FIFA Womens' Football WC 2011 — Anybody watching?

[Shekwan]

This thread is dominating the Copa American thread in terms of posts...

I don't understand.

 

[sophie]

This thread is dominating the Copa American thread in terms of posts...

I don't understand.

It's actually very simple: USA #1 in one thread, USA not #1 in another.

 

[Dell19]

I think it comes down to Women's football generating widely different opinions between those who are following it and those that are not and in terms of the general quality of the play.

There are some other sensible reasons as well such as the Copa America not involving the nations of many of the posters here unlike the Women's WC so there is less likely to be an emotional involvement and that its harder to find coverage so for instance the BBC are not actually listing the fixtures:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/fixtures/default.stm

 

[Stapel]

Wow, get back in the kitchen ladies, Stapel is here to set things straight!

Actually, I am sending men back to the kitchen, as it appears that most people watching this lunacy are men.

---snap---

So, no, we're not watching top-quality soccer, and to some degree that takes something away from the game.

But we don't always watch for the talent on display. There's a reason we don't sit down and leaf through youtube videos showing flicks and turns and juggles -- and instead watch games. There's a reason that people watch games in second divisions, or in meaningless world cup qualifiers in places like the Caribbean or Oceania where everyone knows the teams suck and will never reach the World Cup anyway.

Simply put, the game is far, far more than simply a showcase of human talent. It's a showcase of skill, athleticism, and everything else like pride and emotional content.

I have to agree that makes a lot of sense, especially the bolded part. Even a 6-year old kids game can be fun to watch, I suppose....

So no one's probably fooled into thinking the women's game is on par with the EPL.* But to say this "bears about as much resemblance to the real thing as a women's softball team does to the MLB," is silly.

Huh??? Care to elaborate? Actually, I am 100% sure that woman's football bears about as much resemblance to the real thing as a women's softball team does to the MLB.
It's silly to disagree with that!

Why would that difference be any different? I'm really struggling to find a decent arguement for that!

My remark earlier that "a bunch of overweight, 40+, amateur men would easily beat any women football team in the world", is a bloody serious remark. And one that is actually based on a few facts.

 

[Lambert Simnel]

That's a rather dumb comparison.
...
Quite frankly, to compare the two is ludicrous.
...
But to say this "bears about as much resemblance to the real thing as a women's softball team does to the MLB," is silly.

If you want to have a civil discussion, then I'm up for it. If you're just going to say that I'm being "dumb", "ludicrous" and "silly" (all within a single post), then I have no interest in spending my time in discussion with you.

 

[Lambert Simnel]

I wouldn't as it seems to totally miss the point that Lambert was originally talking about the cross not actually being that brilliant and that it was the standard of football that actually made it look good.

Thanks.

I came across a match, by coincedence (Brasil vs ????). And once more, I was struck by the incredible crap level. Of all sports, woman's football (rightly called soccer) is probably the most annoying sport to watch. A bunch of overweight, 40+, amateur men would easily beat any women football team in the world.

Technique, tactics, and most of all physical power are just too poor!

Generally speaking, I agree. However, I suspect that the level of quality is most apparent to people who have lived and breathed football since they could walk, and perhaps won't be as obvious to most North Americans (NB I'm not trying to insinuate anything about any CfC posters).

 

[Verbose]

Actually, I am sending men back to the kitchen, as it appears that most people watching this lunacy are men.

Whether it makes sense or not, there's no apparent lack of company at least.

Television viewing figures for the FIFA Women’s World Cup Germany 2011 continues to be impressive with updated statistics for matchday seven (Saturday 2 July) further highlighting the competition’s appeal.

ESPN’s coverage in the US for USA’s 3-0 win over Colombia achieved an average audience of 1.9 million, which represents a higher figure than for any of the matches at the 2003 or 2007 editions of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Meanwhile in Germany, an average of 3.5m people watched live coverage of that game in Sinsheim, representing five per cent of the entire German population.

The day’s other game, Korea DPR-Sweden attracted an average audience of over 2.5 million in Germany, accounting for almost 20 per cent of all those watching television during the match.

http://www.fifa.com/womensworldcup/news/newsid=1470951/index.html

 

[Stapel]

Whether it makes sense or not, there's no apparent lack of company at least.

http://www.fifa.com/womensworldcup/news/newsid=1470951/index.html

Well, FIFA and their Stalin-like propaganda apparatus...

But maybe they're right! There are also millions of people watching soap...... Or even worse, in NL the most popular TV-show is a dating show, where men can only take part if they own a farm......

