Woman’s World Cup

I didn’t see a thread…

great first game home win against on paper a better side, cracking goal, missed penalty couple of great saves.

Corking goal, and a great match. Said it before, say it again – I enjoy women’s football loads more than men’s, way more free-flowing, far less theatrics. 🙂

Sad to be missing the start as abroad on hol but will hopefully catch some when back. Come on Lionesses!

Really annoys me how many mates say how much they love watching the womens matches and how great the atmosphere looks…..before descending into the usual tribal twattery about their regular mens teams.

Not convinced how far the Lionesses will go, a lot of last years squad retired or injured

good result but not a great game / performance. Finishing particularly looked quite poor, a few chances they won’t be able to squander against better opposition, and they got undone at the back a bit too.

I was gutted for the Haitian goalkeeper over the penalty retake, fractions of a second in it, and a great stop first time around.

Yeah it was a bit of a soft penalty too!

Quite worried about our defence – I know it’s Bright’s first (full) game back but we looked very shaky. Without Beth Mead and Leah Williamson I can see us struggling.

I do think Toone is a worthy successor to Kirby but we spent all match bypassing her altogether and pinging it straight out to the wings!

Fair play to Haiti though, they were nobody’s fools. Some great players there.

Testing

stonewall penalty, but a dumb one / way to give it away. Lord knows why she had her hands up like that.

Retake – sadly correct, she had clearly stepped off her line.

The defending goalkeeper must remain on the goal line, facing the kicker, between the goalposts until the ball is kicked. When the ball is kicked, the defending goalkeeper must have at least part of one foot touching, in line with, or behind, the goal line.

England look a lot sharper today. absolutely cracking goal!

Not the world cup I was expecting this to be about, I’ll move on….

on catch up, just seen the goal. Great strike!

That looked nasty 🙁

Good performance from England with another cracking goal from James !

And she was very unfortunate to have a goal disallowed for offside. The women’s game has come on so much in the last few years – you still see some errors you wouldn’t see in men’s football at higher levels, but they are certainly improving massively.

Watched the second half – some good stuff, some howlers, awful referee.

Watched the second half

Where? I went onto the BBC site to watch it and was surprised it wasn’t on there

It was on ITV. 🙂

5 minute highlights are now live on the BBC web site though

It was on ITV

Gah! Typical.

So group stages are done and quite a few big names have fallen or at least stumbled (and I’d include England in that list). Bring on the knockout stages – usa Sweden looks like the pick, but I bet nobody predicted we’d see Jamaica v columbia.

It’s been good so far – I think Sweden will beat USA. Germany were bad this morning! Who thought Columbia and Morocco would qualify from that group!

Well, this is rather under-whelming and I have no idea what Lauren James was thinking.

It’s not a great game is it! A shame that Lauren James did that, very silly. It’s very flat. Here’s hoping extra time brings the goal!! Nigeria have been very good though

We’ve looked a bit leggy and playing way too deep! Fingers crossed!!
RM.

Well, that was an almighty let-off :O It’s crazy that, for all of their possession, Nigeria have only actually had one effort on target.

This is really poor from England – we just can’t keep hold of the ball.

They’re tired, Very tired…

Penalties. Who’s going to hold their nerve?

Aaaaargh

Ignoring the first one, that’s a decent set of pens.

Nigeria have been robbed there. Like I care.

Phew!
RM.

How the hell we managed to pull that one off I will never know – thoroughly undeserved but still, it makes up (slightly) for the disappointment in the netball yesterday.

TBH I feel sorry for Nigeria – they were far more positive (though also seemingly far more physical from the amount of times Hemp got dumped on the ground). and Nigeria progressing would’ve made a better story than England scraping through. Expect Columbia and Jamaica will fancy their chances against us now.

Yup, good to get the result but very, very much against the run of play. Nigeria will be rightly gutted.

Expect Columbia and Jamaica will fancy their chances against us now.

I can’t see us playing that badly again TBH – in football, you often just need that bit of luck at times and we’ve come through a poor game with a result.

BTW any thoughts on the ‘Ref explains the VAR decision’ thing? So far it seems to be ‘Ref says what they’re doing but doesn’t say why’ which isn’t really clearing anything up. It’s not exactly progress for them to just say ‘having reviewed VAR, no penalty’, I thought they were meant to say something like ‘having reviewed VAR player X was off balance and falling before player Y made contact, so no penalty’.

I can’t see us playing that badly again TBH – in football, you often just need that bit of luck at times and we’ve come through a poor game with a result.

Hmmmm

I fear we lack a creative attacking spark, without Mead and Kirby.  It looked like Lauren James might be stepping up to that role. But she could be out for the rest of the tournament. Ella Toone could possibly do it? Although the team was kind of set up to bypass her in the first couple of games so she didn’t make much of an impact.  J-Nobbs?

Massive kudos to England to tough out a win. Nigeria fashioned 1 fairly lame shot on target, for an easy save, in the second half, yet no admiration for England’s defence 🤷‍♂️

Nigeria didn’t do enough to win. Then blew the shootout. England held on with 10 players for over 40 minutes, then won the shootout, that’s not nothing.

That last penalty was a cracker.

Foot like a traction engine!

Lauren James for the David Beckham Idiotic Sending Off award