Seriously? I thought it wasn’t a foul at all – fifty-fifty ball. I think this ref is terrible. The US is getting mugged out there.
I agree that the second goal was probably offside.
The PK by Morgan was pretty bad – soft, towards the middle. And then she missed the rebound that came back to her.
Studs up kick right into her ankle? I only saw the one replay, but if my vision didn’t fail me, yeah, red would be justified. Not a 100% have to give a red situation, but still.
Rapinoe and the woman she stole the golden ball from last WC coming on.
And Rapinoe shanks a sitter off a Lavelle cross.
Thompson looks like she’s going to have a panic attack before coming on. Hope her nerves settle after she gets a couple touches.
A win is a win. Underperforming on GD is unlikely to come into play, but a Portugal win vs the Netherlands wouldn’t be ideal from the US perspective.
3-0 seems a bit of a disappointment, but honestly it could have been 8-0 a lot easier than it could have been 3-1.
Rapinoe looked pretty sloppy I thought.
First goal was absolutely world class.
Yeah, that pass from Morgan was pretty amazing.
Agree that Rapinoe didn’t look good at all – maybe she’s just not used to coming off the bench and needs more time to get into the groove. 3-0 was pretty disappointing.
I want to reiterate how bad that ref was. She missed the PK call and the VAR took forever, and it was really clearly a PK. And, I still don’t understand the non-offsides call on that goal – was it because that player wasn’t in the play? The goalie certainly thought she was.
England 1 0 Haiti
Not exactly convincing from England, and way off the standard of the Euros win last year. That said, Haiti deserve a lot of credit and were considerably better than my (very much ignorant) expectations. They really should have got a point out of that. Massive improvement required if England want to get anywhere near the final.
And England was lucky to get the PK for a handball with the fingertips that was totally unnecessary and to get the chance for a second shot when the Haitian goalie moved to soon from the goal line. But both calls were correct.
On the handball, I have no idea what the defender was thinking, it was completely unnecessary and as you say very lucky from England’s point of view that she did it.
I guess she didn’t think at all, it was a spontaneous reflex. Happens sometimes.
I thought that awarding the second PK was a bad call; not that the Haitian keeper didn’t move early, but that every keeper does the same thing and it’s never called.
I used to make a point to watch for that, and every keeper was coming off their line before the kick was made. That was a few years ago, though; probably before the video review. Is this something the officials have cracked down on in recent years, or did the Haitian keeper get busted for something the officials could call every time if they wanted to?
Yeah, the rule is older, but was rarely called. That totally changed with VAR. In a game with VAR it’s always called, that’s why you often see refs explaining this rule to the keepers explicitly before a PK, although they must’ve heard it a thousand times before.
The US goalie coming off the line in 1999 final vs China almost caused an international incident and officially ended our honeymoon (my wife’s Chinese, we got married three weeks before the final).
I think enforcement has been ramping up since then.
Yeah… England vs Haiti was just a totally different match than the other “David v Goliath” matches so far this WWC. USA vs Vietnam, Japan vs Zambia, etc. 1-0 may not sound SO different from 3-0 but it was absolutely night and day. Incredibly gutsy performance from Haiti.
In the 2005 UCL final Dudek cheated off his line massively on every PK and wasn’t called. Clamping down on this is a good thing.
So happy for Sophie Smith scoring the first two USA goals in the games and assisting the third. We’ve been fans of hers since she first started with Portland some years ago. I was immediately impressed with her hustle, speed and footwork, and told my wife that she was the one to watch. A joy to see her play.
Yeah, she’s fun to watch. I think she needs to pass a little more rather than try to get through a wall of players all by herself (he says, from the comfort of his easy chair).
When she launches downfield ahead of the passer, the timing is a beautiful thing to see, as the ball falls right in front of her. The defense is often helpless to defend it.
Last few days of matches have not been an advertisement for expanding the field to 32 teams, as it just emphasizes how many of the teams can’t compete with the big, uhh, girls… Germany 6-0 over Morocco and Brazil 4-0 over Panama were not exciting games.
There are a few group stage matches that could be real bangers:
USA vs Netherlands
Brazil vs France
Australia vs Canada
Japan vs Spain
But, honestly, there are probably still a lot of snoozers to come.
Not everyone of the favorites made it as easy against allegedly lesser teams as Germany and Brazil. France, Canada, England and the Netherlands all struggled.