Tag: 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup

USWNT seeking consistency in World Cup group finale vs. Portugal: ‘We know what’s on the line’

“We’re gonna need to play fast and score a lot of goals”

The U.S. women’s national team is gearing up for a potentially pivotal World Cup group stage finale, and the watchword is consistency.

An intense 1-1 draw with the Netherlands saw the USWNT struggle for a long stretch before proceeding to dominate the game’s final half-hour. With Portugal — the final Group E foe for the U.S. — winning a few hours later, the standings have tightened significantly, with the USWNT able to finish anywhere between first (assuring the easiest path through the knockout rounds) and third (a stunning early elimination).

Midfielders Savannah DeMelo and Andi Sullivan both agreed that the team wasn’t “in sync” against the Dutch, but expressed optimism that they’re on track to sort that out against a Portugal side known for its defensive organization.

“I think we have shown a lot of pieces, and it’s just a matter of stringing all those pieces together and being very in sync,” Sullivan told reporters at a team press conference. “I think we had a lot of great moments during the Netherlands game, and I just think we want to build off those and make those more consistent, and bring that to the Portugal game.

“They’re a strong team, gonna be a tough game. We know what’s on the line. So, we know we need to bring our best, that they’re gonna bring their best.”

Per both players, one particular focus was the USWNT’s pressing structure, which couldn’t consistently be applied against the Netherlands. At times, attempts from the forwards to lead a higher press weren’t paired with the required step forward from the rest of the team, and in other instances the defense and midfield wanted to push higher while the front line wasn’t ready to take that risk.

“It’s always like a chicken-egg situation, right?” said Sullivan. “If you don’t step high enough, then it’s hard for people behind you to read, and if people behind you aren’t reading it, then it’s hard for you to go [press]. So I think we were all just kind of…we weren’t in sync, and that happens.”

“I think we went in halftime talking about all those things and what we wanted to do, and I think that’s why in the second half, we came out a lot more on the same page,” added DeMelo. “We all needed to go together, we all needed to stay together, and I think it was just more about being in sync with one another.”

The halftime adjustments, along with the emotional charge that came from Lindsey Horan scoring an emphatic equalizer just moments after the U.S. captain clashed with Daniëlle van de Donk, appeared to pay off. However, the USWNT knows that a loss at Eden Park could send them home, and they want to make sure they’re able to hit the ground running against Portugal.

“Hopefully we can [be in sync] earlier in the future,” said Sullivan. “Sometimes when you adjust, it’s going to take a second to get on the same page, and we have full confidence in each other that no matter what we do, we will figure it out, and we will execute.”

USWNT looking for a win, and goals, vs. Portugal

DeMelo and Sullivan also discussed the prospect of not just needing to defeat Portugal to guarantee a first-place finish, but possibly having to pile a few goals on. The USWNT will enter their group finale level on four points with the Netherlands, and hold a two-goal edge on the first tiebreaker (goal difference).

With the Netherlands taking on Vietnam, there is a distinct possibility that the U.S. will need a multi-goal win to keep hold of the top spot in Group E.

“I think the conversation began after the game for us, when we kind of debrief as a team,” said Sullivan, adding that the team is fully aware “that we’re gonna need to play fast and score a lot of goals.”

“We also just want that for ourselves, regardless of the game and the situation,” added Sullivan. “We know our first two performances have been solid, but we know we have more to give, especially in [terms of] putting goals up. And so that conversation has kind of been bubbling, just because we expect that high standard from ourselves.”

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2023 World Cup group stage tiebreakers: What happens when teams are level

FIFA’s tiebreakers, explained

The group stage at the 2023 World Cup figures to have some extremely dramatic finishes.

With teams getting just three games to pile up the points necessary to get into the knockout rounds, tiebreakers are virtually inevitable. Every World Cup, men’s or women’s, features high drama as simultaneous kickoffs in every group’s final set of games can require two screens to know at any moment who is going through, and who is going home.

