It may be true, but who cares? I will still watch the women play. It’s not really about who’s the best athletically, it’s more about the competition. Men will always have the physical advantage over women, but that is just one aspect of sports.
Apparently the person that’s getting all worked up about it cares.
I didn’t see most of the game, but watched a fair bit throughout the tournament and saw the PK finale of this game. While I thought the tournament was a hoot and a half, the quality of play is lagging far, far behind any kind of men’s game. I remember a couple of years ago there was a semi final of an under 19 (or 17) European Championship between the Netherlands and England (both famous for sucking at Penalty Kicks) and in the end the Dutch won by something like 21-20, with hardly any missed penalties throughout the series.
I haven’t seen Pk’s this bad since EURO 2000 when Dutch lost to Italy (don’t refer back to this as it still hurts).
To the guy saying the US lost on purpose, right before the last penalty kick Han Solo stayed away from her line to psych the pk-taker out (one of the few examples of mild gamesmanship I can recall), which clearly shows she was doing everything she could to make het miss. You can’t help it when your opponent follows this with a great pk.
I think there’s too much money involved in the men’s game for it to return to, what I would call, a “clean” game. There’s too much pressure on the officiating to let them really card the male players the way they should, so it allows the male players to get away with just about anything. (This is a general statement, of course- not all male players are divers and cheaters, and not all officials are reluctant to card them.) There’s too much pressure on football associations (FIFA, FA, etc.) to keep the money rolling in, so they’re reluctant to hand out after-match penalties. Players and managers know this, so continue to do anything they can to win.
There is little financial gain from the women’s game, so the win-at-all/any-costs isn’t such a motivator. For most of them, pride and recognition is about all they’re getting. This is why I questioned the idea that the American women might have not minded Japan winning today, for sentimental reasons. This (winning) is about all they’ve got; I can’t see them giving that away.
I have to take back a few of the things I posted above. I seems Brazil has just lost their quarterfinal in the Copa America against Paraguay by missing 4 penelties…
We have to decide what we want- do we want women to offer the same quality as men, despite not having the same level of athleticism, or do we want women to be women? When the playing field for both genders is the same, but the athleticism is different, of course the quality will not compare. Anyway, I’m not sure why the women’s game can’t be judged on its own merit. Can we not simply look at this particular game and let it stand on its own, rather than comparing apples to oranges?
Some thoughts:
Tying in the idea that the game was good quality, and that of how a womens national team would fare against a good boys U16 team.
The good U16 team would win easily, and I say that as a normal lad who has watched thousands of games in my lifetime. Watching the game tonight, I enjoyed the spectacle, but in so many cases the use of the ball was painful to watch. Scuffed clearances, passes with absolutely no power behind them, stilted movement. Some of the technique shown tonight in things like crosses were just…wrong. The penalties were a good example. I have seen people choke at penalties, but this wasnt choking, it was just poor technique. Even as simple a thing as the run up was at the wrong angles followed by some weird attempt at a kick you would only see in a womens game. (Wambachs penalty being the exception, much more controlled).
In my uneducated opinion, the issue lies with core strength. Football is a game of poise and control, allayed with intermittant bursts of speed and power. Pit me if you like, but because women are built differently to men, I dont believe they will ever have the same core strength that allows men to have the controlled grace and spare movement needed to excel at the game. The U16 team, even though not fully developed, will have that control to some extent, and it will be enough.
The first Japanese goal illustrates this well IMO. It was a scramble, but that type of scrambling was happening all over the field all night long. Players falling from their feet trying to reorientate as play moved around them, then swiping at loose balls from poor postitions. A good male player would have kept the head up, changed position constantly as needed, and then been able to kick through the ball in a controlled fashion.
I dont mean to denigrate the womens game, they have come a long way, and will continue to improve I have no doubt. But there is a physicality and control still missing from the game.
