Megathread for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_FIFA_Women's_World_Cup
starts this Thursday, July 20th, and runs for the next month.
here is a schedule that will automatically convert match times to your local timezone:
https://www.espn.com/soccer/schedule/_/date/20230720/league/fifa.wwc
I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who lives in Australia or NZ. what have the preparations been like? are you planning on attending any matches?
or, anyone who is travelling from other countries to attend - what has your experience been like?
I'll be watching on YouTube TV. it's one of the more expensive streaming options (currently 73 USD/mo) but I've used it for men's and women's world cups since 2018 (as well as several years of live & time-shifted American football). they've had one glitch in all that time, during a 2018 semi-final match, but otherwise it's been damn near perfect. I'd definitely recommend it if you can afford it.
please limit discussion of other streaming options to legal ones only - linking to pirate streams could get Tildes and Deimos into copyright trouble.
like probably a lot of people, I'll be time-shifting matches because I'm on the US west coast and many will be inconveniently timed (but you better believe I'll be awake at 3am on Sunday Aug 20th for the final)
to avoid spoiling matches for people who haven't seen them yet, please use <details> tags:
<details>
<summary>spoilers for Foo vs Bar match</summary>
wow I can't believe so-and-so scored 15 goals
</details>
turns into:
spoilers for Foo vs Bar match
wow I can't believe so-and-so scored 15 goals
an ELI5 of the World Cup format, for anyone unfamiliar with it:
group stage
this is the first part of the tournament, lasting until August 3rd
there are 32 teams that qualified. each team is assigned at random to a group of 4 teams. the groups are lettered A through H.
during the group stage, each team plays 3 matches, one against each team in its group.
at this point, draws are possible. if they're tied after 90 minutes, it’s a draw. even a 0-0 draw is possible.
standing in the group is determined by points - 3 points for winning, 1 point for a draw, 0 for a loss. thus, losing one of your three group stage matches isn’t necessarily fatal to a team’s chances, but it does seriously hinder them.
in each group, the top two teams by number of points advance to the knockout stage. the bottom two teams are eliminated. (if two teams are tied on points, there are somewhat complicated tiebreaking rules)
(this can lead to a phenomenon called the “group of death” where one group, purely by random chance, has three or four particularly strong teams, of whom only two can advance)
knockout stage
the group stage whittled 32 teams down to 16.
from this point on, it’s a single-elimination tournament - lose and you go home, win and you stay in.
this proceeds through the group of 16, then the quarterfinals (8 teams), the semi-finals (4 teams), and the finals (2 teams). a 3rd-place final is also played between the two teams that lost their semi-final matches.
draws are no longer possible in the knockout stage. a match that is tied at the end of 90 minutes will play 30 minutes of extra time. if they're still tied, it goes to a penalty shootout until someone wins.
penalty shootouts are one of the most exciting (for spectators) and stressful (for players) things in the entire game. if you haven’t seen it before, I would highly recommend this video, 5 minutes long, showing the highlights of the penalty shootout that decided the final of the 2022 men’s World Cup between Argentina and France.
It's always worth shouting out The Guardian's fantastic football coverage. They have a top-notch guide to all 736 players at the tournament that can be found here.
a 2-minute ad for the cup, from the French telecoms company Orange:
original, in French
and the English version
spoilers (yes, spoilers for the ad)
they show highlights from the French men's national team, scoring amazing goals
then reveal that all the footage was digitally edited - essentially a deepfake
all the highlights they showed actually came from the French women's team
I thought this was an incredible way to address the criticism from some football fans that they'll only watch the men's games because women's football is less interesting or exciting or whatever.
also, for clarity - I'm the OP, so all the "I" statements in the topic text above are mine. Deimos helpfully edited the topic author to be the generic "Tildes" user so that I wouldn't have to worry about getting match spoilers in my inbox.
I was just thinking that I should get more into Women's
SoccerFootball. This seems to be a really good opportunity to do so! What are some highlights that y'all looking forward to? Any particular history that I should pay attention to?how familiar are you with men's football / the game in general? and, what country are you from / will you be rooting for?
for the US for example, here's the Guardian's team guide from the coverage that @mycketforvirrad linked to.
the US men's national team is a bit of a perennial disappointment, having failed to qualify at all for the 2018 cup. they made it out of the group stage in 2022, beating some expectations but that's very much damning with faint praise. (they also drew a fairly easy group, with England as a shoe-in to advance and the US only needing to do better than Wales and Iran)
by comparison, our women's national team is incredible. they've won the world cup 4 times, including the two most recent in 2015 and 2019.
as commonly happens with a defending champion like that, a big focus of attention for the US team has been keeping the older returning players healthy while speculating on which younger players will break out as stars.