 

[holy king]

Not really. Soccer is one of the very few sports for women athletes to go into and actually have a legitimate shot at making a decent living/being to some extent well-known doing. The reason the US always puts together such (relatively) terrible soccer teams is because young athletes can get so much more (in terms of money and fame) out of being basketball or football players (in lower income areas) and baseball or hockey players (in higher income areas). Soccer in the men's field is seen as an activity that middle class parents force their kids to do for 3 or 4 years until they pick a sport they actually want to play. At least in my experience, with Women's athletics it's the opposite. Softball and field hockey (with the exception of the olympics, and Basketball to a slightly lesser extent) are basically dead-end sports in terms of the professional field, whereas soccer isn't, so at least in America we are putting the best and brightest female athletes on the field.

[End Ramblings Here]

the german women's clubs (who are part of surely the most professional women's league in the world) regularly play friendlies against german fifth tier men's clubs.#

they regularly lose. most famously, turbine potsdam lost 0:7 to one right after winning the women's champions league.

 

[holy king]

and please dont respond to this with reasons WHY women's football is so bad.
if something is bad OF COURSE there are reasons why it is bad.
but this doesnt change anything about it being bad.


now if someone wants to watch bad football it's totally up to him. i, for one, watch the women's world cup because there's a reasonable amount of emotions involved and goddammit there's no football in summer.

 

[Verbose]

I don't think there's any mystery to this. It's an international competition, as in between nations, and it's a game of skill - i.e. it's relative skill (yes, yes, one might claim it's like a competition in whispering the loudest etc.).

Of course, if the objective is only watching the best possible football being played in the world, there's not much point. However, if that IS the objective, most national elevens on this planet consisting of all-male footballers by right shouldn't draw any crowds either.

 

[Stapel]

and please dont respond to this with reasons WHY women's football is so bad.
if something is bad OF COURSE there are reasons why it is bad.
but this doesnt change anything about it being bad.


now if someone wants to watch bad football it's totally up to him. i, for one, watch the women's world cup because there's a reasonable amount of emotions involved and goddammit there's no football in summer.

You should watch cricket and cycling in the summer!

 

[dgfred]

and please dont respond to this with reasons WHY women's football is so bad.
if something is bad OF COURSE there are reasons why it is bad.
but this doesnt change anything about it being bad.


now if someone wants to watch bad football it's totally up to him. i, for one, watch the women's world cup because there's a reasonable amount of emotions involved and goddammit there's no football in summer.

Yes, and there are some that are extra-cute too!

 

[downtown]

the german women's clubs (who are part of surely the most professional women's league in the world) regularly play friendlies against german fifth tier men's clubs.#

they regularly lose. most famously, turbine potsdam lost 0:7 to one right after winning the women's champions league.

I dont doubt that the best woman's soccer team in the world would get trounced by a pretty bad male club...I'd imagine that a D1 American college soccer team could prob beat them by multiple goals as well.

but self described fat, 40 year old amateurs? I'm skeptical. Our best softball players could strike out anybody on a typical beer league softball league (although not a college baseball team, much less a minor league squad), and I've played basketball with WNBA-quality women, and they can mop the floor with average joe hoopsters. I have a hard time believing the talent drop off is THAT significant, especially in a sport where raw, physical strength is not as important as it is in basketball.

 

[warpus]

The female game is just a lot different. It's not nearly as physical (obviously), which leads to different strategies, etc. The game ends up being more about "Football fundamentals", which is why I enjoy watching it from time to time

 

[Formaldehyde]

Back on topic: Japan is tearing the hell out of Sweden right now 3-1, despite being down an early goal.

And the US recovered from a quite mediocre middle part of the game where they got outplayed by France to win 3-1. Abby Wambach is a huge not-very-secret-at-all weapon.

 

[Earthling]

I kinda wanted the chance to win a rematch versus Sweden for USA #1 but rooting for the US to win anyway, so not really caring too much here. Watching the Japan/Sweden game right now too and yeah, they've really dominated the second half.

 

[North King]

I wouldn't as it seems to totally miss the point that Lambert was originally talking about the cross not actually being that brilliant and that it was the standard of football that actually made it look good.

a) Few crosses are picture-perfect, and I don't think anyone said it was.

b) Measuring this football by that football's standards (this and that being any two standards you want to compare) is simply being unkind to yourself. In ~lower quality~ football, of course your moments of brilliance are going to be things which might not work in ~higher quality~ football. That's the nature of the beast. You can't say, "well that wasn't a brilliant cross because the backline of a more talented team would have taken care of it." The skills of the women's game isn't as honed (say, by years of conditioning and training in a youth academy), and their raw physical talents will probably never measure up. You can't measure them against an institution which has billions of dollars and years of infrastructural development behind it.

