WWC19 | Final: USA v Netherlands

Saturday 8th June
Today's matches:
A: Norway vs Nigeria 8pm - BBC red button
B: Spain vs South Africa 5pm BBC red button
B: Germany vs China 2pm - BBC One

Hard to see any of these going against the seeding. The European game is getting stronger all the time - the leagues are getting better, a lot of the national team players are on full-time contracts. The African teams are struggling to survive at all.

China will send a decent team, but Germany are one of the tournament favourites, so even that game might look like last night's France/South Korea.

But who knows - football tournaments are seldom that simple. If they were, no one would need to actually play :smirk:
 
jojojo said:
Today's matches:
A: Norway vs Nigeria 2pm - BBC red button
B: Spain vs South Africa 5pm BBC red button
B: Germany vs China 8pm - BBC One

Hard to see any of these going against the seeding. The European game is getting stronger all the time - the leagues are getting better, a lot of the national team players are on full-time contracts. The African teams are struggling to survive at all.

China will send a decent team, but Germany are one of the tournament favourites, so even that game might look like last night's France/South Korea.

But who knows - football tournaments are seldom that simple. If they were, no one would need to actually play :smirk:
Click to expand...
Where did you get the schedules from? The sources where I checked had them in exactly the opposite order time wise.
 
Kasper said:
Where did you get the schedules from? The sources where I checked had them in exactly the opposite order time wise.
Click to expand...

Eek you're right. I picked it up from the BBC website a couple of weeks back - and I must have been recycling a long ago corrected typo ever since :lol:

I'll have to check the others now.

I've fixed the today's matches post now. Thanks
 
Classical Mechanic said:
Hmm, so we have England v Switzerland men's tomorrow at 2.00pm and England v Scotland ladies at 5.00pm tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Yes, UEFA put the third place playoff and the final either side of the England-Scotland game.

They've also scheduled this week's Euro qualifiers so that for a particular country the men and women don't play at the same time. So they've at least taken a crack at making sure the TV broadcasters aren't dealing with the worst sort of clash.
 
My take from watching my first full game of women's football: goalkeepers are tiny. They should make the goals smaller :D

Pretty good game though
 
giorno said:
My take from watching my first full game of women's football: goalkeepers are tiny. They should make the goals smaller :D

Pretty good game though
Click to expand...

Most people look tiny next to Renard :smirk: You're not alone in your thoughts though, the Chelsea (women's) manager was talking about the same thing a month or so back, but I don't think the Korean keeper was stopping those goals last night even if she was taller. I suspect we will see a fair few goalkeeping errors the next couple of weeks - but most will be just that, errors from poor coaching and inexperience.

The interesting thing is that the average height for (European/North American) women now is more or less what the average height for British men was when the original FA rules were written.

The trouble if they did now (literally) move the goalposts for women it could reduce opportunities to play. The top teams could afford the special kit and the hassle of changing the setup. Youth teams, lower league teams, amateur teams would all struggle to get pitches/stadia. I suspect some continents would struggle with it as well. Though I bet some of the Asian national teams would be quite pleased to see it, especially if it applied to the men's game as well :lol:
 
Can't believe it's four years since the last one :nervous: oh how time flies. France were the most entertaining last time but missed the first half last night and 2nd half was very flat, but it was all over as a contest already. Bit of a shame Thomis is no longer in the side.

The goals should logically be proportionately smaller, but there would be uproar if someone suggested it seriously.
 
Goal sizes for adults haven't changed since the 1880's. Since then, the average human height in industrialised countries has increased by upto 10 centimetres.

On average, women are shorter than men by almost 12 centimetres. So women goalkeepers are of similar stature to what the Victorians expected when setting out the rules.
 
Germany v China is a game I’m expecting to be a lot tighter than the bookies and pundits are expecting. China are organised and well drilled and Germany are an exceptional side, wouldn’t surprise me if it finished 2-1 to Germany.
 
Casey Stoney is at the Germany/China game for the BBC. Looks like a decent crowd - not packed like Paris but not bad.
 
Ref made a right mess there, she accidentally took out a China player, she probably would have got to the ball and started a counter.
 
Rolandofgilead said:
It’s been a very stop/start first half, lots of added time coming I suspect
Click to expand...

It has, and it's been a pretty scrappy game generally. Germany doing most of the attacking but China not letting them settle on the ball - Germany not really creating many good chances. If China do score on one of their occasional counter-attacks, Germany could find it really hard to get back in it.

And China, amazingly, don't score again :lol:
 
Well China were lacking any sort of quality, but Germany did a good job of making them look competitive in this match. Still, a 1-0 win in the end.
 
The fitness and sharpness of the German team shone through in the end, I think of China had taken one of their chances then it could have been different. Fair result though. Now we have an hour to kill.
 
Aw, I wanted to watch China-Germany but missed it. I'll have to keep a closer eye on the schedule.
 
Rolandofgilead said:
The fitness and sharpness of the German team shone through in the end, I think of China had taken one of their chances then it could have been different. Fair result though. Now we have an hour to kill.
Click to expand...

Yep, a Chinese goal could have changed the whole game - I think we'd have seen a better Germany and it could have been a really interesting contest if they had.
 
A narrow defeat to the group favourites not a bad result for China. If South Africa are the minnows that their ranking suggests, then Group B looks like being one of the groups from which three teams will qualify for the knockout stage,
 
I expect to see a lot of nerves out of South Africa here. Spain will pass fast and often. I’ll say 3-0.
 
Other than France, I haven’t seen another team be dominant so far. Early times I know.
 
South Africa are doing fine here. Spain with the possession but struggling to do anything substantial with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.