With the final set of group games upon us, the tournament is likely to have two teams (or more!) ending up on the same point total somewhere in the mix, and that means going down the list of tiebreakers.

Razor-thin margins are built into the World Cup. The tiebreaking procedures may determine advancement or an early flight home, and they may also sort out group winners from runners-up.

How do World Cup tiebreakers work?

Obviously, groups are determined by total points. Teams get three for a win, one for a draw, and none for a loss. That’s all very normal. It’s once we get into the tiebreakers that things get more murky.

FIFA’s order of operations when teams end up with the same point total is as follows:

Goal difference: Subtract a team’s goals conceded in the group from their goals scored, and you have their goal difference. The higher, the better.

Goals scored: This is the most simple tiebreaker: if the teams have the same point total and goal difference, the team that scored more goals finishes higher.

Head-to-head results. If the teams can’t be broken up on goal totals, FIFA zooms in on the game they played against each other. If that ended in a draw, we move down this list, but if one team beat the other, the winner has the edge. That said, in the event of three teams ending up level on points, goal difference, and goals scored, this tiebreaker will likely be decisive. It is possible for a group to finish with all four teams on four points, but in that scenario this tiebreaker is pretty clearly not going to determine anything.

Head-to-head goal difference: You know the score by now. If the results between the tied teams don’t separate them, we move on to goal difference. With teams only playing one another once in the group stage, this tiebreaker can only be useful in the event of a three-way tie.

Head-to-head goals scored: Again, a repeat of an earlier tiebreaker, scaled down to just the meetings between the teams that need to be separated. As with the last tiebreaker, there’s no way this one comes up if we have a two-team tie.

Fair play points: This is where the tiebreaking process starts to get strange. FIFA wanted to incentivize sportsmanship and clean play, and as such has been assigning a point total based on how many bookings a team collects in the group stage. The fair play point system works like this:

  • Yellow card: -1 points
  • Red card via two yellow cards: -3 points
  • Straight red card: -4 points
  • Yellow card and straight red card: -5 points

A player can only be responsible for one of these four scores, so for example, the player receiving two yellow cards isn’t assessed a minus-one for both cards on top of the minus-three for being sent off.

There is no way to get a positive point total in FIFA’s system. The team whose fair play score is closest to zero will advance if this tiebreaker comes into use, which is a very rare situation.

Drawing of lots: If the teams can’t be separated by any of the above, a member FIFA’s organizing committee with no connections to the tied teams will literally pull a name out of the pot, and that team will go through.

Per a BBC report from 2018, FIFA’s procedure involves placing each team’s name into a separate ball (much like the World Cup draw itself). The organizing committee member will pick a ball out of the pot, and the team in that ball will advance. It’s cruel, but the World Cup doesn’t come with time to insert a one-game playoff between the group stage and the round of 16.

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Three things on the USWNT going through peaks and valleys in Netherlands draw

Despite a performance that wasn’t as bad as it seemed, there are major questions for Vlatko Andonovski

The U.S. women’s national team didn’t expect a straightforward path to another World Cup final, and that instinct looks like the correct one.

The USWNT found itself in a serious battle against a feisty Netherlands side in a 1-1 draw that saw head coach Vlatko Andonovski under fire for a lack of substitutions, among other issues.

The Dutch, on their first attempt at anything resembling an attacking foray, took a surprise early lead through Jill Roord on a sequence featuring four or five errors. That goal left the U.S. reeling, but just as importantly served to inspire the Oranje, who proceeded to threaten to run the USWNT off the pitch.

The U.S. managed to avoid letting the Netherlands turn their control into a ton of chances, and after a conflict between Lindsey Horan and Daniëlle van de Donk, flipped the tables. Horan scored seconds after that dispute was broken up, and as much as the USWNT showing drew criticism, the team will look back and wonder how their dominance of the game’s final half-hour didn’t result in a game-winning goal.