I have to agree that makes a lot of sense, especially the bolded part. Even a 6-year old kids game can be fun to watch, I suppose....

A kids' game doesn't have the emotional maturity or content that a world cup match has. The WWC has a lot more invested in it; I'm sure you can agree. Unless you're seriously comparing the mental aspects of the WWC to 6 year olds, in which case you're the most hilariously over-the-top out-of-touch sexist I've met in a very long while.

Good lord, and people wonder why I think this line of "reasoning" is silly.

Huh??? Care to elaborate? Actually, I am 100% sure that woman's football bears about as much resemblance to the real thing as a women's softball team does to the MLB.
It's silly to disagree with that!

Why would that difference be any different? I'm really struggling to find a decent arguement for that!

My remark earlier that "a bunch of overweight, 40+, amateur men would easily beat any women football team in the world", is a bloody serious remark. And one that is actually based on a few facts.

Well, first of all, you have a gross misunderstanding of the sports in question.

Softball is not the same as MLB because they're not the same game. They are literally different games. I don't even like baseball (matter of fact, I hate the damn thing), and I still know that. MLB:softball isn't EPL:WWC; it's EPL:a pickup game of beach soccer.

Second of all... 40+ amateur, overweight men?

Let's pick a random, godawful league, and watch some match highlights:


Link to video.

Well, dang. These are professional male soccer players, who should be endowed by virtue of their golden Y chromosome to be excellent, superb soccer players who cannot make silly mistakes like, let's say, leaving a sweeper far behind keeping a goalscorer onside, or playing absolutely awful coverage on a corner kick, or giving away the ball right outside their penalty area because their defenders are caught unaware that there's an attacker charging at them while they putt the ball back and forth.

OH WAIT!

They got two out of three in the first three minutes of that video! It's almost as though their Y chromosome doesn't suddenly make the game a vastly superior watch.

Yes, yes, I know! They are from the Australian A-League, and no one else in the world is quite so horrid as that league.

Well, let's pick a slightly better league -- the lower echelons of the German football system?

Seriously, I am literally just picking the first links that come up on Youtube:


Link to video.

Daaaaaaaang, I watch for twenty seconds and already the defense is caught horribly out of position (they actually managed to cover the one basic mistake the Australians didn't up there!) and the attacker is so incompetent that he doesn't even manage to put away the goal...


Link to video.

I find this music godawful irritating. But I'm sticking to my word and going with the first clip I see.

These highlights are the first ones in this list I've seen that actually give me the impression that these players would beat the players in the women's world cup. Same stupid mistakes from time to time, better quality in the finishing, better linkups in the passing. And this is the second tier of English football, not exactly a pushover league. Not particularly good, either, but hey, I already said no one's comparing the WWC to the EPL or La Liga.

Now, look, I know I'm just a stupid American.

Of course... I am a stupid American who spent half a year living in Austria and watching the Bundesliga 2 because there was nothing better on TV when I'd usually be taking my meals. Who watched plenty of La Liga when the internet connection was good (who the hell would watch the Premier League when they could watch La Liga instead, by the way?).

So I know, the Women's World cup isn't high quality football.

But who cares? Because people the world over watch crappy lower level football. Even MLS games draw thousands of fans, and very few people actually have pride in their MLS team. Heaven knows when I pull for the Sounders to win, I don't think any of them are legends... But the women's game, especially at the World cup, has plenty of history. The sides have pride, emotion, and plenty else at stake. And if they're at a lower level of play, then they're all at the same lower level of play, and you can still appreciate moments of brilliance when they come.

They're never going to be as athletically gifted. That's because football does not play to the strengths of the female body.

They're going to be less tactically aware. Of course they're going to be less tactically aware! None of them have been raised since the age of five in the Ajax or Barcelona youth systems.

But that doesn't make Marta's little flicks and turns any less of a joy to behold. That doesn't mean I don't grin when I see a highlight of Wambach's header giving Brazil the karmic payback they deserved for flopping all over the field. Even if the overall product is less polished, that doesn't mean there aren't still heart-stopping moments, or times when I marvel at the placement of the football.

I find joy in these games for the same reason I find joy in any sports. People are competing against one another in high-stakes games where they put their bodies and wills on the line.

 

[EnglishCrusader]

Link to video.

That's an amazing choice of video

 

[classical_hero]

@HK. Don't get too worked over some of the comments. At least you were kind enough to show a victory for my home team.