Only the women’s team.
I don’t want to generalize based off of two samples alone, but we’ve had England and Spain miss a combined 50% of their PKs and England and Sweden also missed 9 out of 14 shots in the shootout weeks ago. Are women’s penalty kicks statistically likelier, in general, to result in missed kicks or saved shots than men’s?
Saw an article today that for this tournament the success rate was 52%. That’s very low, even for a high-level tournament (men’s Euro 2024 had a 77% success rate).
I certainly noticed that the women in this tournament seemed to be trying to just hit the net, and also didn’t shoot particularly hard (Chloe Kelly aside, who just crushed hers today). Most of the saved ones today were not particularly great saves, just weak shots and an easily-saved height - I wonder if the coaches just emphasized hitting the net.
It’s actually a bit backwards, as one of the main criticisms of the women’s game is that the smaller stature of the goalies make long-distance shots more successful (since the goalies just can’t get to well-placed shots from distance). But even with that penalties are being saved/missed at a shockingly high rate.
ETA: I would also say that very few women seem to do the hop-skip-jump approach where the taker delays until the goalie moves and then shoots the other way. This is often very effective (if annoying) in the men’s game but I haven’t seen any of the women try it.
Do women keepers tend to try to anticipate the shot and jump, or react? If the latter, the hop might not be an effective strategy.
In the run up to this tournament, women were marginally (but probably not statistically meaningfully) more successful at penalties than men in the same tournaments.
Lots of food for thought in that article, including some coaches who feel very outdated and who do not prepare for penalties.
Time for a link to a David Squires cartoon:
OK, make it two. Give the Lionesses some joy , even if it is sad for the Spanish Women:
Now something I did not see coming: Barça has signed a contract to receive 44 million €uro from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Barça will wear a sign in their training equipment (not the one they play games with) reading “RD Congo: Coeur d’Afrique” (that is French for: Democratic Republic of Congo: The Heart of Africa).
My Bullshit’O’Meter is off the charts:
The DRC will also be designated as the “Official Empowerment Partner for Sports and Culture,” reflecting a shared vision to promote athletic development and cultural exchange.
“This agreement signifies a shared commitment to fostering multi-sport development within the DRC,” the club said in an official statement. “The collaboration will contribute to enriching the training of the country’s young athletes by transferring its ecosystem of values, an indisputable pillar of the Barça model and style.”
With this latest agreement, the DRC continues to position itself at the intersection of sports, culture, and international diplomacy, leveraging football’s global reach to promote a renewed image of the country as youthful, ambitious, and open to the world.
Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh dear… Is this not just indecent? And I say that as a Barça fan…
ETA: The Athletic has more details, and mentions other deals by Arsenal and Bayern Munich with Rwanda, for instance. Probably paywalled:
As long as Arsenal continue to accept Rwandan money, I’ll refrain from buying their shirt. That sponsorship deal makes my love for the team a little uncomfortable.
Want another thing that sucks? UEFA has paid over 11 million as “solidarity funds” to Russian clubs since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, but has denied those same payments to Ukrainian clubs:
Have I mentioned yet that UEFA (and FIFA, of course) is an amoral corrupt organisation and that I hate and despise them?
And CONMEBOL, CONCACAF…
Don’t forget IOC.
Damn, my Southampton appeared to have been pretty fortunate to beat just promoted (and everyone’s darling) Wrexham today. Just after I read an ESPN piece about the financial disadvantages they will be up against in the Championship.
I watched a few matches from the Premiership’s opening weekend and noticed something that struck me as odd. Post-match, as the players were wandering around on the pitch, a LOT of them were covering their mouths while talking to each other, as if they were on the sideline coaches of a pointyball (NFL) game calling plays. Are they shielding their conversations from lip readers? If so, what are they saying to each other?
Yes, they do. It has been a thing for at least ten years, they don’t want to get their speech analyzed by lip readers. Coaches and managers do it, too, they are afraid of revealing tactical secrets. And maybe prevent anyone from hearing them trash talking.
Sorry the article is in Spanish, but the video is in… huh… English, I guess you can call it. It is only 58 seconds, you won’t suffer for long, I promise! Gianni (Johnny, insisted the host) Mafiantino in the Oval Office, sliming it up to an old and tired looking trump, a “real winner!”, with JD, Noem and a couple of others irrelevancies, none of them wearing a tie:
They announced that the draw for the World Cup will be held in the Kennedy Center on the 5th of december, a “terribly beautiful place” that is, “because we (sic!) are spending a terrific amount of money to make beautiful”. Sorry if the backtranslation sounds stoopid, I fear the original was too, judging by the excerpt in the video.
Apparently Ronaldo just scored his 100th goal for Al Nassr, making him the first player in history to score 100+ with 4 different teams. I can’t imagine anyone will ever do that for 5 .
Score 100th goal, lose Super Cup. One hero can only do so much.
Seeing as how only 25 players have ever scored 500 goals total, I think that’s a safe bet. 9 of those scored 500 for a single club!
Yeah, you’d have to plan your career around it, which would be an extremely weird thing to plan your career around. If you were on pace to score 100 goals for your first pro team by like 21-22, you’d definitely be poached by a bigger team. Organically it would have to be something like Luis Suarez where you go hometown team → ~Netherlands → bigger team → world class team → drop in quality a bit → finish back at hometown team to pad stats.
Man U and its £765m payroll fall to 4th-tier Grimsby and its £3m payroll in the English League Cup (which is a knockout tournament amongst everyone from the top 4 tiers of English soccer). They were tied 2-2 at the end and went straight to penalty kicks; after TWENTY SIX penalty kicks they won 12-11.
I only watched the highlights, but how fun.