World Soccer

[ardilla secreta]

France looks strong. I'm seeing a France-Japan final with France walking away the winners...

I think the Netherlands beats Spain.

I think Japan beats the Swedes.

I think Australia rides the home crowd and beats France. I always root for the team playing France. It’s mental health problem at this point.

After today, I think Spain and the Penal Colony make it to the final. The place will be nuts when Australia hosts the mother country.
I think England beats Colombia.

Basically, I’m all in for England (which may doom them), and want to see an England v. Downunda semi.

Well, so far I’m completely wrong. As usual.

I'm happy that England made you right about that game.

Yup, the blind squirrel found a nut, maybe a couple. Who do you like in the semis?

I’ll go with England and Spain.

[ardilla secreta]

France looks strong. I'm seeing a France-Japan final with France walking away the winners...

I think the Netherlands beats Spain.

I think Japan beats the Swedes.

I think Australia rides the home crowd and beats France. I always root for the team playing France. It’s mental health problem at this point.


Basically, I’m all in for England (which may doom them), and want to see an England v. Downunda semi.

Well, so far I’m completely wrong. As usual.

I'm happy that England made you right about that game.

Yup, the blind squirrel found a nut, maybe a couple. Who do you like in the semis?

I’ll go with England and Spain.

After today, I think Spain and the Penal Colony make it to the final. The place will be nuts when Australia hosts the mother country.

[Brooklyn]

I wish they would try to show those games on USA prime time TV.


*****************


Watched today's season opener as Real Madrid defeated Ath Bilbao 2-0.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/66489759


Generally, the Euro game doesn't quite interest me as much as it did in the old days. But it was fun to watch just the same. As I think about it, I really miss the announcing combo of Derek Rae & Tommy Smyth as they always made the game appear more interesting than it actually was. Smyth was always a wild one but I thought he added much character to the broadcast.

[Matnum PI]

I’m guessing you’ve never seen France take PKs!

France... and Australia. I don't think I've ever seen so many misses. Though, yes, you are correct. The Aussies made one...

[Matnum PI]

After today, I think Spain and the Penal Colony make it to the final. The place will be nuts when Australia hosts the mother country.

I'm hoping for a Sweden-Aussie final...

[Seacoaster(1)]

After today, I think Spain and the Penal Colony make it to the final. The place will be nuts when Australia hosts the mother country.

I'm hoping for a Sweden-Aussie final...

This Spain-Sweden game is insane.

No goals for 87 minutes, then Spain scores, then Sweden levels it...and Spain scores off a corner a minute later. Spain to the final. Wow.

[Typical Lax Dad]

After today, I think Spain and the Penal Colony make it to the final. The place will be nuts when Australia hosts the mother country.

I'm hoping for a Sweden-Aussie final...

This Spain-Sweden game is insane.

No goals for 87 minutes, then Spain scores, then Sweden levels it...and Spain scores off a corner a minute later. Spain to the final. Wow.

I missed it! what an ending.

[FannOLax]

After Australia equalized, it would have been easy enough for the Lionesses to wilt or panic. However, they kept playing their game, upped their quality and ran out worthy 3-1 winners. Well done England!

[Seacoaster(1)]

After Australia equalized, it would have been easy enough for the Lionesses to wilt or panic. However, they kept playing their game, upped their quality and ran out worthy 3-1 winners. Well done England!

So, what do you think? Who hoists the cup?

[FannOLax]

I'd like it to be England, but I have not seen Spain and have no basis to make a prediction.

[Matnum PI]

I'd like it to be England, but I have not seen Spain and have no basis to make a prediction.

From what we've seen this tourney, two very evenly matched teams...

[Brooklyn]

Finale scheduled to start @ 5:00 AM Central.

Ugh! Dunno that I want to get up that early but will give it a try. Had it been for our girls I defo would have made it.


England vs Spain ~ should be quite a clash. Odds makers say it is even (for now). I understand British bad girl Lauren James will return after a two game ban for naughtiness.

[Brooklyn]

NWSL spearheaded women’s soccer growth. Now it’s stuck on the World Cup sidelines


https://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/s ... cup-parity


Shortly before NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman arrived at the Women’s World Cup in Australia, the U.S. was eliminated from the tournament. The metaphor was obvious: the NWSL, once home to the majority of the top players on the planet, and the U.S. national team, a four-time World Cup champion, are now both struggling to keep up.

In 2015, nearly 1 in 10 World Cup players came from the league. Four years ago, the percentage was even higher. This summer, however, England’s Women’s Super League surged past the NWSL, placing 94 of its women on World Cup rosters, accounting for nearly 13% of the players in the tournament. Seventy of those players were on teams that reached the round of 16, according to Sportico, and 40 made the semifinals, half of them playing for England.

