2019 FIFA Women's World Cup

[The_Admiral]

2 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

Did some of the backups get playing time? I don't see why Alex Morgan needed to be in long enough to score 5 goals. 

 

Carli Lloyd came in as a sub and scored the 13th goal in stoppage time.

[MJWalker45]

9 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

Did some of the backups get playing time? I don't see why Alex Morgan needed to be in long enough to score 5 goals. 

Because they used all of the subs. I'd have to check to see if she had 3 before the last one was made, but if you're close to 3 you ain't coming out until you get it or the clock runs out. 

 

EDIT: Last sub was made at 69' with Morgan on 2 goals. She then scored at 74, 81 and 87 minutes. 

[Digby]

USA used up all subs by the 70th minute. You could argue that Pugh for Ertz was a gratuitously attacking substation at that point, but this USA squad has barely three actual centerbacks on it so what’s Jill Ellis supposed to do?

[The_Admiral]

You can't begrudge them the goal-scoring itself. Those are the rules, and not putting the ball in the net when you can compromises the integrity of the game worse than scoring does. But we all know when you have to leave yourself a little ceiling. If you say you simply have to embarrass your opponents in celebration because you may never score another World Cup goal again, aren't you admitting in large part that at this juncture, you're getting away with something?

[JTernup]

13 hours ago, the admiral said:

You can't begrudge them the goal-scoring itself. Those are the rules, and not putting the ball in the net when you can compromises the integrity of the game worse than scoring does. But we all know when you have to leave yourself a little ceiling. If you say you simply have to embarrass your opponents in celebration because you may never score another World Cup goal again, aren't you admitting in large part that at this juncture, you're getting away with something?

Exactly, the game play, substitutions and goals were all fine. They respected Thailand in that regard and played a WC match the way they should have. What it unnecessary is the celebrations from about goal 6 or 7 on. At that point you don't need to rub it in, play with class and win with class. We didn't do that tonight and it was honestly embarrassing for Thailand and us. Rapinoe's over the top celebration specifically stands out as making a mockery out of a game that was already a joke.

[UnclearInitial]

No one (or almost no one) criticizes the USWNT for scoring as many goals as they could. If there’s this kind of disparity in a World Cup, it’s FIFA’s fault that some teams participating are clearly various dimensions apart on what should be the best competition in the world. 

 

At the same time, watching the USWNT celebrate goals like that when they’re clearly not at the same level as Thailand was off putting. Germany beating Estonia 8-0 wasn’t a story because everyone involved understood the difference in stature between the two teams and after it stopped being a competitive game the Germans stopped celebrating what was  them doing their jobs more than a game with stakes in it, and same thing for the other blowouts posted.  I had never seen anyone celebrating that much for a goal that changed the margin from 8 to 9. Maybe it’s because all it takes is one player wanting to retaliate for studs to show up on ankles, but it’s regarded as bad form, and it’s kind of pathetic when it comes from the best team in the world celebrating goals against amateurs. It felt a lot more like showboating their vastly superior capabilities than genuine emotion at being up 12-0 instead of 11-0. And yes, if Brazil had done this against Cuba they likely also would have been criticized for it, Neymar gets called disrespectful and people justify going out of their way to hurt him when he does fancy tricks in games against Ligue 1 competition for crying out loud. 

[Still MIGHTY]

4 hours ago, the admiral said:

Hockey has even worse global inequity than soccer and women's hockey is orders of magnitude worse than men's. Same deal there: I'd hope no one on either side ends up showing up some woebegone team from Mongolia or whatever.

 

2019 IIHF World Championships: Switzerland def. Italy 9-0, Sweden def. Italy 8-0, Canada def. Britain 8-0, Sweden def. Norway 9-1, Denmark def. Britain 9-0, Russia def. Italy 10-0, Sweden def. Austria 9-1, Czech def. Italy 8-0, Canada def. Germany 8-1, Norway def. Italy 7-1, Slovakia def. Britain 7-1, Czech def. Austria 8-0.

 

2019 IIHF World Juniors: Canada def. Denmark 14-0, USA def. Kazakhstan 8-2, Slovakia def. Kazakhstan 11-2, Russia def. Slovakia 8-3.

