Women’s World Cup ‘23 Game Thread (spoilers)
- Thread starter 67YAZ
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Promising Spanish buildup stopped by a whistle for an injured Dutch player behind the play. Not a head injury. Not great refereeing.
I dunno. Spain started fantastically, but the Dutch imposed themselves on the match through the first half of extra time. And they got screwed out of a blatant PK.
But Spain converted when they had to. Still feel like they are playing below their potential.
But Spain converted when they had to. Still feel like they are playing below their potential.
I think the overturned PK call is reasonable. The only surprising part about it was that it didn't appear to meet "clear and obvious error" standards for review to me, but that's typical at this point. They call in a ref for a VAR check if it even looks like it might be the wrong call, that threshold exists in name only. Anyway, from having watched that from like 30 different angles, some of those angles make it look like lots of contact, some make it look like she barely touched Beerensteyn. Some angles make it look shoulder-to-shoulder, some make it look shoulder-to-back. One thing I'm sure of is that Ali Krieger was wrong on the commentary in saying that it was "obviously a shove". There was no arm extension or push, it was an attempt at a shoulder charge - which is legal. So I could live with a call of "shoulder-to-shoulder, legal" or a call of "shoulder-to-back, foul", I don't think it's clear-cut either way. So calling it a "blatant PK" overstates the case imo.
As for the Dutch and Beerensteyn maybe getting screwed a little bit, I think it's just karma.
Shot:
View: https://twitter.com/femmesfootnews/status/1689531185431564289
Chaser:
View: https://twitter.com/sydneyleroux/status/1689848584257351681
I agree with this. It was a 50-50 call and ultimately I thought the striker went down a bit too easily. That said, I don't watch enough women's football or this WC (brutal time zone setup) to say how it's been judged in other similar circumstances.
5 minutes after that controversial call, Beerensteyn made another run behind the defense and the defender semi-shoved her over in the exact same manner, and the ref this time was entirely uninterested. I thought that was much more of a foul than the first one.
This french ref didn't have the greatest of games. There were various other minor errors and shenanigans by her that were pointed out in the Scuffed gamethread. Professional fouls to stop a counter which went by without a card given. So it's hard to say, I think plenty of other refs might've given it there, but by no means most of them.
I only watched about 30 mins, so I missed the similar play you're talking about. But yeah, that ref was rough.
I was pretty impressed with the quality of play yesterday. Spain especially had 2-4 players who could really control the ball. What stands out to me about the womens game more generally is how fast they are at pressing just about everything. However, there's not quite the control to play through it, and the teams don't generally seem to care about possessing as much as the men. Although I will say Spain seems to emphasize possession for the womens NT as well as the mens. The Dutch were super direct and couldn't build much. They would try to turn the ball over in the middle third and then play their fast striker through, or find their target striker with a long ball.
The Dutch made the strategic choice to play the long ball and bypass the midfield altogether. Spain presses well, too, and their possession tactic with a high line really compresses the midfield when they turn the ball over. Japan showed exactly how to attack that if you lack the technical playmakers to thread through Spain’s press.
and the NL were missing their most skilled mids. My favorite non-American player, Vivienne Miedema, is out with a torn ACL. She is the picture of a modern 10 - she’s does it all with class: score in the box, score outside the box, free kicks, set the tempo, thru balls…all of it. She plays for Arsenal, but Barca pushed hard to sign her last summer. And she would have be the platonic ideal of a Barca player.
And van de Donk was on the bench with yellow card accumulation. She’s the all-action 8 that drives the NL. For Lyon, she and Horan absolutely boss the midfield on left and right - Horan’s a little bigger and more physical, but VDD is more creative.
But Miedema & VDD are the heart of the Dutch squad, so without them it made perfect sense to press hard and go route 1. Unfortunately, Beerensteyn doesn’t have that final bit of skill to bag goals and assists while Roord is more of a clinical poacher type than a single high forward.
That makes a lot of sense. I'm not even being critical of the Dutch approach as Beerensteyn was almost through several times, but I'm happy that Spain got through as they really look to play the ball, or at least they did yesterday.
I wish there was a game tonight at 9 or 10, but I guess those Oceanians dont like waking up early on the weekend.
“The hen is the wisest of all the animal creation, because she never cackles until the egg is laid.” ― Abraham Lincoln
It seems kicking the ball into the goal seems to be a better strategy than what the USWNT was attempting.