2023 WWC - The Road to the Final

 Greetings, gentle readers.

So we've reached the weekend of the Final, and what sort of retrospective can we create from the dozens of disparate narratives woven through the tapestry of this event?  To lead off, I suppose I should say that I've finally been convinced by the English team.  To steal a term from Robert Heinlein, I finally grok their style of play.  At the start of the tournament, I wasn't convinced that they had a style.  They had athleticism, they had a grim professional attitude, and they generally didn't fall into the "ball-watching-at-corner-kicks" category into which so many other teams could be lumped.  But then I noticed the play of Rachel Daly, and suddenly a number of things fell into place.

Inadequately trained or drilled teams tend to stare at the flight of corner kicks as though they had a Fox colour-comet-tail behind them.

Danger From The Deep

The Daly Show

In the semi-final against Australia, I finally noticed the same thing that initially endeared me to the Swiss team:  a player who could make an accurate 50 meter pass to clear the ball from her defensive third, to unlock a defensive offside trap, or to switch play to an open runner in space.  Luana Bühler was that kind of quarterback for Switzerland before she was injured and unable to contribute further to her team's cause.  The player who best executes those technical manoeuvres for England is Rachel Daly, a striker with Aston Villa but a left-back for her country.  Her defensive nous made me wonder why she would ever play in a forward position, since her tackling and positional play complement her vision and distribution in a way reminiscent of Philipp Lahm, the legendary German full-back.

Now that I had discovered England's deep-lying playmaking passmaster, I was able to sort the rest of the team out into the component parts of a successful team machine.

Towers of Power and Lighthouses

Another common element of successful teams at this year's WWC is the commanding centre-back.  In defence, that player coordinates the back line and the offside trap it creates; marshals personnel to outnumber rushing and overlapping attacks; organizes formations and structures to combat set plays; and perhaps most saliently, tends to win headers and effect clearances from dangerous areas.  This "Tower of Power" player acts as an extension of the goalkeeper and acts as a fortress, keeping the ball away from the 19-yard box and the goal line.

When their team has possession of the ball in the opposition half, Towers of Power become Lighthouses.  Because they are generally taller and/or have greater vertical leaps than their teammates, they can act as focus points and targets for crosses, corners, free-kicks, from which they can produce headers on net, hold up the ball and distribute it to available strikers, and nod or flick the ball into spaces with more potential.

Wendie Renard standing tall

The obvious example of this type of player is Wendie Renard of France.  At 6-foot-2, she stands well above most women players, and her skill using her head to control the ball is well recognized.  The England team has Millie Bright.  Although only 5-foot-10, her physicality and presence make her the focus of almost all English set plays, and the core of their defensive line.  A player of this sort to watch in the third-place playoff game would be Sweden's Amanda Ilestedt, who already has four goals in this tournament and is still in contention for the golden boot, despite being a defender.

The Mazy Dribblers

There was an episode of Ted Lasso in which the players discover that all of their passing lanes are closed down by a defensive system focused on interceptions.  The solution is obvious — dribble the ball directly at the defenders that are attempting to anticipate the passes.  There are some players (usually midfielders) who make your heart leap when they receive and turn with the ball. 

Another costly suspension

Sweden's Fridolina Rolfö, Switzerland's Ramona Bachmann, and Holland's Daniëlle van de Donk are tremendous examples of this type of player.  The last of those three was suspended for the game in which the Netherlands was eliminated, and her absence was tangible.  

When the tournament began, I didn't recognize this type of player in the England squad, but by the time that they played Australia in the semi-finals, it became clear to me that Lauren Hemp had assumed that role.  Perhaps it took the suspension of Lauren James after her red card against Nigeria in the round of 16 for Hemp to elevate her game and begin to accelerate into space with the ball.

And the throbbing, stinging pain in my arm and hand has announced that it is time for me to take another break.  I shall endeavour to try and conclude my summarizing remarks on the tournament prior to the third-place playoff game, but no promises can confidently be made.

Until the next time I am fit to type, I bid a good night to England and the colonies.

Cheers.

2023 WWC - The End of the Semi-Finals

 Greetings gentle readers.

And so the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup has finally resolved itself into its final weekend, with Sweden and hosts Australia facing off for the third-place spot on Saturday 19 August while England and Spain will clash in the final showdown on the following day.  Or night, depending on your time zone.

In deference to my dysfunctional digits, I shall attempt to wrap up my observations to this point, cap some of the narratives within the competition, and set up a final conclusion.

Who Prepares Wins

As per previous comments, one of, if not THE critical features of successful teams in this competition is the management and coaching staff.  Sweden's Peter Gerhardsson and England's Sarina Wiegman are notable in the way in which they juggled and rotated their squads in order to deal with injuries.  Australia's Tony Gustavsson spent the entire tournament trying to evaluate how much playing time he could get from superstar strikers Sam Kerr and Mary Fowler, the former suffering from a calf injury and the latter recovering from a concussion suffered before the first game of the tournament.

In addition to managing the medical mishaps of their teams, the coaching staff of teams are responsible for tactical systems and training regimens.  When I first saw Brazil's now legendary Marta play as a precocious young 16-year-old, her team were vanquished at the semi-final stage of the Women's Under-19 World Championship.  As I told my father at the time, one team practiced penalty shots while the other team evidently did not.  Gary Lineker's quotation could apply equally to that tournament as it did when he spoke about England's record in the 1990 World Cup and the 1996 European Championships.