Spain’s Liga F sent the second-most players to the tournament with 72, followed by the NWSL, which was a distant third despite placing a league-record 61 players on the 32 teams that started the tournament. With the U.S. team’s early exit in the round of 16, only three NWSL players reached the semifinals.

More former NWSL players advanced.



Australian captain Sam Kerr, the NWSL’s all-time leading scorer, now plays in England for Chelsea. England’s Rachel Daly, MVP of the 2020 NWSL Challenge Cup, plays for Aston Villa, while former Houston Dash teammates Lydia Williams and Clare Polkinghorne, both on the Australian team, play for clubs in England and Sweden, respectively. Mackenzie Arnold, who spent a season as a backup goalkeeper with the NWSL’s Chicago Red Stars, now starts in England for West Ham United, while Australian teammates Stephanie Elise-Catley, who played for three NWSL clubs, is now in England with Arsenal; former NWSL champion Alanna Kennedy plays for Manchester City; and Ellie Carpenter, once the youngest player in NWSL history, is with Lyon in France.

But if that’s the NWSL’s loss, it’s clearly global soccer’s gain. Especially since the rest of the world is following the NWSL blueprint, increasing investment in top-flight leagues and improving the level of play everywhere. This summer’s World Cup, the largest and most competitive in history, is proof of that.

Take the WSL as an example. After the last World Cup, Barclay’s bank paid $12.7 million to sponsor the league, a figure it doubled two years later with investments aimed at offering girls equal access to soccer in schools by 2024. Two years ago, the WSL also signed a three-year broadcast deal with Sky Sports and the BBC, which led to record revenues and an attendance jump of 173%.

The national team rewarded that support last summer by winning its first European championship, and then followed that up this summer with an unbeaten run to the World Cup semifinals.

A little more than a generation ago, girls were largely banned from playing organized soccer in England. Now major corporations there are lining up to sponsor them.


The women’s game may have made an even quicker assent in Spain. Although the country has had a top-flight women’s league since 1988, it wasn’t granted official professional status by the Spanish federation until 2020. Since then, it has grown to 16 teams, signed a five-year broadcast agreement with DAZA and banked about $80 million in media and commercial partnerships, according to league officials.

Barcelona Femení and the Spanish national team have been the chief beneficiaries, with Barcelona reaching the Champions League final in each of the last three seasons while Spain is in the World Cup semifinals just eight years after going winless in its tournament debut.

“We are very proud with the achievements of our women’s team, but this isn’t something that could happen overnight,” said Barcelona President Joan Laporta, whose club placed nine players on the World Cup roster, among them Alexis Putellas, the two-time reigning world player of the year, and Aitana Bonmatí, who has scored three times in the tournament.

“There has been an extraordinary and consistent work for years from a great group of professionals within the organization,” Laporta said. “You cannot improvise players like Alexia Putellas or Aitana Bonmatí and need to create the right structures and environment to ensure their talent could bloom, and then attract international talent like [England internationals] Keira Walsh or Lucy Bronze. This is what we have been working on as an institution for years, as a strategy that goes from soccer grassroots to the top professional level.”

Spain’s team is the most homogenous of the semifinalists with only one woman — former Barcelona forward Jennifer Hermoso, now with Mexico’s Pachuca — playing for a club outside Spain.


Other countries have begun making more modest investments in the women’s game, but have also been rewarded with huge benefits. In Japan, the focus has been on building a solid foundation at the grassroots level, where more than 30,000 girls have registered to play. The country’s 12-team domestic WE League — the initials stand for Women’s Empowerment — was launched in June 2020, three months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and although it has struggled to catch on, 14 of the 23 players on the Japanese team that made the World Cup quarterfinals came off WE rosters, among them Hinata Miyazawa, the tournament’s leading scorer with five goals, and Mina Tanaka, who is tied for the tournament lead with three assists.

But perhaps the clearest sign that the investment in women’s leagues is paying dividends isn’t in the number of players those domestic leagues produce for their country’s national teams, but rather how many they produce for other national teams, rivaling a decades-old trend in the men’s game. In last fall’s men’s World Cup, for example, the English Premier League supplied players for 26 of the 32 World Cup teams, one more than Spain’s La Liga.

The 12-team WSL has had a similar influence this summer, sending players to half the 32 World Cup teams, including three of the four semifinalists. The NWSL also had players on 16 World Cup teams, including two of the final four. But if the NWSL’s numbers have declined, the league’s influence has not. After all, it was the success of both the league and the U.S. national team that made investors in Europe and elsewhere realize that women’s soccer was worth supporting in the first place.

