European champion England beat the World Cup champion USWNT 2-1 at a sold-out Wembley at the end of a heavy week in the wake of the Yates Report on systemic abuse in the NWSL.
One reflection on the loss to England: France had beaten the U.S. in 2018 in a friendly. Flowing the quarterfinal match the French coach observed that playing the U.S. in a friendly is an entirely different animal than playing them in a game that counts!
Question for any refs out there: on the Rodman goal, the ball was originally played to Rodman and she dummied it through to Smith, which was arguably the best part of the whole sequence, although Rapinoe has a shout too. When the ball was played to Rodman, let’s assume Smith was offside but was not the intended recipient (and pretty clearly not in the play at the time of the pass to Rodman but I suppose one could debate that). At the time Rodman dummies it, Smith was clearly onside and it wasn’t close. Isn’t the relevant time for measuring whether Smith was onside the time of Rodman’s dummy? And if not, shouldn’t it be? Otherwise if Rodman touches it in any way, the play is onside but if she doesn’t it’s not. And that seems perverse to me. A dummy to me is a relevant action and if the attacking player is onside when she receives the dummied pass, there is absolutely no advantage whatsoever to the attacking team.
P.S. I don’t know whether the VAR official was German or English but the English suck at VAR and I’m going to take every opportunity to point that out. They fundamentally do not understand what “clear and obvious” means. Like worst of the worst. The phantom butt penalty? Clear and obvious and a great illustration of what VAR is for. The two VARs called against the US? Not remotely close to clear and obvious.
On the pitch this game served its purpose for the US: it showed what areas still need to be worked on. The midfield has been a problem for the last year but this is the first time they’ve played a truly world class opponent and thus, is the first time the midfield got badly exposed. Switching to a double pivot is the obvious move but it means either Horan is instructed to sit deeper and play alongside Sullivan, or it means dropping Horan from the XI entirely in favor of a player like Coffey. The latter is never going to happen under Vlatko so we have to hope for the former, though Horan’s instinct has always been to push up into the attack. She works well in a double pivot at Lyon because she’s playing alongside one of the best and most experienced holding mids in the world.
Canada is a very good team that in no way poses the same challenge in the midfield as an England or Germany. Canada’s strength is in their backline, goalkeeper, and overall defensive organization. Even in that Canada game, however, the best US chances came on the counter as opposed to playing from the back.
According to Soccer America England possessed the ball 61% of the time. This was clearly evidenced by their passing game. Players didn't stand around after passing the ball to a teammate, but instead moved to open position which gave the player with the ball an option. The US played their usual boot the ball game. England even attacked on defense meaning that their tackles took the ball away from the US
Disagree that the US played boot the ball, by which I assume you mean long ball, and possession does not win you games, goals do. The US played a counterattacking game. Which is fine and effective when you have faster, more athletic players. (Hello, GGG?). That game should have been 2-1 US had VAR not intervened and for all of their possession, England did not appear particularly threatening on goal. If I’m England, I walk out of there thinking, nice win on home soil but in no way do I view that as problematic for the US for next year’s World Cup. I was actually heartened by the performance of some young players and thought they’d do much worse than they did (especially with the Yates report coming out the same week).
One reflection on the loss to England: France had beaten the U.S. in 2018 in a friendly. Flowing the quarterfinal match the French coach observed that playing the U.S. in a friendly is an entirely different animal than playing them in a game that counts!
I agree 100%
That was true then. Now, the US team is in transistion, and don’t have the gritty eterans to do that.
I wonder if the USWNT has considered defaulting the match with Spain, in protest? Just refuse to play .
I hope they can just be players in ‘23, too. Time to root out all the Neanderthals, plus their supporters and enablers. For GOOD.
Thanks, Grant. Important piece.
Question for any refs out there: on the Rodman goal, the ball was originally played to Rodman and she dummied it through to Smith, which was arguably the best part of the whole sequence, although Rapinoe has a shout too. When the ball was played to Rodman, let’s assume Smith was offside but was not the intended recipient (and pretty clearly not in the play at the time of the pass to Rodman but I suppose one could debate that). At the time Rodman dummies it, Smith was clearly onside and it wasn’t close. Isn’t the relevant time for measuring whether Smith was onside the time of Rodman’s dummy? And if not, shouldn’t it be? Otherwise if Rodman touches it in any way, the play is onside but if she doesn’t it’s not. And that seems perverse to me. A dummy to me is a relevant action and if the attacking player is onside when she receives the dummied pass, there is absolutely no advantage whatsoever to the attacking team.
P.S. I don’t know whether the VAR official was German or English but the English suck at VAR and I’m going to take every opportunity to point that out. They fundamentally do not understand what “clear and obvious” means. Like worst of the worst. The phantom butt penalty? Clear and obvious and a great illustration of what VAR is for. The two VARs called against the US? Not remotely close to clear and obvious.
On the pitch this game served its purpose for the US: it showed what areas still need to be worked on. The midfield has been a problem for the last year but this is the first time they’ve played a truly world class opponent and thus, is the first time the midfield got badly exposed. Switching to a double pivot is the obvious move but it means either Horan is instructed to sit deeper and play alongside Sullivan, or it means dropping Horan from the XI entirely in favor of a player like Coffey. The latter is never going to happen under Vlatko so we have to hope for the former, though Horan’s instinct has always been to push up into the attack. She works well in a double pivot at Lyon because she’s playing alongside one of the best and most experienced holding mids in the world.
Caity, I have to disagree here. Canada is the Olympic champ, and certainly a truly world-class opponent.
Canada is a very good team that in no way poses the same challenge in the midfield as an England or Germany. Canada’s strength is in their backline, goalkeeper, and overall defensive organization. Even in that Canada game, however, the best US chances came on the counter as opposed to playing from the back.
According to Soccer America England possessed the ball 61% of the time. This was clearly evidenced by their passing game. Players didn't stand around after passing the ball to a teammate, but instead moved to open position which gave the player with the ball an option. The US played their usual boot the ball game. England even attacked on defense meaning that their tackles took the ball away from the US
Disagree that the US played boot the ball, by which I assume you mean long ball, and possession does not win you games, goals do. The US played a counterattacking game. Which is fine and effective when you have faster, more athletic players. (Hello, GGG?). That game should have been 2-1 US had VAR not intervened and for all of their possession, England did not appear particularly threatening on goal. If I’m England, I walk out of there thinking, nice win on home soil but in no way do I view that as problematic for the US for next year’s World Cup. I was actually heartened by the performance of some young players and thought they’d do much worse than they did (especially with the Yates report coming out the same week).