The assistant referee could have provided a decision. That’s how it used to be. If it weren’t for FIFA’s Goal-line Technology™ it would have been solely her decision. The ref wouldn’t dare overrule her.
But she made no signal. No known signal anyway, but I suspect she gave a “coded” communication (when she put the flag horizontally across her chest) that meant, “Yo. Gonna have to go to video for that one. T’was as close as could be!”
I bet it looked exactly on the line to her, as the Goal-line Technology™ later indicated.
At the risk of derailing the thread, I wonder whether Trump is actually the one writing these tweets these days. His flavor of insanity is…different now in 2023 than it was in 2021 or 2019. It’s hard to describe, but it feels like an aide or assistant tweeting on his behalf but trying to imitate his buffoonery, rather than Trump himself. It’s not the same flavor as old Trump.
Anyhow, back to the thread: is it me, or do the women’s games involve more resting time? For instance, Japan gets a full 6 days between its Norway game and its Sweden game. I seem to recall that men’s world cups usually involved only 3-4 days in between games.
You put me in the unpleasant position of trying to figure out what comprises Trump’s old flavour and new flavour. I’m thinking the old flavour was a melange of Big Mac sauce, roadside crow, ammonia, hydrogen sulphide, bitter European licorice, Mountain Dew, thousand year old egg, grand slam breakfast, rawhide and those crappy Hallowe’en molasses toffees wrapped in ghost paper. The new flavour might add tobacco chew, flop sweat, Icelandic marinated shark and a bit more rancour.
Funny that the last two times WOKE EQUALED SUCCESS. Guess third time’s the charm, if you wish for it badly enough.
All this time, all Trump had to do was toupee his holes together three times, while saying “there’s no plate like Hamm; there’s no plate like Hamm”…
Trump’s tweet (or whatever they’re called on that other site) does read like self-parody. Who knows if it’s genuine. I’m just not at all surprised by it.
Anyway, back to the football… England should have enough to get past Nigeria shortly but in this World Cup, you never know!
It’s taking the Lionesses longer than you thought. BTW: is a team of lionesses a pride?
And a red card for stupidity. The team is not going to be pleased. And the yellow press? I remember the Sun’s front page when Beckham got a similarly stupid red card against Diego Simeone in a World Cup a long time ago, it went something like “Ten Lions and one stupid little brat”.
She deserves more slack than Beckham because a) there is plausible deniabilty that it was intentional (but yes, it was stupid), b) she’s young and inexperienced, c) she’s been our best player so far, and most importantly d) they’ve just about got away with it and progressed anyway.
Congrats to England on moving forward! Since Germany and USA are out, I’ll be rooting for them.
I thought the US played very well against Sweden, but their goalie was lights out. The PKs were a shame – the Swedish goalie didn’t make a single save, but the US missed the net three times! Seems like job one would be to get it on target and at least make the goalie guess in the right direction, but I’m not a soccer player.
@Velocity, I don’t understand your attitude about Rapino. She’s a great American athlete, and this was her last international game before retirement. Why you would wish her to go out that way is baffling to me.
I haven’t seen the game as I am working but it sounds like we got away with it big time today and Nigeria were unlucky. I’ve seen the Lauren James incident and it was very similar to Rooney’s sending off vs Portugal in 2006, being a stamp rather than Beckham’s little flick of the leg.
It definitely looked intentional to me. A kick like that can happen unintentionally if the fouling player isn’t in full balance, but James was in total control of her body when she stomped on the Nigerian player’s back. Not a brutal stomp, but rude play anyway and a clear red. I expect that she’ll get suspended for at least two games.
To be clear, I completely agree it was a red. But also, as you said, it wasn’t a violent lashing out like the Beckham incident. There is room for James to claim, if she wishes, that she was slightly off balance and trod on the player by mistake. But if I were her, I’d stay silent on the matter, or simply apologise for making a mistake.
This is definitely a tactic. And players have gotten pretty decent at watching the keeper to figure out which way they’re going to just before shooting. However, the logic in “if my shot is good enough that it doesn’t matter which way the keeper moves” vs relying on the keeper going the wrong way is clear.
Not looking good for Denmark, Australia is deadly effective: three shots, two scored.
I don’t have a preference in this game, but it’s always good for a tournament if the host nation advances far.
ETA: and now the stadium goes apeshit as Sam Kerr enters the field.
That sounds good in theory, but on 3-of-7 kicks they had shots so bad that it didn’t matter which way the keeper moved.
A penalty shoot-out is first and foremost a psychological matter. These players all have the skills to shoot penalties that no keeper in the world can stop, but that’s only a theoretical point when it comes to the real deal.