Women’s World Cup Has Begun

[btfc]

Upsets already:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/07/19/footb...index.html

[graylocks]

Available on Peacock if you've cut the cord. In spanish, though which oddly i find makes me pay attention to the game more since I can't rely on the commentators.

I may also do back-to-back YouTube TV trials with my son.

[hal]

graylocks wrote:
Available on Peacock if you've cut the cord. In spanish, though which oddly i find makes me pay attention to the game more since I can't rely on the commentators.

I may also do back-to-back YouTube TV trials with my son.

you don't need to understand the language to watch soccer (and hockey) - everything you need to know is in the tone of the voice. As the action moves toward a scoring possibility, the voice gets more stressed - when a shot is taken, things get crazy and you can't possibly miss hearing a goal being scored.

[graylocks]

hal wrote:
[quote=graylocks]
Available on Peacock if you've cut the cord. In spanish, though which oddly i find makes me pay attention to the game more since I can't rely on the commentators.

I may also do back-to-back YouTube TV trials with my son.

you don't need to understand the language to watch soccer (and hockey) - everything you need to know is in the tone of the voice. As the action moves toward a scoring possibility, the voice gets more stressed - when a shot is taken, things get crazy and you can't possibly miss hearing a goal being scored.
i know but it's sometimes helpful to know what penalty was called and why.

[pRICE cUBE]

Women’s World Cup Has Begun

To me, the current World Cup is the one worth watching.

[Ca Bob]

pRICE cUBE wrote:
Women’s World Cup Has Begun

To me, the current World Cup is the one worth watching.

If you are American born, this is definitely the way. In the world's most popular sport, the American women have dominated in a way that is close to miraculous. And in the same way that male American players feel that they are established when they get some seasoning in European soccer, the rest of the world has to look at American collegiate soccer, and many of them come here. The woman who scored the winning goal for New Zealand played at Tennessee, and some other player was introduced as the captain of Stanford's team.

Anyway, I find the women's World Cup games exciting not only because there is terrific sport, but because there is so much on the line for us.

[Ca Bob]

Review of this evening's game against Viet Nam.

First of all, get all those thoughts about "U.S. against Viet Nam" off your chests and over with. It did sound a little weird, hearing it from the announcers, those of us who grew up watching Walter Cronkite on the news.

Second: As commenter Alexi Lalas pointed out, this was hardly more than a training exercise for the US, considering the level of the opponents. To me, the US seemed fairly desultory in their attack in the first half, and only near the end of the game did they put on the high-energy, aggressive attack that they have been able to do in the past. And this was after Rapinoe and Lavell had been subbed in. Lavell seems to still have the speed. Rapinoe kind of stood around when they were on offense, but showed that she still is one of the best in making passes to set up plays.

I think that Wednesday's game against the Netherlands will tell us what this team is made of. Can they continue to play dominating defense? (The US team has not given up a goal in two straight games in World Cup play, including this one and the championship final against Netherlands 4 years ago. In that World Cup, the US gave up 3 goals in 7 games, including shutting out every team in the opening 3 game round robin, and 1 goal each from 3 teams leading to the shutout in the final. Can they play up to this level again? My view is that a lot of defense is just individual hustle from people with speed and talent, so by that standard they should do OK. But at this level, there is a little more in terms of how different players coordinate what they do.

So a lot comes down to the ability of the forwards to coordinate attacks with each other, and with the strikers actually getting the ball inside the net, compared to bouncing it off the top of the goal, as they did at least a couple of times. And they need to get penalty kicks done.

Overall, a 3-0 victory looks good, but as the commenter said, it could and should have been more like 10 goals, and the fault was in that final touch.

Anyway, time to buy a lime and a bottle of Corona.

[rich in distress]

Great review CB, it helps set up a good perspective.
Thanks!

[pRICE cUBE]

For the consistent attack the US put on, Vietnam defense held up pretty well for a first time WC team.

[Ca Bob]

I don't know how you do this, but I wonder if a women's World Cup thread could be created as a sticky at the top. Anybody have the interest and the influence?