The England womens' football team has been providing plenty of action recently. On Tuesday they beat Latvia 20-0 in a World Cup Qualifying match. Twenty! They have so far won all six of their games in group D, scoring 53 goals and conceding none. I wasn't watching because it coincided with another match in which I had that skin stuff. But would I have continued to watch such a one-sided match, once the score reached say 10-0? I'm not sure; I have no previous experience to go on.
In the mens' World Cup qualifying competition we are used to "minnows" like San Marino, Gibraltar and Liechtenstein conceding 6 or 7 and some people complain that "this is embarrassing; there should be a pre-qualifying competition to weed out the weakest nations" and others respond by asserting that these teams will learn, and eventually get better, by playing the top teams.
Overall I think the situation in that case is just about OK and I can see both sides of the argument. But twenty? What can Latvia learn by losing 20-0 to England? They already know they aren't very good, presumably, having conceded 46 goals in their five matches, but this must be horrendously demoralising. And there is a sense in which serious mis-matches undermine the integrity of sport. Had I been watching, I would almost certainly have switched off at half time with the score 8-0. No fun.
By the way, football commentators often use the "this could be a cricket score" phrase when faced with a team scoring five or six in the first half of a game, but this displays a certain ignorance of the game of cricket, where scores of two, three and four hundred are typical. Just saying.
I don’t have a settled view on the structure of women’s football but I do think 20-0 is a ridiculous outcome for international football. Perhaps the women’s game has to go through this very early phase before better quality players appear across nations.
ReplyDeleteLook at club results and you’ll see similar results. Barcelona score an average of 6 goals per game. So far this season they have scored 68, conceded 3 in 11.
Lyon average 5 goals per game. Ol. Cluj score 7 goals per game in the Romanian Super League.
Even the top 6 teams in the women’s bundesliga all average 2 goals or more per game.
If goals are what we enjoy most, It sounds like we are watching the wrong leagues.
Is there also another factor that makes women’s football a higher scoring affair, beyond gulf in ability between better and lesser clubs? I don’t know enough to say. The divergence in goals scored does seem odd.
Spare a thought for Neretva of the Croatian top division, who have conceded 90 in their last 8 games. Who’d be their keeper? At least they’ve scored 1 goal, or those numbers would look really bad.
Blimey your extensive research puts my superficial analysis in the shade. I enjoyed those details.
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