It was intense, breathless, controversial, and everything else people want out of high-level sports…except, if you’re a U.S. fan, it didn’t end with the expected three points.

Let’s dig into the most charged-up game of this World Cup thus far:

USWNT World Cup draw vs. Netherlands gets record TV ratings

The arrow is pointing up

The ratings for the U.S. women’s national team’s games at the 2023 World Cup remain through the roof.

Fox Sports announced that the USWNT’s 1-1 draw with the Netherlands was watched by an audience of 6,429,000, surpassing a record for U.S. group-stage viewership on an English-language broadcast.

The old record of 5.3 million was set in the 2019 World Cup, when the U.S. faced Chile, and the eventful draw against the Dutch surpassed the total for the team’s 2023 opener against Vietnam by over 1.1 million people.

Metrics from Nielsen Research and Adobe Analytics said that this game also saw the largest streaming audience for a women’s World Cup group stage game in Fox’s history, with an average viewership of 196,938. The Vietnam win held the previous record, but the Netherlands match upped the total by 20.8%.

On the television broadcast, a spike in the game’s final 15 minutes saw viewership peak at 8,451,000, nearly two million more than the peak audience for the USWNT’s tournament opener.

The group-stage records set by this match will likely stand for a while, as the USWNT’s Group E finale against Portugal is scheduled for 3:00 a.m. Eastern.

The top markets in terms of viewership share were:

  • Milwaukee (5.8 rating/16 share)
  • Kansas City (5.5/16)
  • Washington, D.C. (5.4/18)
  • Cincinnati (4.6/13)
  • Dallas (4.4/14)

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USWNT World Cup group scenarios: Breaking down how the U.S. can advance, or be knocked out early

Frustrating performances aside, the USWNT is still likely to win Group E

The U.S. women’s national team has not met high expectations thus far at the World Cup, but they’re still very much on track to advance out of Group E.

Their opening 3-0 win over Vietnam set them on their way, and while their 1-1 draw with the Netherlands raised plenty of questions, getting to four points from two games is a really good recipe for a place in the knockout round. Moreover, with the USWNT being heavily favored to beat Portugal in their group finale, the team is in pole position to win the group.

That said, pole position doesn’t guarantee you win the race, and between upsets popping up all over this tournament and a wobbly performance against the Dutch, USWNT fans have every reason to want to know about their knockout round scenarios…and also how to avoid a shocking early exit.

We crunched the numbers so you don’t have to. Here’s what the USWNT is looking at, based on all three possible outcomes of their upcoming clash with Portugal (3:00 a.m. Eastern, Fox, Telemundo).

USWNT beats Portugal

A win over Portugal just before the sun rises on the east coast Tuesday morning would assure the U.S. of a spot in the knockout round, and would make it very likely that they’re going through as group winners.

That result would see the USWNT finish with seven points and a plus-four goal difference at a minimum. Just about the only way the Netherlands could nose ahead would be to beat Vietnam by at least three more goals than the U.S. margin of victory over Portugal.

So for example, if the USWNT defeats Portugal 2-0, the Netherlands would need to put up at least a 5-0 scoreline against the Vietnamese to have a chance to win the group. Anything less, and the USWNT would finish in first on goal difference. That would send them to Sydney for an August 6 round of 16 clash with the runner-up from Group G.

If the Dutch win is by three goals more than the USWNT’s, the Oranje would claim the group instead. In that case, the U.S. would fly to Melbourne instead, and take on the winner of Group G on August 6.

There is the potential for some tiebreaker drama here. For example, if the Dutch margin of victory is only two goals more than that of the USWNT, both teams would finish level on points, and on goal difference. In that case, total goals scored by both teams would be the second tiebreaker.

