One thing I like about women’s soccer is the sheer unpredictability. Whereas in men’s you always know who the upper dog and underdog is and the underdog doesn’t win all that often.
Well, I don’t know. This has been the first women’s WC where so many underdogs made the knock outs, usually the established names make it through. There have only been four different WC winners since 1991: USA(4), Germany(2), Norway(1) and Japan(1). In men’s football, the first real sensational winner was Germany in 1954 (yeah, that short after the war, and with Hungary, the “miracle team”, as an opponent, it was a big sensation), and there have been other unbelievable upsets like Greece winning the European Championship in 2004. And that’s not even counting upsets in individual matches. So I strongly contest your notion.
Or Denmark winning the Euros in 1992 having not even qualified. They only got into the tournament due to the break up of Yugoslavia.
Yeah, Denmark in 1992 too, I forgot about it.
I must admit I also assumed 6 points must be enough to qualify, but of course it’s not 100%. Though this does raise the question: has a team ever got 6 points but not qualified for the KO? The answer seems to be no, not in world cups, but in 1994 there were 2 groups with 3 teams all on 6 points - however all 6 qualified due to it being a 24 team tournament. And in 1982 (when it was 2 points for a win) there was a group in which a team got 2 wins and didn’t qualify.
I found a discussion on Reddit which asked the same question, and the answer is no, except for 1994, which you had already mentioned.
That discussion, however, did bring up the 2001 Confederations Cup, which had 8 teams, 2 groups of four, with two teams advancing from each group. In Group A, 3 teams went 2-0-1, but only two advanced, by virtue of better goal differential.
So it’s certainly possible.
Yeah, the highest you can get and not qualify is 6 and the lowest you can get and still qualify is 2.
#2 Germany and #17 South Korea are out, while #25 Colombia and #72 (!) Morocco are through.
Earlier in the group stage, Germany beat Morocco 6-0. But an upset loss to Colombia and today’s draw with South Korea has sent them back to Deutschland.
I imagine Morocco will get crushed in the next round. With Germany out(!), I imagine the path just got a lot easier for other top teams that are still in it.
What an odd Cup!
If Germany had managed a win today, it would’ve been the 6-point group we’ve been discussing. Alas.
Morocco gets 2 wins, and is still -4 goal differential.
To mix sports a bit, the 1987 Minnesota Twins (baseball) had a negative run differential–they were outscored by 20 runs, 786 scored to 806 given up–and won the World Series anyway. Strange stuff.
I think I’ll root for Morocco the rest of the way.
When they are bad they are very bad indeed but when they are good they are just barely adequate?
The “top” half of the knockout bracket looks stacked compared with the bottom half.
USA, SWE, ESP, NED, JPN & NOR, six of the top 12 ranked teams.
ENG, FRA, AUS are the only contenders in the bottom half. The rest are ranked 13, 25, 40, 43 and 72.
Either Colombia or Jamaica are going to be in the last 8.
You will find that “ranking” has little predictive power.
FIFA always weighs practice matches too heavy, at one point the top 10 for men’s teams was without France and Italy.
Six goals by Spain; five of them into the Swiss net, even.
Norway hangs around for a while, but Japan is just too good for them and wins comfortably.
Two things this tournament has had are upsets and bizarre own-goals. Italy had a ridiculous one (which ended up decisive), Spain had an even worse one (although similar), ended up not mattering at all.
Yeah, that’s what I was referring to.
The same player who kicked the own goal also scored for Spain. If she’d gotten a third, would that count as a hat trick?
What year was this? Italy is only borderline top 10 atm and haven’t qualified for the WC since 2010. And France had to cheat to get into the 2010 WC. Woudn’t shock me to see a reasonable ranking somewhere in there where they were both just outside the top 10.
FIFA’s men’s ranking used to be complete trash (the US was ranked 4th at one point in 2006 when nearly all US fans thought they’d go out in the group stage that WC). They’re better now, but ELO rankings are better still. I don’t follow women’s soccer enough to know if their rankings are good, Women’s ELO has both Japan and Norway outside the top 12 (13 and 14 respectively), but reasonably match up.