So what if the NWSL commissioner arrived late and the U.S. left the party early this year? Without them, there might not have been much worth celebrating.







The USA just isn't producing the type of talent it did in the past. Internationals are now producing better players. It is likelier that they are producing better coaches as well but this was not covered in the article. Another matter not addressed here is the problem of relying on colleges to produce international talent as compared to foreign countries that rely on sports academies. The NCAA only allows 20 hours of practice per week during the regular season, 8 hours of practice in the off season. By contrast, international sports academies have no such limitations. A soccer player (a hockey or basketball player or whatever) can get 50 hours of practice/training per week all year round - and get paid for their efforts. Small wonder why there are high school graduates playing in the NBA with more experience and better qualifications than college graduates from NCAA schools. This has been happening in MLB* and pro tennis for several decades and is happening today in soccer. We must dissolve the NCAA and rely on sports academies in order to improve our sports.








* The Dominican Republic and Venezuela has continued to produce an extraordinary amount of players every years. They graduate from baseball academies speaking better English than you do, play baseball better than anyone else, and know how to handle their finances like experts. That's what we need for all sports in the USA.

[FannOLax]

NWSL spearheaded women’s soccer growth. Now it’s stuck on the World Cup sidelines


https://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/s ... cup-parity


Shortly before NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman arrived at the Women’s World Cup in Australia, the U.S. was eliminated from the tournament. The metaphor was obvious: the NWSL, once home to the majority of the top players on the planet, and the U.S. national team, a four-time World Cup champion, are now both struggling to keep up.

In 2015, nearly 1 in 10 World Cup players came from the league. Four years ago, the percentage was even higher. This summer, however, England’s Women’s Super League surged past the NWSL, placing 94 of its women on World Cup rosters, accounting for nearly 13% of the players in the tournament. Seventy of those players were on teams that reached the round of 16, according to Sportico, and 40 made the semifinals, half of them playing for England.

Spain’s Liga F sent the second-most players to the tournament with 72, followed by the NWSL, which was a distant third despite placing a league-record 61 players on the 32 teams that started the tournament. With the U.S. team’s early exit in the round of 16, only three NWSL players reached the semifinals.
...

Australian captain Sam Kerr, the NWSL’s all-time leading scorer, now plays in England for Chelsea. England’s Rachel Daly, MVP of the 2020 NWSL Challenge Cup, plays for Aston Villa, while former Houston Dash teammates Lydia Williams and Clare Polkinghorne, both on the Australian team, play for clubs in England and Sweden, respectively. Mackenzie Arnold, who spent a season as a backup goalkeeper with the NWSL’s Chicago Red Stars, now starts in England for West Ham United, while Australian teammates Stephanie Elise-Catley, who played for three NWSL clubs, is now in England with Arsenal; former NWSL champion Alanna Kennedy plays for Manchester City; and Ellie Carpenter, once the youngest player in NWSL history, is with Lyon in France.

England's Women’s Super League is built on the solid foundation developed by the men's teams over the course of 150-some years; Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur etc. all now have women's teams (unlike 40 years ago, when England's top clubs didn't have women's teams). This gives England's women an amazing physical infrastructure, and a natural fan-base affiliation that the U.S. women lack. Mexican women's soccer is structured pretty much like England's. Will the Mexican women's national team be overtaking the US women's team in the not-so-distant future?

[Brooklyn]

England's Women’s Super League is built on the solid foundation developed by the men's teams over the course of 150-some years; Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur etc. all now have women's teams (unlike 40 years ago, when England's top clubs didn't have women's teams). This gives England's women an amazing physical infrastructure, and a natural fan-base affiliation that the U.S. women lack. Mexican women's soccer is structured pretty much like England's. Will the Mexican women's national team be overtaking the US women's team in the not-so-distant future?

EPL always signed players from the time they are in the early teens. They send them to sports academies and they never see the inside of a high school, let alone a college. Brits, like so many Continentals and internationals, know that college (for the most part) is just a waste of time and money. It has destroyed the career potential of more pro athletic prospects than it has created. Youths in those academies eat, sleep, and drink pro soccer from the time they are teens 24/7/365. Meantime our soccer players have far less practice/learning time because we stupidly send them to college. This is why our men's team gets beaten so easily overseas. Soon this is what is going to happen to our women's team as well.


Re "unlike 40 years ago, when England's top clubs didn't have women's teams" - this explains why our women's team won for so many years. Most countries throughout the world did not have girls/womens soccer or any other form of sports unlike us. All they had was clubs, not varsity sports. Small wonder why we won so readily. But once they adopted the academy level as they did with men's soccer and other sports, they have emerged as soccer super powers. And they will snowball in size and strength. Watch for it in soccer, basketball, and in all other sports.