Two other points:
To the clown saying the US team may have thrown the game out of pity, thats the dumbest thing I have ever heard, and is incredibly disrespectful to a squad of women who probably worked harder to be on that pitch than you or I have ever worked in our lives. You obviously have no concept of the blood sweat and tears needed to compete at the highest level in any discipline. I have played in finals at a much lower level than a world cup final and I can tell you that you want it so much it makes you sick. Pity doesnt come into it.
To the people commenting on the lack of cards and playacting. I hate cheaters as much as anything, but the reason it happens less in the womens game is that because the pace is so much slower it is simply harder to do. I guarantee that as the womens game gets faster, and their technique improves, you will start to see a lot more of the marginal calls that people like to call playacting.
No, that was choking. Take a look at their penalties against Brazil. Those were well struck (with the exception of Boxx).
I will say we should probably cancel out the talk about penalty taking, because there have been plenty of men’s games that have ended up in shite PKs. (As polar bear just noted- Brazil tonight for one.)
Other than that, I think you make a lot of great points here, and I agree with most of them. I think the most important thing for me is, I want the women’s game to get better within itself. I don’t care if they’ll never be as good as the men- I only want them to be the best as women.
Buckyty,
I’m not saying they threw it. I’m just saying perhaps it was a factor. I watched the post-game interviews of Coach Sundhage, Hope Solo, and Wambach. All 3 mentioned the fact that despite losing, they were happy that, if it had to be any team, that it was Japan to have won it. A big part of sports is psychology, especially at the top levels, you should know that.
No disrespect was intended. I think only you thought it was disrespectful.
Help a brother out with a cite.
USWNT vs. SoCal Boys ODP B92/93
I believe they are U-17.
(And that’s an older link- not sure what the last results were for the friendlies.)
It’s not insulting, it is something that happens regularly during training.
I don’t know of places that archive friendlies against u-16 club teams. I don’t know if you’ll accept this as a cite, but I don’t see why not. From the date that was posted those ODP teams would have been u-16 and u-17. Socal is the best region in the US for youth soccer.
Here’s Alex Morgan tweeting about a loss to some u-19 team. I have no idea who they are. Could be an intramural team for all I know.
I’m having trouble finding other cites (clearly, I used twitter), but I know they’ve played and lost the the u-17 men’s team every so often as well as losing to Solar SC (a very well regarded youth team from Dallas).
I don’t get why people would find this controversial.
The US females are WAY better looking than the Japanese. WAY better.
U-17 and U-19 is not the same as 14 year old boys. I saw one blog posting from one of the non-starters about playing the U-17 Bayern Munich feeder team, and getting their asses kicked by them, but that’s the Bayern Munich youth club. The reason the entire conversation is annoying is that it is a general theme with losses by women athletes that we get into the discussion of how much they suck compared to men. It always turns into, “yeah, they’re fun to watch, but they’re not really good compared to the men”, and it’s bothersome to me. I’m not saying it isn’t factually correct. But it’s completely one sided. You didn’t see anyone during the threads where the USMNT was getting their asses kicked in the WC2010 about how they haven’t performed as well as the women’s team so while they made it into the round of 16 and got beat by Ghana, it was really irrelevant compared to how well the women have done historically.
I don’t want to continue the hijack though, anyone is welcome to PM me or we can start a new thread.
Yes, but in international play they go to a shootout. It’s disgusting. Seeing something like the hockey final in the Olympics or the World Cup decided by an arbitrary skills competition makes me angry.
I read a great column today that said watching Women’s football is like drinking Coca Cola Light. It is still good, hell you might like the taste more than the original (different tastes and all), but you should never compare it to the real thing.
I agree with this a lot. I watched far more of the worldcup than I had planned and enjoyed it a lot. At the same time (as bucketybuck posted) there is a lot of difference with the man’s game. I’ve watched a few U21, U19 and U17 tournaments as well and it seemed to me that these kids played more like the elite men (including playacting, cardwaving etc) than the women did. This is no judgement, just subjective observation (and memory).
Which is why the u-16 and u-17 games were blowouts and not evenly matched.
Another solution would be to be better at taking shots.
Number of shots is a meaningless stat if the shots are crap.