Stuck a Feather in Her Cap and Called it Macaroni

One of the most notable results of the Round of 16 led to much gleeful celebration around the world, particularly in the United States.  When Sweden defeated the United States Women's National Team in a penalty shootout to eliminate the Americans from the competition, there was much rejoicing.  As Lineth Beerensteyn of the Netherlands said,

"From the start of the tournament, they had really big mouths and were already talking about the final. I was thinking you first have to show it on the pitch before you talk [big]," Beerensteyn said. "I'm not being rude in that way, I still have a lot of respect for them, but now they're out of the tournament, and for me, it's a relief, and for them, it's something they will have to take with them in the future."

Many American spectators did not fault arrogance and overweening pride for the failure of the two-time defending champions to retain their title.  In fact, live online comments seemed to indicate that there was a sizable viewership on Fox who were awake at 3 AM EST specifically to hatewatch the USWNT and cheer on the Swedes.  Television ratings and trends are discussed in THIS YouTube video.

In addition to those who despised the team for a series of mediocre and disappointing performances, there were those (like Megyn Kelly) who interpreted the team's actions during the national anthem and press conferences to be non-patriotic and possibly antithetical to the American national identity as a whole.  Players like Megan Rapinoe in particular were pilloried for behaving as social justice activists first and sports players second.  The underwhelming exit of the 2015 and 2019 World Cup winners on penalty kicks seemed to satisfy domestic fans who were tired of seeing their national representatives outworked, out-thought, and humiliated while enduring the accompanying self-righteous pontifications on TikTok, Instagram, and other online social media.

Former USWNT stars such as Carli Lloyd criticized the dethroned team as being disrespectful and entitled, and implied that the failure of the coaching and management staff to address the negative elements of the locker room culture was a primary cause for the earliest ever exit of the team from the Women's World Cup.

To Be Continued

And my failing extremities are causing me to abbreviate this session.  I shall return ere long.  Until then,

Good night England and the colonies. 

2023 WWC - The End of the Group Phase

 Greetings, gentle readers.

So what we find is this:  the group phase has crashed to its final conclusion and Germany, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Canada, and Italy have all been sent home.  Some rejoice at this development.  As one commentator remarked during the Germany v. South Korea match, "people love underdogs."  Certainly the Koreans do, particularly when barbecued and slathered in gochujang sauce.  In an echo of one of my earlier articles, people are joyfully proclaiming an increase in global parity and equality of sporting quality across the globe.  I draw a different conclusion.

Call the Governor

Sports change over time.  This is self-evidently true, given the constant tweaking and changing of the rules.  The National Hockey League has changed the number of games in the season, removed the two-line offside rule, and fiddled with the enforcement of offsetting, cranial injury, stick-related, and instigator penalties.  In women's football, the rules around Video Assisted Review, concussion protocols, substitutions, and injury time added-on to each half of football played, in addition to other minor tweaks and changes in enforcement emphasis.

Retired NHL player Sean Avery has a goaltender
interference rule named after him.

But it's not just the rules that change as time goes by.  Athletes are starting to get tracked or streamed into their particular sport or endeavour at earlier ages, and begin dietary and physical conditioning contemporaneously.  As more and more girls become involved in sports at a grassroots level, the overall population of girls that populate the overall talent pool increases, creating larger quantities of elite-level professionals at the adult end of the athletic career path. The practical upshot is that players in the international level are bigger, stronger, faster, and with greater stamina than they were twenty or even ten years ago.

The practical upshot is that the responsibility for analyzing the development of the game and translating the patterns or growth and development into strategic and tactical decisions falls solidly on the management and coaching teams.  The success and failure of teams at this year's Women's World Cup can be directly linked to decisions made by the managers of each team.  I'm going to try and trace some of the vectors through which managers influence the performance of their teams for as long as my dysfunctional limbs will allow.

The Squad Mod

An international team manager's first responsibility is to form a squad.  The starting team is one goalkeeper and ten "outfield" players, but the training squad is usually around three dozen players from whom the team is selected.  During as long a time as possible, considering professional league schedules and global travel considerations, that group is trained, drilled, taught, and evaluated before being trimmed down to a tournament squad size.  In the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, each country is allowed to bring a squad consisting of 23 players.  So the manager needs to gather as many of his/her country's best players as possible, assess their ability to play with one another and within a tactical system, select the final squad, and then accept the responsibility for the performance of that final selection.

(Wo-)Man Management

Throughout the entire training and preparation process, a manager is expected to inculcate a philosophy to the players that should not only encompass the players, but the nation they represent.  If Brazilian players aren't allowed to play with fluidity and freedom, they will face scorn from the culture that expects to see itself (and its values) reflected in their style of play.  Dutch, and to a similar but lesser extent, German players are expected to fulfill any role on the field.  Teams that have not yet earned a reputation are expected to "park the bus," which is to say that their team is primarily focused on preventing opposition forays into forward areas to the neglect of any forward progress.

In addition to designing an on-field philosophy that jives with the country to whom the team belongs, managers and their coaching staff are responsible for ensuring that every member of the team, regardless of gender, age, height, width, or whatever are 

<to be continued in the next commentary of the Women's World Cup, 2023.>