Megan Rapinoe announced she'll be retiring later this year. extremely well-deserved, at 38 she's the former team captain and among other things won both the Golden Boot and Golden Ball at the 2019 world cup.
I haven't followed the roster changes very much but the up-and-comer I've heard the most about has been Sophia Smith - she was the MVP of last year's NWSL season.
Not familiar at all; I have some friends that have encouraged me to start watching, especially since I live in Seattle! I did see that Megan Rapinoe was retiring, but I figure that means it's a good time to get to know some of the new folks along with people who have been watching for a long time.
The Guardian's coverage seems really good; any other sources I can check day-to-day? I figure generally people try to avoid spoilers and then watch the games on their own time?
Since the US team is the previous winner, everyone else is obligated to call it women's soccer I think.
What are the streaming services that one can watch the games on? I don't currently pay for a cable/live tv sub, but if I do what are my options?
YouTube TV is the one that I've used and can personally recommend.
this Yahoo Sports article has some other recommendations:
Sling TV's "blue" plan appears to be the cheapest option at around 40 USD/mo (and a half off deal for the first month)
Fubo TV's "pro" plan (confusingly, their cheapest plan) is about the same price as YouTube TV (75 USD/mo) with a 7 day free trial
they also mention that the BBC will be streaming all the games, but it's region-locked only to people streaming from the UK. the Yahoo Sports article suggests using a VPN service with a UK exit point to get around this (and they have a referral link that will give them a kickback if you sign up for the VPN service they recommend).
the VPN option would probably work, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you're already familiar with the technical details of setting up and configuring a VPN. it's likely to be the option that is slowest / has the worst video quality, since your video stream needs to get proxied from the UK. it may also break unexpectedly because BBC likely has measures in place to detect this sort of VPN shenanigans and block the IP addresses belonging to the VPN service.
group stage is over, welcome to the knockout stage
my vote for goal of the tournament (so far) is this, in the 2nd minute of France/Panama
Sweden/Italy has some great highlights, including 3 excellent goals from corners
and 2 great goals in Argentina/South Africa
For people that need a more visual schedule, this one is pretty good.
I really hope Fox doesn't drop the ball and shows full match replays for people that can't adjust their schedules.
Can’t wait to see who the breakout young players are this tournament. Dennis Rodman’s daughter is on the US team and she’s supposed to be great.
The US Netherlands match that just occurred was fantastic. Was rooting for the Netherlands but the game swung back and forth and had a really good intensity
It is incredibly good for the game that the US isn't so dominant. I've been loving all the WC debuts this year.
I had to miss the game but am going to be watching replays and followed along with news updates. Rose Lavelle makes things happen when she comes on the field IMO
Of all the games I've watched so far, this one was the most exciting!
It seems like the US creates a lot of opportunities to score, but it doesn't actually convert to goals. Netherlands had possession of the ball for longer periods of time, but the stats show that the US had way way more shots at the goal and way more corner kicks as well. I'm not actually sure what it says about either team, but I found it really interesting! In the US v Vietnam game, the US similarly created a lot more shots at the goal but it didn't really convert to many actual goals.
It also seemed to me like Netherlands was just better at keeping the ball away. Some really nice footwork and passing, it seemed like. Baseball is the main sport I watch so I'm kinda missing all the stats that are usually on hand. I'd love to see completed pass % per team (FOX seemed to provide completed pass % for a player substituting off, so it does seem like they track it).
The US created a lot of chances but they weren't really high percentage chances. A lot were from distance or very scruffy. When you look at shots on target the two sides were way closer.
Netherlands controlled the game from 15 to 62 ish, but then had a good 15 minute period where they just looked rattled and the us started turning the screw. It was a really good match overall
Football/soccer has been using a ton of stats in the last 10/15 years, but you're right in the coverage so far they haven't really shown many for some reason. I'm not entirely sure why that is - the men's world cup coverage had the stats flashing across the screen almost the entire time
Where can I find full replays? I'm in the PNW so the matches are very early in the morning here.
You would need some sort of subscription with both FOX and FS1 access; then Fox has them on their website.
Is it just me or 1. standard of goalkeeping is pretty poor (bar the handful of great saves), 2. there are heaps of teams who rely on physical side of the game as opposed to the way football should be played ie brazil,japan (love the way they play) and maybe france. Everyone else swings in crosses - lot of headed goals in this tournament.