G8 Summit at Women's World Cup

It appears that the best predictor of the Women’s World Cup quarterfinalists is membership in the G8. Six of the eight sides (Germany, France, US, Canada, England, and Japan) are in that organization. Compare that to last year’s men’s tournament, in which only two quarterfinalists (Germany and France) were members.

Yes, the US are in that list on the strength of their 2-0 win over Colombia. But at 11 v 11, the match was 0-0 and even a woman up, the US offense struggled. Fortunately the back line and Solo have remained solid and Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe had enough moments of quality to carry them through. Morgan's shot was excellent but the Colombian keeper may have been cheating to the middle in anticipation of a cross, allowing Morgan's near post shot to sneak through. Because of previous yellow cards to the starter and a straight red in this match to the back-up, that was the Colombians third string keeper.

The offense still looks slow and mechanical.  They will sorely miss Rapinoe (accumulated yellow cards) against China.  Off of recent form, that match (Friday at 7:30 on Fox) looks to be a deathly boring contest destined to be decided on penalty kicks as both teams have well-organized defenses but are severely lacking creativity on the offensive side.  To my eyes, there are at least three sides – Germany, France and Japan - looking better than the Yanks right now.

The other quarterfinal matches are:

Germany – France (Friday 4 pm on Fox - way to go FIFA – this should have been a semi or the final)

Japan – Australia (Saturday 4 pm FoxSports1)
Canada – England (Saturday 7:30 pm FoxSports1)

Fivethirtyeight has Germany, US, Japan and Canada advancing, with Germany the slight favorite to win the tournament.

Saw the Brazilian coach, after losing 0-1 to Australia, complain that the US had an easier path to the title.  Really dude?  As the 7^th ranked side, you were gifted a bracket that included no team ranked higher than 4^th and lost in the first knockout match against the 10^th ranked team.  The brackets are indeed unfairly weighted – in your favor.

Union Rollercoaster

Contrary to my expectations, the Union did indeed find their mojo out in LA – for about 20 minutes.  But they couldn’t put the ball into the net, then the Galaxy scored against the run of play.  This cycle was repeated throughout the rest of the night and the final ended 5-1 for the west coast team.  The Union were missing both Aristeguieta and LeToux, but Sapong has become the go to scorer anyway, plus the real issue is allowing five goals..  Oy, this is back to being a hard team to watch – the only club in MLS averaging less than one point per game and a goal differential seven worse than the nearest team.

But things got better on Wednesday when they took on Seattle, the team with the best record in the MLS.  But the Sounders were missing Clint Dempsey (three game suspension for paper shredding) and Obafemi Martins (injury).  Again the Union looked good out of the blocks.  Again they failed to score with the run of play - a goal was disallowed because of a foul against the keeper (soft?) and Edu missed a PK.  But Sapong did come through in the second half on an deft header from a flat Williams cross into the box.  Check out the video. Seattle woke up but - and here's where missing Dempsey and Obafemi hurt - really didn't threaten all that much.  So the rollercoaster continues with a home match against Montreal on Saturday.

Philip S points out a Chestnut Hill prodigy - Manolo Sanchez - that he coached (however briefly) made his debut for the Red Bulls last weekend and promptly set up the only goal of the match.  Taught him everything he knows, right Philip?  I was also shocked to see the Red Bulls sitting in 6^th – must have fallen a bit from their early good start.  Of course, they are also just three points out of 3^rd so there is some compression in the standings at this point.

Silly Season

Does this say Newcastle?

4,235 – number of stories linking Newcastle with possible transfer targets
0 – number of new players actually signed.

At one point Newcastle were favorites to sign Charlie Austin.  Then they weren't.  Then it wasn't clear Austin was leaving.  Now supposedly Newcastle are favorites again.  Whatever.

Though I call it the silly season, it is fascinating.  Arsenal has the signing of the summer so far, picking up keeper Petr Cech.  Chelsea’s John Terry says this is worth 15 more points for Arsenal.  I’m thinking Terry’s just saying kind things about his now ex-teammate.  Advanced metrics I’ve seen do suggest Cech is marginally better than Ospina (who will like be moved once the transfer is complete) and significantly better than Syzygy Szczesny but that doesn’t sound like a 15 point improvement.

The summer transfer window is also far and away my favorite aspect of Football Manager.  Love doing the research to see which players I want, which I can afford and which I can actually sign.  I also can’t believe I get attached to certain players.  The opportunity to get a 4-4.5 star (out of 5) keeper on a free transfer arose and I briefly hesitated out of concern about how our current 3.0 star keeper of the last two highly successful campaigns would react.  But, the upgrade was too big to pass up.  We also made improvements at striker (wait, we had the number two scorer in the EPL last year), left mid and center back.  And I still have almost $13 million in transfer funds to work with.  Preseason predictions have us in 11^th place; last year we were projected 19^th and finish 6^th so I’m hoping we have been underestimated again.