Off Topic Well done Lionesses

Thoroughly enjoyed the performances of our great young women in this Tournament but they’ve gone out to the side who’ll no doubt be crowned Champions(again!).Well done and thank you.

 

I’ve got to say I was really disappointed last night.

Mentally they were all over the place, Phil Neville was screaming and shouting from the touchline. His players were panicked. One girl was so intimated she couldn’t even take a throw in with Neville standing over her.

Need to improve defensively and I don’t think Neville is the right man at all. In fact I think we should have a woman boss.

On the ball though and in attacking areas we are absolutely sensational. These ladies would wallop the Ipswich Town men, that’s for sure.

It was nerves and mentality alone that cost us the game last night, just a shame it’s a long wait now for the next one. I think there will be sell out crowds here in 2021.

 

It would be interesting to see if they could cope with the physicality of the men’s game.Whilst a bit naive at times their approach to the game was a joy to watch and certainly the antithesis of Mick’s type of hoofball.

 

I think that only really comes into it in the goalkeeping and centre back positions with height rather than strength being a factor - but there are plenty of tall women out there if the talent pool was wider.

For me it's only talent pool, opportunities, coaching standards, facilities and resources.

The best player in the world is only 5'7.

 

USA were the better team. Missed penalty was frustrating but no reason to suspect we would have gone on to win in extra time. Enjoyed the tournament far more than the champions league final.

Watching the group games I had equated woman's football to league 1 and was concerned. But now I'm thinking, If that's the case, I'm less aphrensive about getting enjoyment from watching league 1.

 

The poorer teams are not even Football League level. But think about the men's game and that's true of many nations too.

Individually there are plenty of Premier League quality players in the World Cup, but not as a team yet I would say. Weakest position by far is the goalkeeping at the moment.

 

I think the women’s game is still miles behind the quality of top level men’s football. As well as the Lionesses played in this tournament, I still think this England team would not beat Ipswich Town, or many clubs in the top four divisions in English men’s football. And there’s no shame in that. Notwithstanding the obvious advantages that men have in natural physique and endurance (generally) and better training regimes at their professional clubs, the women’s game in this country was only made professional a couple of decades ago.

As for the semi final, we looked nervous and struggled to string passes together. Phil Neville’s ludicrous decision to select a centre back on penalty duties, ahead of in-form attacking players, struck me as utter tactical ineptitude. The penalty decision was also incredibly harsh on the US, since when was it a penalty when you pull your foot back to shoot and innocuously touch the defender behind? Not to mention the amount of fouling we did in the last ten minutes.

Despite a poor semi-final, the women’s team should be congratulated and will hopefully go one better than the men’s on Saturday by securing third place. Furthermore, hopefully the success of the tournament and the increase in coverage and popularity will encourage more girls and women to get involved in football and continue to build on the women’s game.

 

There are not any obvious advantages of physique or endurance. It’s (usually) a 90 minute game played by millions of amateurs, so professional athletes, male or female, nothing between them. It is a game of skill and judgement as well as performance, not just performance like 100m sprint where those tiny fractions matter between the best of the best. This was a myth perpetrated for fifty years by the FA and the establishment.

Those England ladies would absolutely batter Town. They are great tacklers, can hold the ball up, spray passes out, excellent wide play, lethal finishers. Just defensive organisation and the goalkeeper letting them down - so based on last season at least, there is no part of the game where Town's men would come out on top.

As for the women's game being professional for two decades... no, the WSL was only set up in 2011 as a summer competition between eight sides and even now the average player only gets £20k (per year, not per week!)

 

Not so much in endurance perhaps, as some studies show that women are typically fitter than men, but it's basic science that men have the biology to be more physically stronger and muscular than women. At a very basic level ,look at the most muscular a women can get and compare it to a guy. Men's bodies have more muscle than women, to deny it is to just buy into the misguided identity politics rubbish that we're equal in everything. Professional male footballers are therefore stronger and faster than women.

So no, I don't think England Ladies would 'batter' Town, because the ladies would struggle defensively, they would struggle with the physicality, they would struggle with the basic fact that Ipswich Town have far superior coaching, training, and development plans in place. The state of goalkeeping in the women's game is still generally low. I get England Ladies did well in this tournament, but the level of hyperbole gets embarrassing and naive when you start comparing them to top level professional men's football. And let's not forget they are managed by Phil Neville. Phil Neville for Christ's sake! Shouting so loud from the sidelines one of the poor players couldn't even do a throw in properly. The women's sport has nowhere near the same pull and attraction as the men's game.

What are you on about? There has been a top flight women's football division in England, sanctioned and run by the FA, since 1992. It was professional well before 2011. The league was doing fairly well until 2008 and the financial crisis where a lot of teams went into financial difficulty.

