carolynduthie

During the 2012 Olympic qualification the US beat someone (Dominican Republic?) like 14-0 and there was a bit of this backlash but it was only really the coach who kept going wild after the first few goals, the players were much more toned down.

As a sort of public service announcement they had FIFA menus at the stadium in Nice yesterday and you couldn’t get beer or any alcohol inside so don’t plan on that.

They are running shuttles to this game iirc from the Montpellier Airport, which seems really out of the way compared to just taking the tram. (It’s on the FIFA WWC site for each stadium if they have shuttles and where from.)

There didn't seem to be any of that in Nice yesterday (I was at the match), I think so far the only match with ticketing issues was the first one - a bunch of people had had their tickets re-issued and didn't know, so the tickets they printed weren't valid anymore and they had to go get new ones, but all of the other games (which lower attendances) seem to have gone fine. All they did say in the stadium yesterday was to please sit in the seat assigned by your ticket, but I'm not sure if they were breaking groups up if some of them weren't - it's easy to say if you show up to your seat in an empty stadium and a group of ten is filling that row that you should just move but if you have a group of 10 that all bought tickets to sit in that row, it becomes a problem. There were large groups (like an entire lower bowl section) of Scotland fans all sitting together and given our experience buying tickets either the Scottish FA somehow got them a section or some of those people just moved to sit there, so there's that. As for the actual attendance yesterday, it seemed like at least 80% of the people there were from the UK, and another percentage other travelling fans - the local attendance seemed really low, a few youth teams if anything. Also to note, FIFA organized a bunch of shuttles to and from the stadium, which became really the only way for anyone not driving to get there (the train had organized a special match day price and everything but was on strike) and the shuttles were easily the best-organized thing FIFA has ever pulled off, I was astonished.

she....she played the entire first half.....

They've been playing a 3-5-2 with Sinclair as one of the top 2, which I don't think is really the best place for her now, it does seem like she (or most people tbh) can't keep up the pressure on opponents for the whole game. In Portland they play her more withdrawn, kind of behind the forward line, and she looks much better there.

She is there, she played in both of the first two games (in the central midfield, however).

Mal Pugh didn't go through the draft because she wasn't eligible to declare for it when she decided to go pro (they only opened it up to pre-college grads this year). Nichelle Prince, Janine Beckie, and Rebecca Quinn and Kailen Sheridan all went through the draft and then were allocated and had their salaries paid by Canada Soccer (ditto for a bunch of American players - Emily Sonnett and Rose Lavelle were both drafted and subsidized in their draft years), so presumably Huitema would also have to declare.

She theoretically would have had to declare for the NWSL draft if she wanted to play in NWSL this year. (I say theoretically because the NWSL has never been one to enforce their own rules, but they changed the draft so that anyone who would be 18 during the season could declare, and say that if you're eligible and don't declare you can't sign until the end of the season.)

There's not always a lot of detail money-wise (and it varies a lot from league to league and club to club), but as a comparable, when Lindsey Horan signed with PSG out of high school it was reported to be a six-figure deal, so if she's actually signing with PSG it could be quite a bit - in addition to the fact that she'd be allowed to accept sponsorship money now.

As far as I can tell she would've had to declare for the NWSL draft if she wanted to play there this season.

This was released by Canada Soccer this morning https://canadasoccer.com/canada-begins-fifa-women-s-world-cup-france-2019-campaign-with-two-matches-in-europe-followed-by-the-algarve-cup--p161993

My friend, look at the document in the link you yourself posted: "June 7 - July 7 - FIFA Women's World Cup - Release to national team: 14 days before the opening match. Release back to Clubs: the day after the team’s last mach in the tournament." Obviously the international break for teams in the WWC isn't just from the 10th to the 18th of June. Like, I'm sorry if Heiner-Moller didn't use the exact phrasing you prefer but he has four opportunities between now and the WWC in which he can bring together all of his team and play international friendlies where the clubs cannot withhold their players.

As Vic said, the window is for teams outside the World Cup. You can pull players two weeks before the WWC from their clubs, so I imagine they'll play a one or two games at the beginning of that window before the WWC starts (either as a send-off series in Canada or in Europe, depending on what they're planning camp-wise).

Dude what are you on about? Canada has been playing in these March tournaments for as long as I can remember (the last CanWNT victory over the US was at the 2001 Algarve Cup), the same as everyone else. As Vic noted, Canada was often playing in Cyprus for awhile after the Algarve became the more "tier 1" tournament, but since the US started their own thing Canada has been invited back to Algarve (and interestingly, several of the European teams didn't want to return to the US tournament because they hate the format of it and the fact that they're paraded around to different stadiums, often in a non-sensical order, on short rest just for the benefit of US Soccer being able to fill different stadiums and make more $$). I'm not sure what you think the benefit would be of Canada starting now a fifth March tournament, trying to attract teams to come play in the cold and snow (or in Vancouver, on turf) instead of literal resorts in Portugal or Cyprus with much shorter travel for all of the Euro-based players.

The coach literally said they are planning to go to the Algarve- "There are four FIFA international breaks before the tournament and Heiner-Moller plans to use all of them, including a return to the Algarve Cup in Portugal." https://nationalpost.com/pmn/sports-pmn/canada-to-learn-womens-world-cup-first-round-foes-at-saturdays-draw-in-paris I suppose that could still fall through but I'd be surprised, given that Canada participated the last few years.

They've already said they are intending to play in the Algarve Cup, the Algarve Cup teams haven't been announced yet, where on earth did you get this idea that Canada isn't playing a tournament in March? Edit: The Australia Tournament, unless I've missed something, is South Korea, not England https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/dec/18/australia-to-host-cup-of-nations-as-matildas-prepare-for-world-cup - so that makes England, France, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, among others...all those teams also don't have a March tournament booked yet, hope some of them can sneak into the Algarve Cup last minute too! Or are you saying all of those teams aren't preparing for the WWC either?

https://niketeam.nike.com///niketeamsports/content/pdf/catalog_thumbs/NTS_M_Soccer.pdf (there's a separate women's catalogue but the jerseys tend to be the same)

Look I don't want to dispute that Sinclair is a draw but there's a pretty necessary correlation does not equal causation warning here.

1. Sinclair 2. Lawrence 3. Fleming

As Neil Davidson reported, Canada is planning to use every international break until the WWC - https://nationalpost.com/pmn/sports-pmn/canada-to-learn-womens-world-cup-first-round-foes-at-saturdays-draw-in-paris. "There are four FIFA international breaks before the tournament and Heiner-Moller plans to use all of them, including a return to the Algarve Cup in Portugal." The Algarve Cup is four games, and if they use the other three breaks that'd be a minimum of seven games, a maximum of ten. It's hard to know if they'll manage to schedule two friendlies for all three of the breaks, especially the one in January, given that it is in less than a month, but they do tend to schedule to play the same team a second time in a closed door friendly if they can only manage the one.

The best four third place finishers.

Whoops, must've been looking at F instead of E, thanks for catching that. I agree, England in the 16 would be tough.

This bracket is wrong - FIFA changed it around yesterday when it was pointed out to them that it's not balanced (4/6 group winners are on the bottom half). Winner of Group E gets runner up of Group D, runner up from Group E gets runner up from Group F, so we only play the US if we both finish 2nd in our respective groups - it's fixed on the Wikipedia article now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_FIFA_Women's_World_Cup

It's on purpose, the pots are done by ranking.