 

2019 IIHF Women's World Championships: USA def. Switzerland 8-0, USA def. Russia 10-0, USA def. Russia 8-0 (Semifinal), Canada def. Russia 7-0 (3rd Place)

 

IIHF tiebreakers go head-to-head first, then goal differential.

 

---

 

Simply put, FIFA's first tiebreaker is goal differential. With that being the case, if given the opportunity, teams need to create the highest goal differential they can because, if it comes down to it, you don't want to be eliminated or at least sent to the harder side of the bracket simply because you felt bad about clobbering the opposing team.

 

The USWNT had only played Thailand once before in a 2016 friendly. This friendly ended as a 9-0 US win. The result was always going to be this lopsided.

 

The USWNT has only played Chile twice before, two games in late last year. USA won both games, 3-0 and 4-0. I'd expect around the same when they play next, another strong USWNT win but probably not as lopsided as the Thailand match.

 

Meanwhile, Sweden has given the USA fits over the last several years. I don't think the USWNT wants to lose any edge before taking them on.

 

I have no problem with how the US played the game today. Also to note with Alex Morgan's 5 goals, Carli Lloyd won the Golden Boot in the 2015 World Cup with 6 goals. So. Go ahead and pencil in Alex Morgan right now.

[MJWalker45]

After revisiting this, I'll say Rapinoe maybe should have reacted better. If she stopped at the twirling she may not have gotten so much vitriol. Doing a slide and the stanky leg was too much.  All the other goals were normal celebrations, and if you just tied the record for most goals in a game, you can set off a fireworks display and still not over celebrate. 

 

Someone asked about added time. It's always a minimum of added time that has to be played. With 3-0 going into the half, 2 minutes was the right amount. They actually should have played 7 minutes of added time based on 6 subs and 10 goals so they actually reduced the amount of time played. There's actually a formula for how much time gets added for subs and goals, usually 30 seconds apiece. 

[crashcarson15]

11 hours ago, Digby said:

Pia's not in charge of Sweden anymore though, right? Which makes me sad as I still love her to death.

 

 

I mostly agree with this take; that said, this is mostly on FIFA as the nature of the tournament at this point. Shouldn't have been expanded to 24 teams, frankly. At least not without FIFA doing something about developing the women's game for a change, because there are many half that many teams that should even be bothering with all this.

The biggest issue at play here probably isn't the 24-team World Cup; I think there's 24 teams in the world that could play at least somewhat respectably with the US. The issue is a combination of how World Cup slots are allocated and the continued fallout of North Korea's doping suspension from the 2015 World Cup.

 

On the latter, AFC gets five qualification slots, and broadly speaking, there are five good women's soccer countries in Asia — Australia, China PR, Japan, North Korea and South Korea. Normally would be no problem.

 

Key is that the AFC's qualification is routed through the Asian Cup, where the top 3 teams from the previous Asian Cup plus the hosts qualify automatically, and the other 4 spots are determined by a single-group qualifying. Teams are seeded for the qualification based on their results in the previous year's competition.

 

So Australia, China PR and Japan all qualified automatically for the Asian Cup, and South Korea was seeded in Pot 1 as would be normal. But since North Korea was banned from the 2014 version, they were placed in an unseeded pot and, of course, got drawn in the same group as South Korea. Only one could advance, guaranteeing that we would get an over-matched team into the World Cup.

 

--

 

On the former, though, the Women's World Cup absolutely has the issue where it's not at all possible for the top 24 teams in the world to qualify.

 

Think about it — the way the draw fell out, one of Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden was guaranteed to miss the tournament. That's the two finalists of EURO 2017, plus two long-time powers in the sport.

 

UEFA gets 9 qualifying spots for the tournament, despite having 15 of the 24 highest-ranked teams in the world by the FIFA rankings. Meanwhile, CONMEBOL has 1, but gets 2.5; CAF has 0, but gets 3; OFC has 1 and gets a full slot; CONCACAF has 2, but gets 3.5.

 

None of this is to say that they should change the allocation — like on the men's side, there's a need to balance getting good teams to the finals with growing the game — but I think it goes to show why they needed to go to 24 teams. In the 16-team World Cup, UEFA got 5.5 berths, plus the host's spot. There's a good chance that if the World Cup was still 16 teams, the Netherlands (a team that could genuinely win this thing) would still be sitting at home.