Some common scorelines could cause a dramatic and highly unusual situation to unfold here. As an example, if the U.S. wins 1-0 and the Netherlands takes a 3-0 decision in the other game, the teams would have the same point total, goal difference, and goals scored. FIFA has more tiebreakers after that, but the next three (head-to-head, goal difference in head-to-head games, and goals scored in head-to-head games) clearly don’t change anything, because the U.S. and Netherlands tied 1-1.

That would bring us to fair play points, in which bookings collected as a team are tallied up on the following scoring system:

  • Yellow card: -1 point
  • Indirect red card (second yellow card): -3 points
  • Direct red card: -4 points
  • Yellow card and direct red card: -5 points

Why are the points negative? Let’s not worry ourselves about why FIFA does whatever they do.

The USWNT is currently a minus-two on this scale, while the Netherlands have a score of minus-one. If the scores set up in a way where this finish is possible, we’re all going to have to count yellow cards in both games on top of everything else.

USWNT draws

All due respect to Portugal, who will be tough and organized, but this would be a troubling result.

However, let’s stick to math for a second rather than soccer analysis. This would put the U.S. on five points, lock in a plus-three goal difference, and would guarantee a spot in the next round, as it would keep the Portuguese behind the USWNT. With Vietnam’s maximum point total being three, the U.S. would go through.

However, they would probably be going through as the group runners-up, with the Netherlands heavily favored against Vietnam. The USWNT would need Vietnam to produce a Jamaica vs. France-level shock in getting a result against the Dutch. In that case, the Netherlands would also finish with five points, but the current goal difference edge the USWNT has would give them first place.

If Vietnam managed to beat the Netherlands in this scenario, the U.S. would win the group and Portugal would climb over the Dutch on goal difference (they’d have a plus-one, while the best Netherlands GD with a loss would be zero).

USWNT loses

A 1W-1D-1L record would represent the USWNT’s worst showing in a World Cup group stage, and would almost certainly be followed by a coaching change and plenty of recriminations and fallout at U.S. Soccer.

It would not, however, guarantee elimination. Believe it or not, the U.S. could fall to Portugal and still go through.

It would take a miracle, though. A loss would see the USWNT finish on four points and (at best) a plus-two goal difference. Portugal, on six points, would definitely be ahead of the U.S., and the only way through would be a Netherlands loss to Vietnam. In that case, you’d have the U.S. and Netherlands level on four points, with Vietnam eliminated on three.

Goal difference could become a factor if the Dutch loss is by just one goal. The U.S. would have to not just lose, but get steamrolled, to end up being eliminated in that scenario.

However, a Vietnam win over the Netherlands is…let’s be generous and just call it “unlikely.” Most likely, the Oranje will be up there on seven points, meaning that a U.S. loss to Portugal would likely be just as catastrophic as you’re probably thinking.

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USWNT player ratings: Disappointing showing vs. Netherlands ends in draw

A good start and finish sandwiched some worrying stuff for the USWNT

The U.S. women’s national team was far from its best against the Netherlands, struggling for a long spell in the middle of the match before recovering for a 1-1 draw.

Jill Roord’s goal on the first shot conceded all tournament by the USWNT deflated the group, and until Dutch star Daniëlle van de Donk clattered into club teammate Lindsey Horan, it was starting to get hard to see a way back in for the favored Americans.

However, Horan — after a fairly heated argument with van de Donk in the seconds that followed — powered home a header, and the U.S. took the game over for the final half-hour.

The good news? Those final minutes were the “real” USWNT. The bad news? They arrived for a reason the team can’t control, and since a winner didn’t arrive (nor did any substitutions after Rose Lavelle’s entry at halftime), the flaws on the day aren’t going to be papered over by three points.

With all that in mind, let’s dig into who delivered, and who didn’t.

As a reminder, here’s the Pro Soccer Wire player rating scale:

Our scale:

  • 1: Abysmal. Literally any member of our staff would have been been able to play at this level.
  • 6: Adequate. This is our base score.
  • 10: Transcendent, era-defining performance. This is Carli Lloyd vs. Japan in the 2015 final.

