USWNT coach resigns.
Anyone thinking that Weigman would drop a step on the ladder (and possibly lower pay) to coach the US doesn’t know shit. She is next in line for Southgate’s job.
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Another interesting article about which leagues are sending W players to the WWC:
In case you need a subscription:
Summary
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.
One thing of note that is not noted in this article: The Euro leagues – England, France, Spain, at least – all have Pro/Rel. It induces more investment in order to stay up in the league. NWSL? Owners just sit back and reel in the cash. No need to try to be too much better. Besides, salary cap. Can’t compete against the other leagues of the world.
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That would be awesome to have a woman coach the men’s side. It’s very rare in sports. I remember the tennis player Andy Murray had Amelie Mauresmo as a coach for a while. His mother also coached him for a long time.
My wife doesn’t think it would be a good thing, as there is only one female coach for the last 8 teams in the world cup, and it would be a shame to lose her to the men’s. I thought that if a women succeeds in the men’s game, it will be good for female coaches everywhere.
Most men’s and women’s team sports are so different due to the differences in athleticism, that I do not think a “women’s coach” can simply move over and become a “men’s coach”. Men’s and women’s soccer are simply different sports. So are men’s and women’s basketball. Perhaps I overstate the difficulty because because a head coach might simply be the “leader” and have the team of coaches “coach”.
I think it is easier for a men’s coach to switch to women’s coach, but it is still not seamless.
Well, someone will be the first.
Pretty sure they’re the same sport.
Kinda ruined your argument there.
Men are just better coaches.
And male players are simply not willing to be led by a woman.
That is the argument.
Haha. That may be your argument. I can speak for myself.
ESPN’s talking (writing?) heads on the possible replacements:
Based on this list, Laura Harvey seems most likely. I’m guessing there might have been more unspoken issues with Gustavsson and the team that took him out in 2019, but maybe those players are gone. Weigman is as likely as Pep to take the job.
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Didn’t know that there was an attempt to remove Ellis before 2019. Just reading about the Spanish and French (pre-Renard) teams, who had also have/had widely-disliked managers.
@dr_t_non-fan, I did find this in an article about the “unintentional handball” call.
The new handball law led to referee Melissa Borjas awarding the penalty because Saki Kumagai’s hand blocked Vivianne Miedema’s shot, even though there was no clear intention.
I didn’t read any further or look at any video of the call.
OK, so I’ll chalk this up as muddy words to describe an action that already has clear words to describe it. Because, as written, it would could be inferred that the referee made a mistake. Cuz, that’s what #Murica prefers in their sports.
She definitely had her arms out (1:32) but given that the shooter was so close, didn’t have time to bring them in. It did look sloppy to have her arms flailing about like that though.
Defenders will often hold their hands together behind their back if they’re within the box, but that’s normally when the shooter is further away.
Interestingly, Japan also gave away a handball in the box when they were knocked out this time.
To-Do List for USWNT:
#3 is key, and long overdue:
Step 3: Retool the USWNT roster (and cut players without sentiment, as hard as it is)
For the players with outsized reputations, the next coach must shed any reverence for the past. That job is made a bit easier by the retirement of Megan Rapinoe – she was sensational for the USWNT for about a decade but, at this World Cup, didn’t look like the world-class player she once was. The USWNT needs to invest in finding its next great game-changing winger instead of hoping it can still be Rapinoe.
Other evaluations of veterans won’t be as easy. Alex Morgan has been the face of the USWNT for years now, but she also had a very rough World Cup. There needs to be a serious examination about whether she wasn’t put in the right position to succeed or whether she just isn’t at the level to contribute to the USWNT.
This is the sort of tough decision-making that must happen with every player before settling on an Olympic squad.
I also think that the USWNT didn’t have the leaders it needed to have fun in the off-times. Perhaps there was some edict from the top that said “no fun allowed.” Or that the generation gap resulted in smaller groups (perhaps groups of one?) having their own fun instead of as a team.
Reality may be that the Europeans are going to dominate women’s soccer for awhile regardless of what short term actions the US takes? Certainly the US will never be as dominant as it was but, as I have said before, I think it is healthier for the game that it is now well-supported and competitive in many countries.
Thought that Spain was going to be out early because some of their players (allegedly best in the world at their positions) opted not to play. Turns out that the ones who wanted to play don’t have the issues that those opt-out players had. And, they’re pretty good.
Geez, these players hate their coach.
USA! USA!
Final for Tori Penso, husband of another FIFA-level referee and mother to three daughters.
Two assistants are also USA referees.
I don’t know if I will manage to get up early enough for a live start tomorrow. Might DVR and just start watching when I wake up. Should be easy enough to avoid spoilers if I do that. Of course feel free to spoil away in this thread. Nobody avoiding spoilers should look in this thread IMO.
Spoiler:
Summary
What a nearly complete dissection of England today.
USWNT should have made sure that no other macho-first countries allowed women’s soccer.
Gonna be difficult, with the Owner-First American league, to find and develop top talent.
Honestly, between the non-stop talker on the Fox broadcast, and the non-stop Spanish talkers on the Leagues Cup match… toss-up. I hate them both. Sorry, but there is just not enough going on in the game that you have to make sure there is never a silent moment. You know, the fans in the stands make noise, too. Why drown them out?