 

That's worse for the game than any blowouts that come from a 24-team tournament.

[Seadragon76]

I think you guys are kind of forgetting that Thailand isn't exactly a cupcake here. They made the last World Cup and even won a game against the Ivory Coast. Hell, Germany dropped a 10 spot on the Ivory Coast in the last World Cup.

 

Blowouts happen. It's how you do in the game after it that shows how good or bad they are.   

[crashcarson15]

38 minutes ago, Seadragon76 said:

I think you guys are kind of forgetting that Thailand isn't exactly a cupcake here. They made the last World Cup and even won a game against the Ivory Coast. Hell, Germany dropped a 10 spot on the Ivory Coast in the last World Cup.

 

Blowouts happen. It's how you do in the game after it that shows how good or bad they are.   

No, Thailand is very much a cupcake.

 

They likely only qualified for the 2015 World Cup because North Korea was banned, and likely only qualified for the 2019 World Cup because of the fall-out from North Korea being banned in the previous version.

 

Beating the worst team in the last World Cup 3-2 doesn't keep them from being a cupcake. Beating Chile this World Cup wouldn't keep them from being one, either.

[DEAD!]

I don't have a problem with the scoreline or the celebrations. I just hope the people who are to defending any of the actions of the USWNT in that game are NOT the same ones who say, "Act like you've been there before" 

[The_Admiral]

This seems like an opportunity for Americans who, under normal circumstances, would rigorously patrol our own boorishness on the world stage. Now they can wrap themselves in the flag, albeit more subtly, of course, and yell "YOU HATE US CUZ YOU AIN'T US" the way dumb guys always get to. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Another option is that it's just not worth getting upset over. They scored goals and celebrated doing so.

 

You can YASQUEEN or Hamilton it all you want, but those are kind of your issues you need to work through.

[UnclearInitial]

Seeing the griping about participation trophy culture and ‘if you don’t want to see them celebrate, get better and don’t let them score’ not coming from 50 year old HS football coaches was pretty bizarre 

[The_Admiral]

2 hours ago, DG_Now said:

You can YASQUEEN or Hamilton it all you want, but those are kind of your issues you need to work through.

 

MOD EDIT

[JG36]

This right here is exactly why there shouldn’t be a problem with the US-Thailand game. There wasn’t a problem with this

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_31–0_American_Samoa

 

Yes, this isn’t  joke. The Socceroos actually beat American Samoa by about double the score of the Pats-Rams Super Bowl.

[Digby]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

 

MOD EDIT

 

I mean you haven’t exactly been subtle with bringing up your cultural axes-to-grind lately.

[Digby]

I’ve been DVRing the big games (sponsored by YouTube Tv) and am catching up on France vs Norway and—

 

what a howler doesn’t feel right for this. Not sure I’ve seen an own goal that looks so much like a strong link-up between opponents?

 

 

[Kramerica Industries]

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

This seems like an opportunity for Americans who, under normal circumstances, would rigorously patrol our own boorishness on the world stage. Now they can wrap themselves in the flag, albeit more subtly, of course, and yell "YOU HATE US CUZ YOU AIN'T US" the way dumb guys always get to. 

 

Frankly, I'll fully admit that this is influenced by our political climate more than anything else (but there are other contributing factors as well), but I'm so tired of all the toxic nationalism and jingoism that goes into supporting your national team. I support the United States because, you know, I'm "supposed" to because, by nothing more than the accident of birth, I was born in this country and not someplace else like, for instance, my father was. National team competitions bring out the absolute worst in people. 

 

It's to the point now where I can't even remember the last time I "rooted" for a US team to win over anyone else. Maybe the 2014 Olympic hockey game against Russia? And you can spin an anti-Russian angle on that as easily as anything else. Any of these various hockey or soccer tournaments, frankly, let the best team win unless it's another country that I actively dislike. I find all the flag and eagle .gif's and various other assorted nonsense that comes out when a US team wins a tournament (or beats Canada in hockey) to be just as annoying as literally anything else anyway. 

 

The United States is the greatest country on earth. You know why? Because we can't be content in the "knowledge" of that; we have to beat it over everyone else's heads repeatedly even if no one asked and no one disputed that being the case or not. Based on that, I just can't imagine why the rest of the world hates this country.