The Best and the Worst

Best game – Germany 2 Brazil 0. The best of the best. Strong, organised, clinical Germany versus fast, expressive, skilful, Brazil.

Best player - Marta. But perhaps she could pass the ball a little more next time.

Best fans - All so good, but possibly Ghana for the singing and the dancing.

Best mascot - England’s panda.

Best prediction - ”Do you want to know who will get the trophy? The winner!” Joseph S. Blatter.

Best headline – “Come on … Brazil?” – from the local sports daily after China had just been utterly humiliated by the South Americans, but in the knowledge that a Brazilian victory against Denmark would all but assure the hosts’ qualification for the next round.

Worst game – Germany 11 Argentina 0. Yes, some of the goals were excellent, but this got the tournament off on completely the wrong foot. Women’s football is not the joke this scoreline suggests.

Worst fans – those who booed the Japanese anthem and players.

Worst pitch – Shanghai’s Hongkou Stadium, before it was relaid just before the final.

Worst organisation – the stuttering re-scheduling of the final group games due to typhoon Wipha.

Worst excuse – “Due to Typhoon Wipha, we change the way to provide press conferences passes” Hangzhou Dragon Stadium.

Worst lunch – the plain, dry, chewy bagguette at Hangzhou’s Dragon Stadium.

Worst aspect of play – goalkeeping (Germany’s clean-sheet-queen Angerer aside). And some disappointing diving from Brazil’s players at times.

Worst idea – perhaps the US decision to drop Hope Solo before crashing out to Brazil or maybe Solo’s own public disgust at the decision which led to her dropping from the entire squad for the third place match?

Some thoughts on the tournament

A record-breaking World Cup in the world’s most populous nation delivered plenty of surprises (some welcome, others not) but in the end it was the reigning champions Germany who went away with the trophy.

The opening game was, thankfully, misleading. Germany’s 11-0 destruction of Argentina was far from representative of an increasingly professional, sophisticated and competitive international women’s game. The gaps between the best teams and the good teams is appreciably smaller and the technical standard is rising all the time.

In terms of quality, questions remain over the general quality of goalkeeping. Keepers from Argentina, Ghana and even the US’s Briana Scurry gave performances they will be glad to quickly forget. Having said that, the runaway player of the match in the final was the penalty-saving German goalkeeper, Nadine Angerer.

The fact that the top four teams yet again included Germany, the USA and Norway makes the Women’s World Cup look a little like the closed shop of the English Premier League. Only Brazil posed a genuine threat to the “old guard”. The speed and flair of Marta, Daniela and Cristiane up front lit up the tournament and they fully deserved their “Most Entertaining Team” award. Next time they will look to add a true killer instinct to their play. For all their improved teamwork, they remain a side of great individuals rather than a great side.

FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter has been just one of those praising the increased techincal skills and tactical sophistication almost universally across the board. Argentina, Ghana and New Zealand particularly failed to impress, but most other teams were closely matched in the battle for the knock out stages.

North Korea did not quite produce the shocks expected – for all their strength and speed, they were unable to take full advantage of their chances on goal. England gave a much improved showing – they were the only team to stop Germany from scoring. Norway aside, Scandinavia was disappointed as Denmark and Sweden both crashed out in the first round. While the hosts China blew hot and cold.

The Brazilian team is an interesting case study for looking at the women’s game as a whole. As they collected their silver medals from the podium, a couple of them held up a banner begging for more support from their federation. The opportunistic announcement from the Brazilian football association (CBF) of a new women’s league was announced with glee by Blatter, who had faced criticism just days before over the CBF’s treatment of the women’s game. It has aroused a little more scepticism in the Brazilian media, who claim the details are far too sketchy to take seriously. Time will tell whether their commitment is a fleeting attempt to bask in the glow of their girls’ excellent displays.

FIFA’s 4th Women’s Symposium, held in Shanghai’s plush Grand Hyatt hotel and timed to coincide with the final games, tried to address these very issues of sustaining and developing interest in the women’s game. With near capacity crowds across China and high TV audiences all over the world (the UK’s first channel, BBC1 broadcast a women’s football match for the first time ever) there are certainly firm foundations upon which to build.

The Symposium gave plenty of concrete examples and proven principles for how to develop clear, strategic plans for development. FIFA’s specific funding allocation for women’s football is to be doubled from 10% to 20%. There will always be calls for more, but games like (among others) England v Germany, Brazil v Denmark and the final show that the women’s game is not merely an inferior side-show to the main event of the men’s game.

In fact, the men’s game could learn a few things from the women’s. You’d have to go back a long way to find a men’s World Cup with no straight red cards, and yet that is what this women’s tournament has achieved. No crowding of the referees, no spitting, no serious injuries caused by foul play.

The Local Organising Committee will be happy to claim a similarly clean record for themselves. Stadia were nearly full. Many may have been block bookings and discounted tickets for school children, but, as I have argued before, this is no bad thing. The local fans entered into the spirit of the tournament with volume and enthusiasm. This being China, there was some disappointing booing of the Japanese national anthem and even some of their players. Added to the trouble caused when China hosted the Asian Cup in 2005, this will need serious attention for next year’s Olympics.

Blatter has said that from all he has seen, he is in no doubt that China could, if it chose to, bid for the FIFA World Cup (the men’s competition, that is). Perhaps. Better English would be necessary. And the combined logistics of the largest single sport event in the world would certainly require better planning than the confused handling of fixture changes due to typhoon Wipha. There was also the largely uninvestigated “spying” scandal where Denmark’s training session before they faced China was disrupted. Journalists in Hangzhou also reported receiving uncomfortably close supervision from local authorities. Again, the eyes of a larger portion of the world will be much less forgiving with larger events like the Olympics and any future men’s World Cup.

Record TV audiences saw the final, and a record number of broadcasters picked up the whole tournament. It will be hoped this is a good stepping stone to getting more and more recognition for the women’s game across the world day by day. Not just every four years.

Scapegoat Wipha

HANGZHOU, 27 September 2007

Already blamed for the bungled rearrangement of matches at the end of the group stages, for the temporary closure of Media Centres, for re-allocation of spaces for press conferences and the mixed zones, the typhoon that never really was has now been blamed for the poor state of the pitch at the Hongkou Stadium.

In a press release the Media Department of the Local Organising Committee says: “Due to damage suffered during the recent Typhoon Wipha that struck the Shanghai area, the local Venue Organizing Committee decided to renew the pitch at Hongkou Stadium to meet the high standards necessary for the upcoming final of the FIFA Women’s World Cup”

Anyone who attended the opening fixture in Shanghai could have seen that even before the typhoon (which, in the end, did not directly hit the city)  the patch-work pitch at Hongkou should not have been passed fit for the biggest tournament in women’s football.

In addition to this, the chronology of events seems a little confused. The press release says that an inspection was made of the pitch “On the morning of September 25″ followed by “a solution search meeting”. This suggests that it was at this point they decided a new turf was needed. However, it goes on to say that a “Pitch Maintenance group” has been working on the project since September 19. These hard workers have “managed to select, transport the new grass and implement the project in a short time.”

Which is all very nice. The pitch desperately needed replacing. But why did no one think to do so before? Why wait until a week before the final when the tournament has been in planning stages for years? Why close the Hongkou Stadium closed for a year to prepare for the tournament without making sure the pitch is 100% perfect?

Answers came there none.

We are promised a “first class pitch for the final”. Possibly the best outcome would be if, after the final day, nobody is talking about the pitch.

England’s secret weapon

Which one is Casey Stoney actually listening to?

New Pictures page

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