yea, because if they want to expand, they’ll have to do it little by little. I hope eventually the Women’s World Cup has as many teams as the World Cup, but it has to be built up.
Some of the additions, even if they are getting ten goals against, are doing something just because their addition. Including more teams creates more groups and more mix of skills. Teams that in previous World Cups would have little chance of passing rounds, due to having been sorted with heavy weights, now have a better chance of passing through. I would like to go back when this round is done and see how the teams have done compared to previous Cups (or debut).
I would also ask why did the Euro Championships expand to 24 teams when there arent enough good teams to fill that tournament? I dislike tournaments when 3rd place teams get to advance.
I see, but IMHO, seeing teams losing by 10+ goals isn’t a “problem;” it’s just part of the game.
Group A is coming right down to the wire.
Canada went up in the 6th minute over Netherlands, but the Dutch looked (slightly) the better team all game long, finally equalized in the 87th minute.
New Zealand, who had not scored a goal, went up 1-0 over China. China got a TERRIBLE PK call to equalize, then went up 2-1, then NZ equalized at 2-2. 1 minute plus stoppage time for each game…
And that’s how they stayed.
Canada, China and (almost certainly) the Netherlands go through from Group A.
And that’s how it ends. New Zealand look shell-shocked, their coach refused to shake the Chinese coach’s hand.
Canada wins the group, China 2nd, Netherlands in 3rd but with 4 points look likely to advance, and New Zealand in 4th.
It needed to expand, when many of the Euro qualifying groups are just as tough as the WC qualifying groups and there’s teams who have been historically decent like Ireland who have only managed to qualify twice for the Euros, something needed to give. I think 24 teams is just right for the Euros. At the end of the day worse teams have qualified for the 32-team World Cup than will qualify for the 24-team Euros.
Of course the effect is now that qualifying has become much easier, but even then its proving not to be a cakewalk: Italy, Germany and Spain are all in 2nd place in their groups, the Netherlands are in 3rd place, Sweden and Russia are 2nd and 3rd in their very easy group behind Austria. Greece, the only team to win the Euro Championship in their group are in last place. My theory is that a lot of the teams that have consistently failed to qualify for the Euros in the past see that they now have a good chance and have raised their game in qualifying.
Of the traditional Euro powerhouses only Portugal and England top their groups and only England are cruising with a 100% record so far and only needing to beat San Marino in the next match to ensure qualification (due to the tie-breaking rules).
Men’s soccer in Europe is so well-established it doesn’t need to promote itself, but I imagine for the Women’s World Cup the thinking is a little different and it’s important to get some of these lesser teams into the final tournament to help promote the development of women’s football outside of the places where it has already managed to gain a toehold.
This is why we need more world competitions and less regional ones. Apart from the obvious Germany and Italy and the 1Aers like Spain and France; UEFA really isnt better than the Americas groups. But rather than simply debate the issue lets have it out on the pitch. Id like to see and Euro team have to play a qualifier in Costa Rica where the crowds are very hostile. At the last WC they beat Italy and drew with England and defeated Greece to gain a quarterfinal birth. And lost to Holland on penalties. The world is getting to be a much smaller place.
The Chinese coach got ejected from the game for interfering with a New Zealand player trying to take a throw-in. Evidently he had been rather demonstrative before that. I’m not quite ready to condemn the New Zealand coach here, or say he had the worst sportsmanship of the two.
Sigh, and we’d gone almost two days without referee mistakes changing the outcome of a game (in this case, changing who went on to the next stage). I don’t know what the referee saw there, but even if the ball had actually hit the New Zealand player’s arm in that situation, it would have been a pretty marginal call (arm was against her side, and clearly not intentional, ball wasn’t going anywhere in particular). New Zealand have every right to be pissed.
This has been argued to death, but I’ll never understand why people are so opposed to using instant replay in soccer, particularly for something as game-changing at a PK call.
The argument is always that’ll disrupt the flow of the game and we’d end up with something like American football with breaks in play all the time. I don’t buy that at all since the watching audience sees the replays and knows whether a foul was legit before the PK is taken like 99.9% of the time.
Yeah, it’s TOTALLY clear to me than any call that results in a PK could be reviewed. What’s trickier is whether it’s possible to review NON-calls, or how long you let play continue as long as the attacking team is still attacking (as you certainly don’t want to blow the whistle, stop a potential attack, and then have it reviewed and it turns out it wasn’t a foul at all).
I agree that it’s not a trivial problem to get right, but I think an imperfect system with instant replay HAS to be better than the current system where teams can get tournament-defining goals that are with-100%-certainty-known-to-be-wrong.
In basketball, they wait until the ball is dead before reviewing the replay. Play continues until a stoppage. Mostly, maybe exclusively restricted to whether a shooter made a three point shot or had a toe on the line and made a two point shot.
I know most people have written Ecuador off, what with their record of no wins, no ties, and two losses and a goal differential of (cough) negative 15, but I am here to show that going home is NOT a foregone conclusion for the gallant Ecuadorians.
The simplest method of advancement is:
- Ecuador wins, beating Japan, giving Ecuador 3 points; while
- Switzerland beats Cameroon, leaving Cameroon with 3 points as well and in a tie for third with Ecuador in their group; and
- Spain and Korea tie, leaving them with 2 points each in a tie for third in THEIR group, so Cameroon/Ecuador beat them out in the Third Place Sweepstakes; in the meantime
- Sweden loses to Australia (meaning that Sweden ends with 2 points); with
- Nigeria losing to the US (so Nigeria ends with 1 point, so Sweden’s two points is good enough for third, which combined with the Spain-Korea tie means that the third place team in Ecuador’s group moves on;
- which brings us to the last step, which is making sure that Ecuador beats Cameroon in the tiebreaker between the two teams, which can be accomplished if the total margin of victory in those two games is greater than (or possibly equal to)…
um…let’s see…
borrowing some fingers…
20…
Hmm.
Well, I’ll be rooting for them anyway.