Women's World (Footie) Cup

[Atticus]

USA just beat Thailand 13-0. We're going to be criticized. It's the World Cup; just play hard.

[booond]

Up 7-0 with still 35 minutes to go makes for a long time of icing the ball.

[Conor Dary]

Women's soccer in third world countries is almost non existent.... even in Europe it is barely a thing....though it is slowly changing there...

[DrJay]

Not worthy of its own thread nor any discussion, but Auburn scored 13 runs in the first inning of game 3 (best of 3) in their NCAA baseball Super Regional yesterday. Yes, play hard. The time for "everyone gets a participation trophy" is in the rear view mirror.

[Conor Dary]

Not worthy of its own thread nor any discussion, but Auburn scored 13 runs in the first inning of game 3 (best of 3) in their NCAA baseball Super Regional yesterday. Yes, play hard. The time for "everyone gets a participation trophy" is in the rear view mirror.

Then 90% of the women's teams wouldn't even be there....the advantage the U.S. women have over a team like Thailand is on par with Alabama football over a middling high school...

[18.99s]

Now Jamaica doesn't feel so bad for losing 3-0 to Brazil.

[TN1965]

USA just beat Thailand 13-0. We're going to be criticized. It's the World Cup; just play hard.

Unless the Thai player are hyper-Americanized, they would appreciate that Team USA played hard.

I stopped watching at the half, and thought "maybe we should go back to 16 teams for a while." And then I learned that Thailand was the 4th of 5 qualifiers from Asia-Pacific. (South Korea is the 5th.)

[18.99s]

In the Asia-Pacific qualifying matches, Thailand stretched Australia to 2-2 in extra time before losing to the Aussies on penalty kicks.

Maybe Thailand was missing some of their best players, or they were still suffering the after-effects of indigestion from the French food.

[Adam$]

It is what it is. A not very good tourny with a few dominant teams and not even that
is really very equal. Eg the USA and Norway are fairly even but the US probably has 1000 girls to every one playing competitively in Nor. A huge numbers advantage.

So being that it's that time of year on the events calendar Christine Brennan starts showing up and I caught her on PBS. She just presents an extremely unrealistic outlook on the state of things. And I can understand her being an advocate journalist but I don't think it's helpful to present things inaccurately rather than how they actually are.

~ I don't know what the US girls are paid v. men when they are in friendly or national competition but I would guess that it's close if not equal. Even though there is probably huge revenue disparity. I doubt the women's team is treated as poorly as some say.

[Atticus]

Unless the Thai player are hyper-Americanized, they would appreciate that Team USA played hard.

There was nothing more insulting to me, when I was our school's boys coach, then to have the other team go easy on us when we went down early.
When we had a big lead, I would put in the subs and tell them to play as hard as they could.
When the USA plays their subs, they are better than most of the other teams' starters.