[FannOLax]

With the Women's World Cup over, European leagues re-take center stage. In England, I find it difficult to see realistic possibilities for any team to de-throne Manchester City. Newcastle? Liverpool? Arsenal get to show their credentials today in South London against Crystal Palace. Chelsea's problems are far from solved. West Ham are fresh off winning a European trophy and dispatched Chelsea, but it's hard to see the Hammers as serious title contenders. Brighton? The Seagulls have rescntly sold many players for big fees, yet are top of the table. Hmmm, shades of Leicester 2016? Now that Kane has left in search of a trophy or three, can Spurs win something without him? After the way Tottenham won this weekend, it is harder still to imagine Manchester United challenging at the top of the League. However, the season is young, and in theory at least, anything can happen.

[ardilla secreta]

England's Women’s Super League is built on the solid foundation developed by the men's teams over the course of 150-some years; Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur etc. all now have women's teams (unlike 40 years ago, when England's top clubs didn't have women's teams). This gives England's women an amazing physical infrastructure, and a natural fan-base affiliation that the U.S. women lack. Mexican women's soccer is structured pretty much like England's. Will the Mexican women's national team be overtaking the US women's team in the not-so-distant future?

EPL always signed players from the time they are in the early teens. They send them to sports academies and they never see the inside of a high school, let alone a college. Brits, like so many Continentals and internationals, know that college (for the most part) is just a waste of time and money. It has destroyed the career potential of more pro athletic prospects than it has created. Youths in those academies eat, sleep, and drink pro soccer from the time they are teens 24/7/365. Meantime our soccer players have far less practice/learning time because we stupidly send them to college. This is why our men's team gets beaten so easily overseas. Soon this is what is going to happen to our women's team as well.


Re "unlike 40 years ago, when England's top clubs didn't have women's teams" - this explains why our women's team won for so many years. Most countries throughout the world did not have girls/womens soccer or any other form of sports unlike us. All they had was clubs, not varsity sports. Small wonder why we won so readily. But once they adopted the academy level as they did with men's soccer and other sports, they have emerged as soccer super powers. And they will snowball in size and strength. Watch for it in soccer, basketball, and in all other sports.

The USA developing athletes through the college system not only eliminates a lot of talent, but makes it likely that the USWNT has seen their best years as other countries develop theirs women’s game.

[Typical Lax Dad]

England's Women’s Super League is built on the solid foundation developed by the men's teams over the course of 150-some years; Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur etc. all now have women's teams (unlike 40 years ago, when England's top clubs didn't have women's teams). This gives England's women an amazing physical infrastructure, and a natural fan-base affiliation that the U.S. women lack. Mexican women's soccer is structured pretty much like England's. Will the Mexican women's national team be overtaking the US women's team in the not-so-distant future?

EPL always signed players from the time they are in the early teens. They send them to sports academies and they never see the inside of a high school, let alone a college. Brits, like so many Continentals and internationals, know that college (for the most part) is just a waste of time and money. It has destroyed the career potential of more pro athletic prospects than it has created. Youths in those academies eat, sleep, and drink pro soccer from the time they are teens 24/7/365. Meantime our soccer players have far less practice/learning time because we stupidly send them to college. This is why our men's team gets beaten so easily overseas. Soon this is what is going to happen to our women's team as well.


Re "unlike 40 years ago, when England's top clubs didn't have women's teams" - this explains why our women's team won for so many years. Most countries throughout the world did not have girls/womens soccer or any other form of sports unlike us. All they had was clubs, not varsity sports. Small wonder why we won so readily. But once they adopted the academy level as they did with men's soccer and other sports, they have emerged as soccer super powers. And they will snowball in size and strength. Watch for it in soccer, basketball, and in all other sports.

The USA developing athletes through the college system not only eliminates a lot of talent, but makes it likely that the USWNT has seen their best years as other countries develop theirs women’s game.

It is a paucity of coaching and quality training in this country. USWNT will be back but the competition is rising. The amazing thing about Spain is that 12 of their 15 national team players were kicked off the team.

[FannOLax]

It is a paucity of coaching and quality training in this country. USWNT will be back but the competition is rising. The amazing thing about Spain is that 12 of their 15 national team players were kicked off the team.

Yes, Spain' really overcame a lot of adversity to win; "amazing" is right!

[Brooklyn]

The USA developing athletes through the college system not only eliminates a lot of talent, but makes it likely that the USWNT has seen their best years as other countries develop theirs women’s game.

100% spot on.