USWNT lineup vs. Netherlands: Unchanged 11 sees Rose Lavelle start on bench

Fans hoping to see Lavelle will have to wait

The U.S. women’s national team has named an unchanged lineup for its attention-grabbing World Cup clash with the Netherlands.

The pairing, a rematch of the 2019 final, had been eagerly anticipated since the draw placed both sides in Group E, and Vlatko Andonovski has decided to make no alterations to a side that opened the 2023 edition with a 3-0 win over Vietnam.

That means no starting role for Rose Lavelle, despite speculation ramping up that the star attacking midfielder would get the nod after she appeared in the team’s pre-game press conference. Lavelle scored a triumphant goal against the Dutch in the 2019 final, and has been working her way back from a knee injury for months. The OL Reign playmaker played 27 minutes in the USWNT’s opener.

Per U.S. Soccer, all 23 players in the squad remain available, meaning that the USWNT has not picked up any knocks in training or that may have materialized during a physical battle with Vietnam.  Striker and co-captain Alex Morgan acknowledged that the U.S. was not “always clicking” in that match, but Andonovski apparently saw enough positives to retain the exact same starting lineup to take on the Oranje.

USWNT lineup vs. Netherlands

(4-3-3): Naeher; Fox, Ertz, Girma, Dunn; DeMelo, Sullivan, Horan; Rodman, Morgan, Smith

Netherlands lineup (3-5-2): Daphne van Domselaar; Sherida Spitse, Stefanie van der Gragt, Dominique Janssen; Victoria Pelova, Daniëlle van de Donk, Jackie Groenen, Jill Roord, Esmee Brugts; Katja Snoeijs, Lieke Martens

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Graham Hansen critical of Riise as Norway’s World Cup hopes fade

Graham Hansen: “I feel I have been stepped on for a year”

Norway’s World Cup is rapidly spinning towards becoming a debacle.

The favorites in Group A suffered a stunning loss in the tournament’s first game to New Zealand, a result compounded by a flat, mystifyingly conservative performance.

Head coach Hege Riise then shocked most observers by announcing that she would be dropping Barcelona duo Caroline Graham Hansen and Ingrid Engen for their second match against Switzerland.

Norway would go on to register a scoreless draw against the Swiss, a result that only just barely kept the Gresshoppene alive in a group they were expected to stroll through.

Graham Hansen and Engen would both figure into the match as substitutes, but after the game, it sounded like that choice went down like a lead balloon.

“It’s tough. I don’t know what I can say,” Graham Hansen told broadcaster ViaPlay at full time. “There’s not much I can say, I feel like I’m standing here with my hands tied.”

“I feel I have been stepped on for a year. People talk all the time about standing together as a team and a nation, but I feel that in the last year I’ve just accepted [this treatment],” continued Graham Hansen. “I’m not going to go into who here in the press, but perhaps you understand between the lines what is happening and where the shoe is pressing.

“It’s not like you should get anything for free in this life, but I thought I had earned a certain respect. It wasn’t like that. Maybe you have to look at yourself in the mirror and believe less about myself.”

Speaking to Norwegian broadcaster TV2, Graham Hansen added that she disagreed with the rationale Riise apparently gave for the decision.

“I do not agree with the justification, or that one is put out in that way. That’s how it is,” said Graham Hansen. “I can’t create any chaos no matter how much I want to. I don’t want to be a bitter egoist who only thinks about herself.”

Reporters asked Riise about Graham Hansen’s remarks in a post-match press conference, but the coach was not inclined to discuss them at length.

“I don’t think I should comment on that. Caro will be responsible for that. I haven’t seen it or heard it, so I can’t relate to [her comments],” said Riise. “I made an assessment of what we have been working on for a long time, ever since we arrived… These are things we will handle internally. There is a lot of frustration that we didn’t win. Caroline is entitled to be frustrated and entitled to express her option.”