EDIT - After doing a bit more research, it seems the women's teams generally struggle to beat boys teams in pre-season matches. The USA Ladies team, then-World Champions and favourites for this tournament, lost 5-2 against FC Dallas U-15s only a couple of years ago. Manchester United Ladies, a newly formed ladies team granted, lost 9-0 against Salford Academy Boys last summer. In recent years, the Swedish and Australian Ladies teams have not only been beaten, but thrashed by U-15 and boys teams. So yeah, no chance England Ladies is beating a professional men's football team like Ipswich Town. Not for the foreseeable future anyway.

 

I'm genuinely embarrassed for you nuggets, but it shows there is a long way to go.

Ronaldo is very muscular because he trains in the gym relentlessly. He is way more muscular than the average elite footballer. But he is not anywhere near as muscular as a female body builder.

For Ipswich Town's coaching - I don't think it really is that superior. Paul Hurst tried to improve that aspect and we know how that ended up. But it is here in coaching and resources (as well as talent pool) that the disparity lies.

For the 'edit' paragraph, I am just embarrassed for you nuggets.

 

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/why-dont-men-women-play-football-together-stephanie-labbe

"Bradley says that he has tested some top-class female players who have achieved higher scores on physiological tests such as endurance. One such test, called the Yo-Yo intermittent endurance test, is similar to the beep test you may have done at school, where you have to run from one side of the gym to the other before the beep sounds. The Yo-Yo test adds brief pauses to recover between sprints. “We tested some elite female players, and there was one player in particular, they would get a score of about 2,800 metres,” Bradley says. “An average for a male player in the Premier League might be 2,400 metres.”

There are some female players, then, who could potentially match or outperform their male peers on physical performance."

- and I think we can safely say that Ipswich Town players are nowhere close to the average Premier League player physically.

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/stephanie-labbe-soccer

"I’m around 5′ 10″ and strong, but I doubted whether I was physically capable of handling the weight training on top of practice. The volume was insane. It wasn’t like anything I had experienced before — and I’ve been playing with the Canadian women’s national team for years. Honestly, there were squat days when I wanted to ask my coach to cut my reps because I was so exhausted, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to recover in time to hop into goalkeeper training.

But I kept going. I didn’t scale things back. I wanted to make that team so bad, and I loved the feeling that came along with not knowing how things would turn out. Of knowing that I needed to work harder than I had ever worked before if I was going to have a real shot.

And the cool thing was that every day I could feel my legs getting stronger. My hands quicker. My passes smarter. I was proving to myself that I could hang.

Something that seemed like it might be impossible when I started, was suddenly becoming very … real. And it became clear to me that in some ways I’d been selling myself short by assuming back then that I wouldn’t be able to hack it on a men’s team. After a while, I couldn’t help but wonder where that self-doubt had come from in the first place."

You are also assuming that football is all about physicality, which it isn't.

 

Hang on, so I provide you with evidence of top international ladies teams being thrashed by boys teams and you're embarrassed for me? I know you like to regularly take the contrarian opinion on here, and relish an argument regardless of the subject, but you've not really got much to back you up on this one. I mean why stop at Ronaldo when comparing to a female body builder? Compare a male body builder to a female body builder and there's your argument over right there.

I'm supportive of the women's game, I've watched most the England matches this tournament, and I believe that giving the women's World Cup the current level of coverage will be beneficial and advantageous to their game. I'm all for that. But it's way behind the quality of top level men's football. Maybe in ten or twenty years time the divide will be bridged more, as budgets increase and interest rises.

Regarding your 'evidence' post, you've 'embarrassed' yourself with your link to Stephanie Labbe. Just because a former Canadian international goalkeeper, who has played at the Ladies World Cup and won an Olympic bronze medal, had a few decent training sessions with a fourth-tier men's team in the USA does not mean anything in relation to our debate about international ladies teams potentially beating top-level men's teams, including Ipswich Town. Some women might be fitter than men, as per the bleep test, but why does senior women's football teams consistently fail to win in matches against boys?

The crux of the matter is the female football game still needs time to develop and grow. The logical next step is the have mixed gender teams and develop things from there. In the latest Soccer Aid match, the female professional footballers looked better than the male celebrities, as you'd expect, but struggled against retired male professionals. With more exposure playing with men, the divide may be bridged. We're nowhere near it right now.

 

The Stephanie Labbe article is particularly interesting precisely because she talks about the intensity of conditioning and training compared to what she faced in the women's set up and precisely because it wasn't even elite level. That is where the gap is.

For many years we were told that girls just weren't interested in playing football. But we know that now not to be the case. Give it 20 years, when the girls inspired by the game finally coming out of the dark ages are coming through and the repression and sexist attitudes will be consigned to the dustbin of history.


Now why am I embarrassed for you? You've clearly done a quick Google otherwise you wouldn't be using all of these examples.

