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The ninth edition of the Women's World Cup starts on July 20 in Australia and New Zealand. This historic tournament will see 32 nations compete for the first time. Here are all the basics you need to know.
I wonder who’s actually buying these tickets. It will be interesting to see how many people actually show up at each match.
The Women's World Cup kicks off on 20 July, but who will be lifting the trophy at the end of it?The United States are looking to defend their back-to-back titles, while European champions England are chasing a first World Cup crown.
The Republic of Ireland are competing in their first World Cup and joint-hosts Australia and New Zealand hope to make it a memorable one.
BBC Sport spoke to pundits, ex-players and managers to get their predictions.
Which team has the most trannies? They win.
How many trannies are in the mix?
A lot of people are about to be disappointed. As non-all star boys teams are beating the women teams the quality of the games will be lackluster
Btw the boys teams are teenage amateurs …..
Will anyone miss the Rappin’ Ho this time?
Women playing soccer? It’s actually kind of cute.
Can’t watch a lesbian American hater.
Yup, nothing says empowerment like posing in your undies in order to get attention.
SNORT.
About half the tix for the 2022 Qatar men’s tournament. A lot better ratio than for the WNBA.
Those poor oppressed girls.
Iirc, global television viewership for the last Women's World Cup was about one third of viewship for the men's World Cup. I have the impression that the women's game is developing grassroots support in most parts of the world, Africa and Latin America being the big laggards. Africa is Africa, and a lot of Latin America is misogynist. But bottom line, the women need to put butts in seats and build tv audiences.
I don't follow the details closely enough to have an informed opinion, but my sense is that the biggest threat right now to the women's game internationally -- and to the USWNT particularly -- comes from Europe. For both marketing and political reasons, European men's soccer has moved towards "strategic partnerships" with the women's leagues. The problem is that there is so much money in European men's soccer that the European clubs can buy the women's leagues with spare change. The danger is that they will pull the women's game into a permanent WNBA model, in which the women's teams are run as loss leaders for the men's leagues. That would mean permanent dependency, living on charity, and it would inexorably pull those wanting improvements in the women's game (including higher pay) into basing their arguments on endless whining about "equity" rather than ticket sales and revenue. This is a profound corruption. There is a lot of "equity" rhetoric flying around women's soccer in the U.S. as well, but at least financially, the NWSL has so far been insistent on the women remaining masters of their own ship and building the league from the grassroots up on a financially sustainable model. (The national team players get a separate salary from U.S. Soccer, but most of the regular NWSL players still don't earn much, which is why so many of them double up with a second season abroad after the NWSL season wraps up.) For the league, this means attendance uber alles. As it should be.
FIFA is corrupt and still stiffs the women's game. That's yet another problem.
Oh well. The upcoming Women's World Cup is wide open. The U.S., as always, is one of the teams to beat, but I don't think it will win. This is simply a matter of the law of averages catching up. Once past group stage, it is a high stakes, single elimination tournament, so the winner has to run the table against peer level competition. Even the best team is going to have to dodge a bullet now and then. The U.S. has now won two consecutive World Cups, which is an impressive winning streak against peer level teams. Sooner or later, the lucky goal, the questionable call, the moment of magic, or the ball off the post will bounce the other way. Streaks are made to be broken, and the U.S. team enters with a bullseye on its back. They are one of the teams to beat, but the odds say the unbeaten string will be broken.
It would be a different calculation if soccer were like the NBA, NFL, NHL, or MLB with seven game series. But it's not. It's like the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Even the best team has to survive an off game.
As always, I am amazed (but no longer surprised) by freepers who will root for U.S. women swimmers, gymnasts, ice skaters, hockey players, track and field competitors, etc. in the Olympics, but who love to hate on women’s soccer.
I have decided that the reason is that in the aforementioned sports, the U.S. men are also formidable competitors. In soccer, however, the U.S. women compete for championships and win more than their share, while the U.S. men struggle to get past Panama and Jamaica and are not a threat to win any significant international tournament.
Why some men — most of whom have never played soccer — should be embarrassed by this is beyond me. U.S. men’s soccer underperforms. The basic reason is that there is so much more money in professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey that the bulk of the elite athletic talent is drawn elsewhere. Ok, we all understand that. That will change slowly as soccer continues to increase in popularity at the youth sports level. The thuggification of the NFL and NBA will probably accelerate the trend. Most of us will probably live to see soccer replace hockey as the #4 U.S. men’s professional team sport. After that ... well, in time.
Does the USWNT lose scrimmages to boy’s Academy teams composed of 15 and 16 year old elite players? Of course. And all the other elite women’s teams around the world lose similar training games. At that age, the early maturing “boys” are already strapping, nearly grown teenagers; the Academy players are the soccer equivalent of the four and five star basketball and football players who are living on the AAU circuit and are already getting paid under the table by recruiters. These guys are already bigger, faster and stronger than adult women.
The women’s teams arrange these games because you improve by playing someone better than yourself — not too much better, because then you’ll just be blown off the field, but enough better to make you the underdog. Serena Williams practiced against plenty of men for the same reason. But she never entered men’s tournaments.
Women’s sports are a class based competition. They compete in their own division just as lightweight boxers, weightlifters and wrestlers don’t compete against the heavyweights. Best in class should not be a hard concept for people to grasp.
Megan Rapinoe is an obnoxious irritant off the field, but she ain’t the issue.
1.4 million divided by 64 is 21,875 people per game. The finals will have good crowds, but a lot if the games will have hardly anyone there.
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