Women's World Cup - June 10th 2019 - Canada vs Cameroon

[red card]

Canada played like they have in previous matches this year. Opposing team chances kept to a minimum and mostly controlled the ball but failed to find the final pass/kick enough times to score more than one goal. Their passing was more crisp and movement was better. Schmidt, Scott & Chapman all played better than seen in 2019. Lawrence & Prince played to their standards. Beckie & Fleming were subpar. 

Bunkering has come to the women's game as the lesser teams are getting better organized, are more fit and athletic. Canada (and seems like many women's teams like Japan & Germany) always had a hard time scoring against these tactics. 

I expected a bigger crowd given Cameroon uses the French language. Unless the Voyageurs get a big turnout, Canadian football crowds wearing hockey jerseys tend to be meek as they don't know what to do.

For tv coverage, the TSN panel has been great. The males covering the WC could learn from them that there is more to the WC than what's happening on the pitch. Moscato was good given this is only the second or third time she has done this. Wileman talked too much with filler content. Good for a run-of-the-mill MLS match but not for the WC. Wileman needs to focus on the action more and let the match breathe like the world feed announcers have done.

Edited June 10, 2019 by red card

[damaaster]

Not a bad start.  Definitely would have been nice to get another goal or two - but a win is a win.

 

My thoughts:
Players who looked great:
Lawrence, Champan, Prince/Rose

The chemistry between Rose/Sinclair is obvious.  Lawrence made a ton happen, and is always the first one tracking back. Love her- she was my player of the game.  Chapman was right up there too - making some great runs, and defending great.

Players who were good:
Beckie, Buchanan, Schmidt, Scott

As usual, Scott shut everything down, Beckie made a lot happen, and put in a lot of good balls - need our girls to shoot more though.  Buchanan's goal was a perfect header - but she makes me nervous with some aggressive tackles in our box/area.  

Fleming had a terrible 1st half- was losing the ball everywhere, but a good 2nd half.  Sinclair had a few brilliant touches/one amazing thru ball but these 2 will need to be better if we want to go far.

 

Looking forward to the next one!

[rightback]

16 hours ago, red card said:

For tv coverage, the TSN panel has been great. The males covering the WC could learn from them that there is more to the WC than what's happening on the pitch. Moscato was good given this is only the second or third time she has done this. Wileman talked too much with filler content. Good for a run-of-the-mill MLS match but not for the WC. Wileman needs to focus on the action more and let the match breathe like the world feed announcers have done.

My take is the exact opposite...every single time Wileman shut up, Moscato had to pipe up with some blather. The world feed announcers are often pretty awful in my opinion. In the Spain/Cameroon game, he was going on and on about the "deserved" 2nd penalty...highly debatable to say the least and his other opinions were about as insightful. I have some sympathy for them since they're on their own and I guess they think they need to supply the "colour" or something but I wish they'd shut up from time to time. Peter Drury (I don't know if he's doing this world cup) is the worst I think but he can be tolerable when there's someone else in the booth with him. Of course, tastes vary.

 

[narduch]

The colour commentator was a little bit too homery for me.

[Unnamed Trialist]

We had a good time at the match, and pre-game. Meet up maybe had up to 40-50 come through in total, over the course of the afternoon. From what I was told there were players family members there. It was really a mixed bag of supporters in any case.

Weather was nice during the day. Was at the game with a group of maybe 12-15, many from this board. We were sitting beside, or in front, of one of the most vociferous Cameroon contingents, so ended up moving to a covered corner, where a few more people joined us.

As it started to rain, we were fortunate to be out of it, as the entire opposite stand was exposed and fans mostly cleared it out and hid from the weather. Perhaps first time I have seen a main stand and two ends covered and an opposite lateral exposed, I think they have expanded capacity and taken out the roof. 

We dominated throughout and they came back at us in short bursts. They really only had counters and a few corners, but we controlled through the back and middle, and up the wings. We tended to stall as we got in close, relying on crosses and free kicks, which, fair enough, got us the winner. I felt we should have imposed ourselves more, and even run up the score, but I guess they were better defensively than I gave them credit for. I just felt we needed to impose ourselves and really go for the jugular, try to get a few more as I imagine our rivals will also beat them in the group. But okay, after seeing other results, where a Sweden only got a result late vs. Chile, for example, maybe we should not be expecting to run up scores so easily. 

[paul-collins]

18 hours ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

As it started to rain, we were fortunate to be out of it, as the entire opposite stand was exposed and fans mostly cleared it out and hid from the weather. Perhaps first time I have seen a main stand and two ends covered and an opposite lateral exposed, I think they have expanded capacity and taken out the roof. 

 

Can confirm that those stands were uncovered 4 years ago.  Montpellier had three sides roofed then.  (I got chased into the corner by rain when I was there, too)