Australia women vs Newcastle Jets U15s

- A friendly game with rotation throughout, much like SoccerAid
- No overseas-based Australian women players
- There were no regular games for the women's players that did feature

Man United ladies had just formed as you noted.

The US game was a kick about, described as a 'scrimmage' by Dallas on an artificial practice pitch after which the ladies posed for photos smiling with the boys. When the headlines surfaced Dallas deleted their article about it, which is a shame for the boys.

So we're pretty much left with: Sweden Ladies played AIK U17s in a friendly and it finished 3-0. Big deal.

I didn't know this when I said it's embarrassing. It's just pretty obvious these matches mean **** all just as Brazil getting walloped 7-1 in a proper match when they are at fall strength and trying very means **** all in terms of the ability of Brazilian footballers (5 World Cups?) or Town beating Man United 3-2 didn't stop them getting walloped 9-0 at Old Trafford with virtually the same side.


Anyway, it will never get to zero for physicality but that doesn't necessarily matter and here's why:

- It may be that the best 20% or 30% or 40% of women are physically better conditioned than the worst 20% or 30% or 40% at an elite level, say, the Premier League.
- Maybe the women will work harder and compete with or better the elite men.
- Physical condition isn't necessarily such an important factor. It's certainly not a factor in swerving a 30 yard free kick into the corner of the net.
- Most relatively fit people can run around a football pitch for 90 minutes, never mind elite athletes, so stamina isn't likely to come into it.
- Pace is an attribute that we typically associate with wingers. Then again, Waddle was never much of a sprinter, it was all about what he could do with his feet. Some players are slower than Brexit.
- Centre backs and 'keepers tend to be tall and that's the really obvious difference, but that's only three positions on the pitch and there are plenty of women well over 6'.
- The role of goalkeeper has changed completely beyond recognition in the last 30 years since the back pass was banned and the game will continue to evolve.

So the point is, all else equal those physical margins are going to be relatively small, maybe even completely insignificant given all the other factors.

The England women's team (yes competing against the best women) showed so much more skill and attacking prowess than we have seen from Town that I think five or six of those ladies could dramatically improve the Town side. Four years ago based on the last Women's World Cup and with Town challenging for the Play Offs? I would have said no way.

 

My main point is that the gap between standards of training, conditioning, and development is too distant. While it is slowly being closed with likes of Manchester City Ladies using the same facilities as the men’s and academy teams, the Ladies sides are still at least a decade behind catching up to the standards and ingrained development in men’s teams. This is the main reason why our Ladies team would struggle against effectively any men’s team in the top three to four divisions.

The second factor to consider is that men are naturally stronger and fitter than women at the top levels of almost all sports. Compare and contrast world and Olympic records and times between men and women across disciplines like sprinting, endurance races, marathons, shot put, javelin, swimming, and jumping. Men have the better times, and sometimes by considerable margins. Male tennis players hit faster and harder serves and shots. So male footballers will have a natural advantage there.

Did you watch the semi final against the USA, Hampy? I wouldn’t call England that decisive and potent in attack. We were mostly on the back foot and the USA strangely sat back when they dominated the first half. The move for our goal was good. While you can scoff at particulars about the friendlies listed, that is evidence and shows women teams consistently losing by heavy margins to boys teams. Will we ever see an exhibition female and male teams play against one another? Probably not because I think the result will be confidently predicted. Therefore the argument is hypothetical but I would not be so confident the England Ladies team would beat top men team opposition. The correct next step would be a mixed gender league, if there is the appetite to grow it.

 

England ladies will never challenge for top honours until they get the basics right, the passing is abysmal and I lost count of the number of times they gave the ball to the opposition putting themselves under pressure, the midfield is ineffectual in winning the ball and when they are in possession they invariably give it away, 2nd choice keeper is poor and no substitute for Bardsley, on field decisions are poor, White is scoring freely so we let a defender take a crucial penalty with the obvious result, there are good things but so much improvement needed and the opposition will only get stronger.

 

Yes I watched it Nuggets, by all means skip back to my first post on the thread for my assessment.

I don’t have any interest in a mixed gender league, but perhaps a mixed knockout competition like the Wimbledon doubles would be fun.

The next century in sport is going to be interesting because we are going to have transgender and non binary athletes to incorporate somewhere and then we will have some people with machine components - artificial or enhanced limbs, organs, and mental capabilities.

Sooner or later there will be some regulation about how human you have to be to compete.

 

I launched into a quick Google search for results in direct competition between Male and Female sports. Invariably it came out as a male Victory or that the males were given a handicap of some description. What is clear though it's never been done in full heat of competition.

I think individual results are a little misleading anyway. For 10 years we've been regularly embarrassed by lower league footballers. For that reason I remain convinced the Lionesses would trash Ipswich Mens

 

They struggled again last night ...

 

...and the side they would have taken to extra time had their penalty been converted won the final comfortably.

Third place matches should be replaced with an all star or legends charity match.