2015 Women's World Cup

Really well-taken goal from Fran Kirby for England. Leading 1-0 against Mexico, though it took a while.

The group will be very interesting should England win, thanks to Colombia beating France 2-0 earlier.

BartFargo wrote:I was impressed by the defensive play of Julie Johnston.  She seemed to be everywhere. Hopefully this doesn't sound too sexist but damn, she is nice looking too!

Thats my mom. Please dont talk about her like that again.

Not a good day for France in general.

The 'Group of Death' currently looks different than I would have expected. I thought more it would be USA - Sweden - Nigeria - Australia, but now it is USA (4pt) - Australia (3pt) - Sweden (2pt) - Nigeria (1pt).

Smilarly I wouldn't have expected the France group to stand at Columbia (4pt) - England (3pt) - France (3pt) - Mexico (1pt).

The next matches in this group will sure be interesting:
Mexico vs France and England vs Columbia

Could someone explain to me why, on the FIFA website, they have designated Japan as 1st place in Group C?  I can see why Brazil has been marked the winner of Group E.  It looks like if either Cameroon or Switzerland wins and Japan loses then Japan could be brought down to 2nd place by goals for/against points????    I must be missing something here . . .

Look at the knockout stage on this link:
http://www.fifa.com/womensworldcup/matches/index.html

I realize that Japan will most likely beat Ecuador but that is not a 100% certainty.

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ETA:  NEVER MIND.  Someone realized their error and fixed it on the FIFA site.

Is anyone else in the US disgusted with the Fox video quality (or rather, lack of) when the long field camera is used? The close-ups are OK. I can barely read the status in the upper left hand corner of the screen.

I get my stations via Dish Network so that may be part of the bad quality, although the Moncton Stadium video quality was much better.

Dnmac4 wrote:
It's F'd up.  

FIFA in a nutshell.

Germany vs Thailand just kicked off. We already had two nice opportunities, but one was saved by the Thai keeper and the other on the line by another player.

Norway already lead 1:0 against Côte d'Ivoire.

Melanie Leupolz scores the first goal in the 24th minute.

56.) 0:2 - Lena Petermann (assist by Bianca Schmidt)
58.) 0:3 - Lena Petermann (assist by Melanie Behringer)
73.) 0:4 - Sara Däbritz (assist by Lena Petermann)

FT - Thailand 0:4 Germany

The other match in the group ended

FT - Ivory Coast 1:3 Norway

https://i.imgur.com/w9dtIuI.gif

Time to bump the thread about whether Marta could've played at a men's league?

About Marta - dunno. She's good, but dunno if she could go against stronger male opponents as women have a different physiology and performance data. After all, you wouldn't put Serena Williams against a male tennis player either, even though she is really good in her own right.

Oh, and Canada just scored the 1:0 against Netherlands in the 10th minute.

What did I miss?  The New Zealand coach refused to shake the hand of the Chinese coach after the 2-2 tie.  I can understand being in a bit of shock but it seems awfully rude not shaking hands afterwards.  Is there some history I'm not aware of?

I can already tell this lines-woman is going to annoy me to no end.

This refereeing team though...

The matches that I saw (Switzerland - Cameroon) / and that I'm seeing (Australia - Sweden) today are not very amusing.

The German commentator is slating Sweden and Pia Sundhage big time (and rightfully so). You could virtually see her shaking her head when she said "If I were the coach, I would have taken this or the other player off right now [for the passes they played]".

Nigeria down to 10 players after the LB gets a second yellow. No idea why the ref didn't play advantage there as Leroux was back on her feet and had the ball in their box.

Hm. Maybe the ref remembered that in the last match a Nigerian player broke the jaw of one of the Australian players and thus she wanted to be stricter, to take no chances?


LOL, now the commentator said "I would love to go down to Pia Sundhage right now and interview her about the abysmal play of the Swedish team."

For all of Leroux's clear talent and physical prowess she can be incredibly frustrating with her decision making in and around the box at times.

Thought we would've struggled a bit more with Nigeria's pace and physical ability, but we did reasonably well and shackled them. With more technical ability, they probably would've hurt us a bit more. Poor first touches were a huge part of why they couldn't get a lot going.

As for the US, nothing spectacular and it didn't have to be. Did what needed to be done. Nice, solid shut out to win the group.

Current situation:

France 4-0 up against Mexico and on course to win the group.

England 2-0 up against Colombia and will finish second.

Colombia should still qualify from third.

As it stands, France will be playing Costa Rica/Spain/South Korea, England will play Norway and Colombia will play USA (I think).

We can beat Norway

South Korea come from behind to beat Spain 2-1 and go through as group runners-up. Spain and Costa Rica are both out.

So assuming I understand the format correctly, the round of 16 looks like this:

Germany vs Sweden
China vs Cameroon
Brazil vs Australia
France vs South Korea
Canada vs Switzerland
Norway vs England
USA vs Colombia
Japan vs Holland

Some very interesting match-ups there.

Germany - Sweden will be taxing. If our ladies don't drink some target water and stop being so utterly wasteful, they may well lose this.

Norway vs England should be quite a game, too, just as Canada vs Switzerland.

RealGunner wrote:We can beat Norway

Please

Pathetic finishing by Germany throughout this tournament.

EDIT: Yes Mittag! Goal!

By the way, Germany are playing against Sweden right now.

Germany: Angerer (c) - Maier, Krahn, Bartusiak, Kemme - Goeßling, Leupolz - Laudehr, Mittag, Popp - Sasic

Sweden: Lindahl - Berglund, Ilestedt, Fischer, Samuelsson - Sembrant, Seger (c) - Rubensson, Sjögran - Jakobsson, Schelin

24.) 1:0 - Anja Mittag (this is her 5th goal in the 4th match this World Cup)