by Guest » Today, 11:40
Guest wrote: ↑Today, 11:25
Guest wrote: ↑Today, 11:20
Looking at this latest squad, with the addition of mini who will undoubtedly be included in the 18 with the understanding she could always be swapped out for an alternate if she’s not ready, do we think this group has enough in it to genuinely compete for a medal?
My personal opinion is that we would need to get incredibly lucky and have quite a few things go our way to be in with a genuine chance. I think we are lacking that proper top quality in certain areas that other teams have in abundance and our squad is also a lot thinner in quality than other teams, which in a shortened tournament where rotation will be key is quite important.
Can I envisage us getting a medal? Yes. Do I think it’s likely? Not really.
Without sounding incredibly negative and I hope I am so wrong here, I think it’s more likely we are out in the group than we are to get a medal.
(Also hoping this might work as reverse psychology and go the other way)
I don’t see it, but I’ll also say this: I saw it even less in 2021! And yet we almost made bronze. So who knows. I do think Spain are getting gold for sure. Just don’t see any team dispatching them right now. France usually choke but they do have home advantage and some of their key players back from injury. USWNT is a tossup these days. It’s one of those tournaments where we need a lot of luck on our side.
To me our chances will boil down to 3 main things:
1. Defence = can we keep clean sheets? we wont be high scoring by any means so keeping clean sheets will be vital. (a la Canada 2021 maybe)
2. injuries / rotation / tony's rotation/sub choices = can we get lucky with injuries, and can Tony make good line-up choices?
3. luck = we will need a lot of things to go our way in terms of results of others, the draw, injuries, ref decisions etc
[quote=Guest post_id=5849103 time=1716290712]
[quote=Guest post_id=5849096 time=1716290418]
Looking at this latest squad, with the addition of mini who will undoubtedly be included in the 18 with the understanding she could always be swapped out for an alternate if she’s not ready, do we think this group has enough in it to genuinely compete for a medal?
My personal opinion is that we would need to get incredibly lucky and have quite a few things go our way to be in with a genuine chance. I think we are lacking that proper top quality in certain areas that other teams have in abundance and our squad is also a lot thinner in quality than other teams, which in a shortened tournament where rotation will be key is quite important.
Can I envisage us getting a medal? Yes. Do I think it’s likely? Not really.
Without sounding incredibly negative and I hope I am so wrong here, I think it’s more likely we are out in the group than we are to get a medal.
(Also hoping this might work as reverse psychology and go the other way)
[/quote]
I don’t see it, but I’ll also say this: I saw it even less in 2021! And yet we almost made bronze. So who knows. I do think Spain are getting gold for sure. Just don’t see any team dispatching them right now. France usually choke but they do have home advantage and some of their key players back from injury. USWNT is a tossup these days. It’s one of those tournaments where we need a lot of luck on our side.
[/quote]
To me our chances will boil down to 3 main things:
1. Defence = can we keep clean sheets? we wont be high scoring by any means so keeping clean sheets will be vital. (a la Canada 2021 maybe)
2. injuries / rotation / tony's rotation/sub choices = can we get lucky with injuries, and can Tony make good line-up choices?
3. luck = we will need a lot of things to go our way in terms of results of others, the draw, injuries, ref decisions etc