Hegerberg injury more trouble for Norway

Graham Hansen’s discontent isn’t Norway’s only problem. Star striker Ada Hegerberg withdrew literally during the team’s last huddle before kicking off with an apparent groin injury.

Norway scrambled to add Sophie Román Haug to their starting lineup, with Hegerberg playing no part in the match.

The Lyon forward took to social media to say that she felt “discomfort” in a sprint after the national anthems, and that there was a collective agreement that playing would have been too great a risk.

Norway may not have been listed among the absolute favorites in Australia and New Zealand, but with Graham Hansen, Engen, Hegerberg, and Chelsea playmaker Guro Reiten, they have the talent to trouble any team on the planet.

However, this rocky start to the World Cup is coming after a disastrous Euro 2022 that saw them lose 8-0 to England and crash out in the group stage. Despite her legendary status as a player during Norway’s glory days, Riise appears to be facing a daunting task to get the team back on course.

As things stand, Norway must beat the Philippines to have a chance of escaping a group they were supposed to win handily. They’ll very likely need to do so by multiple goals as well, given that a draw or a New Zealand win in the group’s other game would leave Norway tied with either the hosts or Switzerland on four points.

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Three things on the USWNT opening the World Cup in completely okay fashion

Vlatko Andonovski made some big calls against Vietnam, with some working better than others

The U.S. women’s national team got off to a winning start — if not an imperious one — at the World Cup.

A 3-0 victory over Vietnam didn’t quite live up to some outsized expectations, but when you consider that Alyssa Naeher barely even touched the ball with her feet, much less her hands, it was also a functional, easing-into-it kind of performance. Vietnam was more physical and more organized than Thailand (who infamously fell to the USWNT 13-0 at the last World Cup), and they recently gave Germany a more difficult time than they did the U.S.

In other words, while it wasn’t amazing, it also wasn’t bad. The USWNT got valuable World Cup debuts in for six starters and two substitutes, they didn’t have to run themselves into the ground to take the three points, and they showed no signs of weakness at the back. No one got hurt (though a couple of players probably have some bruises, because Vietnam got stuck the heck in), and potential knockout round opponents probably still don’t know exactly what they’re going to be facing in a couple of weeks.

With all of that glass half-full thinking in mind, here are some points worth digging deeper into from what the U.S. hopes is the first of seven straight wins.

USWNT World Cup opener vs. Vietnam gets big TV ratings

Turns out people like the USWNT

The U.S. women’s national team was on the big stage Friday night, and they drew a huge crowd.

According to Fox Sports, the USWNT’s World Cup-opening 3-0 win over Vietnam drew in 5,261,000 viewers.

That marks the second-highest figure to ever tune into an English-language USWNT group stage match, only bettered by the 5.3 million viewers who watched their 3-0 win over Chile in 2019.

Drawing on metrics from Nielsen Research and Adobe Analytics, Fox said that viewership spiked to just over 6.5 million during the game’s final 15 minutes. Additionally, the match averaged 155,821 streaming viewers, the network’s biggest figure ever for a women’s World Cup group stage match.

That’s big growth from the first U.S. game in the 2019 tournament against Thailand. That match drew a TV audience of 2,649,000, with Friday’s game representing a 99% improvement.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Telemundo, between TV and streaming, drew in around 1,000,000 viewers, a new all-time high among Spanish-language broadcasts of a women’s World Cup group-stage game in the United States.

Those figures bode well for the USWNT’s next game, a rematch of the 2019 World Cup final against the Netherlands. Like the Vietnam win, that game is set for a 9:00 p.m. Eastern kickoff on Fox (and, in Spanish, on Telemundo).

The top markets in terms of viewership share were:

  • Kansas City (5.0 rating/16 share)
  • Washington, D.C. (4.3/15)
  • Hartford, Conn. (3.9/11)
  • Austin, Texas (3.7/13)
  • San Francisco (3.6/15)

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