What’s the capacity of the stadium? Maybe they could have sold more tickets if they had more seats.
There were a remarkable number of upsets in the (Mens) World Cup last year. I don’t know to what extent the perceived difference in skill is for many of the Womens teams. But it is not so surprising the home team gains momentum or that surprises occur. I think there will be a lot of them.
The Filipinas fell to Switzerland 0-2 today. Next up is NZ. I don’t think we stand a chance.
Yes, and since it’s the Football Ferns’ first win at a World Cup, the media here are understandably excited.
The 42,000 is a record for football in NZ (men’s or women’s matches). Predictably, everyone’s getting ahead of themselves and thinking NZ will progress to the round of sixteen - but it’s still a great result for women’s sport here.
Says it seats 50,000 online, but I don’t know if that is for football or other things.
Canada drawing Nigeria 0-0 seems like a bit of an upset.
Yeah, I was surprised by that result. Canada beat USA recently (in a friendly, maybe?).
Looking forward to 9PM!
The talent differential in women’s soccer is significantly higher than in men’s. This is closing a lot, but the gap between the top team and the bottom in this WC is probably similar to Argentina/France/Brazil men and like the 90th ranked men’s team. To win $100 on the USWNT game later today you’d have to risk $75,000.
Plus the field this WWC expanded from 24 to 32 teams, so suddenly there’s a new tranche of “bottom” teams who wouldn’t have qualified before.
Still, the sport as a whole is definitely progressing.
I didn’t really pay attention to that. Hmm, could be some bad games. In the controversial game last time where the US beat Thailand 13-0, Thailand was the 34th ranked team in the world. This time there’s Zambia at #77. Spain v Zambia, England v Haiti, US vs Vietnam, or France v Panama could all get out of hand.
The sport seems to be becoming more competitive.
I think the USA has been the best team in the world the entire time women’s soccer has been seriously played. But its edge over the #2 team has never been huge, and still isn’t huge. The main difference now is that the USA could now plausibly lose to the #10 team in the world, which would have been unthinkable in the past. Meaning the chances of the US winning any given tournament are of course much smaller.
Yup. And last WC I thought that both England and France outplayed the US for large portions of the match if not the whole game (double checking that my memory isn’t trash both teams had higher xG than the US). Previously US losses seemed to be a lot of the US crapping the bed (I’m specifically thinking of the Brazil loss when Solo was benched and vs Sweden) rather than the other team actually being as good/better.
I curious to see if in the future Europe dominates the women’s sport. There’s more training/coaching talent there than in the US so it seems possible.
Canada won gold in.Tokyo. Maybe they got lucky; they missed a penalty versus Nigeria and looked mediocre. When the US commentators were discussing the other good teams prior to playing Vietnam, they mentioned several European teams but not Canada or the host countries.
…these are MONSTER numbers for a soccer game here in NZ. This was literally what they were talking about last month:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/06/23/fifa-concerned-about-womens-world-cup-ticket-sales-in-nz/
USA ahead early in their first match, 1-0.
Now 2-0 at the half. Could have been 3-0, but USA missed a penalty kick.
I guess I trust the technology, but that second goal looked offside to me. I was surprised when it was allowed on replay.
Not watching, but was it a good PK? The US has a bad habit of keeping players around too long. Morgan isn’t that old, but definitely on the downside of her career.
Turned on after the Messi game. This Vietnam keeper is terrible on crosses, Abby Wambach would have 6 goals by now.
That Horan yellow maybe should have been red, IMO.