Should national teams have a set XI months before the World Cup?
To men’s soccer watchers, this might seem like an odd question. Any player who has a dip in form in the Premier League or La Liga might lose his roster spot, let alone his starting spot.
But the Fox commentary team insist the time for “experimentation” is over. Time to pick a lineup and roll with it.
Is the women’s game different? Is the men’s game too unforgiving? Or are we all behind the times and not recognizing that women’s soccer actually has a club game that should matter?
(Email me, tweet @duresport, rant about this secretly on your message board or Reddit, etc.)
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From the “Isn’t it 2018?” department, we have this from Guardian contributor Caitlin Murray at the scene …
Would’ve thought most people would’ve blurred that bit of pop-culture insensitivity out of their heads by now.
Jamaica doesn’t appear to have a snazzy Twitter picture, but we’re seeing several U.S. clubs and colleges show their pride in being represented in a crucial international, including this typo the UK folks will find amusing.
Yes, Schneider plays for UNC Wilmington, about a quarter-mile from the apartment that housed your correspondent from 1991 to 1994. (Yeah, I’m kind of old.)
And the New Jersey/Wilmington/Jamaica keeper has been brilliant.
The full lineup: Sydney Schneider, Lauren Silver, Allyson Swaby, Dominique Bond-Flasza, Jadyn Matthews, Konya Plummer, Chinyelu Asher, Marlo Sweatman, Khadija Shaw, Deneisha Blackwood, Jody Brown
Your unsurprising USA starting XI, as visualized on Twitter because Twitter people like visuals …
Elsewhere in CONCACAF, Canada has qualified for the 2019 World Cup with a nail-biting win over Panama. And when we say “nail-biting,” we mean we’re glad no one got hurt in the last 15 minutes, when both teams forgot the score was 7-0 and kept barging into legal but scary challenges. Panama is seeking to qualify for the World Cup for the first time and will want to be healthy for the all-important third-place game in three days.
Panama already has one concern …
That would be Yenith Bailey, the 17-year-old keeper who was impressive against the USA’s onslaught and the outright hero of Jamaica’s shock win against Mexico, which fully expected to be packing for France by now.
Jamaica also has never qualified for the World Cup, so a likely Panama-Jamaica game on Wednesday would be an exciting opportunity for each team.
And two teams that expected to be going to France next year and have been to Cups past will not be there. Along with Mexico, that’s Costa Rica, which made the trip in 2015, fell 1-0 to Jamaica.
Nov. 5, 2010. The U.S. women took the field for the second World Cup qualifying semifinal, fully expecting to follow Canada into the comforts of automatic qualification.
The final score: USA 1, Mexico 2.
The U.S. women would have to regroup and beat Costa Rica in the third-place match just to reach a home-and-home playoff with Italy, which the USA won with moderate difficulty.
So the USA won’t take this game lightly, even with several second chances in case the unthinkable happens tonight against Jamaica. With the World Cup field expanding, CONCACAF now has three automatic berths and one team going to a playoff.
But no matter how certain those paths may seem, the U.S. women won’t want to take them. With all due respect to Robert Frost, the USA wants to take the road more commonly taken.
Beau will be here shortly, in the meantime here’s how they’re preparing for the run-in to next year’s World Cup:
For observers who last watched the US women’s national team win the Women’s World Cup in 2015, the ongoing Concacaf qualification tournament for next year’s event in France probably feels similar. The Americans finished the group stage on Wednesday having outscored their opponents 18-0 and, although they haven’t clinched a spot in the 2019 Women’s World Cup yet, they sit very close.
The reigning World Cup champions are just picking up where they left off, right? Not quite. Since winning the World Cup, it’s hardly been a smooth road for the Americans and, in many ways, they’ve come out the other side looking like a much different and more potent team than before.
You can read the full article below:
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