Womens euros 2025

[Brogue]

Oh look another thread taken over by StP’s nonsense.

[genome]

I think he's drunk

[Royal Rother]

Brilliant stuff.

Very good game. Spain technically superior but to coin that daft cliche, this England team never knows when they are beaten.

Surprised / concerned that Carter started but she was very solid. And Leah Williamson again showed so much class and composure.

Hampton had another very good game and her 2 penalty saves were decent but the 2 that Coll saved were brilliant.

I was pretty confident the Spanish sub (who couldn’t hit a barn door from what we’ve seen of her) would miss hers, although I thought she’d smash it over the bar not put it wide.

(Always amuses me when a pen is scored and it’s at a perfect savable height and nowhere near the corner but the goalkeeper has dived the other way and the commentators say it was a brilliant pen.)

[Double C]

The women's once again proving they are better then men's at football

[St Pauli]

Oh look another thread taken over by StP’s nonsense.

It was the sexism that derailed it Brogue I won’t stand for it and will always call it out. If that makes me a bad poster so be it.

[Orion1871]

[St Pauli]

Ok fair point

[6ft Kerplunk]

Wiegman deserves a job in the PL.

What a manager!

I think other teams have worked her out now. Let England have a much possession they want, get your midfield and defence really disciplined and say break us down if you can. Its just too slow in the final third in this tournament. Then hit them quickly on the break down the wings as England's wide midfielders aren't the best at tracking back. Italy's goal last night a prime example. Bronze has to go a bit more central (not that she looked over her shoulder at all) as the central defenders have had to move across but whoever was supposed to be covering back in the right hand side midfield position is nowhere to be seen. We only looked good last night from 80mins when we started to play with more urgency around the penalty area and put crosses in at pace rather than floating hopeful balls in.

Credit to the team though, they play for the full 90mins plus stoppage time never giving up and Wiegman isn't afraid of subbing off her captain and big players when things are getting down to the wire.

So yeah, hands up I was too quick to write off Wiegman. Did a decent job in the final, rode our luck a bit but against what had been the best team in the competition you have to do that.

[stealthpapes]

Bit of a shame for the otherwise outstanding AKB that her error (if it can be called that when it was really a piece of brilliance by Bonmati) cost Germany last night but the general standard of goalkeeping in this tournament has been excellent.

I predicted that would happen a few years ago, now I suspect it's the general standard of finishing that will improve massively in the next few years.

We are already seeing more and more players - like Lauren James, and Ageymang, who have the first touch and passing range of the elite men's game. That's something that has always been a differentiator, speed of transition and passing.

Hmm, not sure on Agyemang's first touch. Good pace and tenacity, eye for goal, but some of her first touches were really poor (also, that 'standard trope' of 'much better player when no time to think').

[stealthpapes]

Would you guys agree with me that the next area of big development will be in the strikers, which across the board seems to me to be a relatively weak area?

I know there are some who put in consistently decent numbers, but there's nobody who really looks really top class in the way that AKB, Bonmati and James do in their positions.

The main thing I've noticed is that there's smaller differences between players in terms of physicality - aimless crosses are pointless as there seems to be only small differences in height/leap. Players rarely get a big lead in a straight sprint.

Some ways, this is good.
Other ways, not so good.

The other big difference was in the penalties - while some penalties were leathered, a relatively higher percentage than in men's football were a lot less powerful.

Enjoyed, got to hand it to England for grit, resolve and character.

[John Madejski's Wallet]

Aside from the Sweden clusterfukk, were those pens really that bad compared to men's pens?

A hell of a lot of men's are weak and saveable

[stealthpapes]

I would go with a firm yes.

But if you want me to have a look at the stats, well, so be it. I have a feeling they're going to get Bayesian.

[Dirk Gently]

I think part of the problem may be that the overall standard of goalkeeping in the women's game is pretty poor - so players never really have to develop penalty-taking skills to any great standard in order to be successful with penalties.

But when they come up against 'keepers at the top clubs/countries who are genuinely good their penalty taking skills are shown up a bit.

[stealthpapes]

Just a basic headline analysis. I know this doesn't answer the question per se, but let's put some facts on the table first.

The average success rate in men's World Cups appears to be a shade over 70% (i.e. in a 10 penalty shootout, 7 get scored). I don't have the numbers for Euros, but as this WC total appears to be lower than penalty success rates in given leagues, I would assume its a similar success rate.



This, on the face of it, makes sense, a shoot out in an international tournament is a different beast to a penalty in a run of the mill game.

The recent womens Euros saw three shootouts - 5/14, 11/14, 4/9 - total 20 scored from 37 attempts - success rate of 55%

Where it gets hard is that penalty shootouts are rare beasts - there were none in the 2022 womens Euros, and two in the one before that (16 taken, 11 scored, short of 69% success rate).

Now, the BBC has a chart here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/ar ... 6gxqy5pyzo - that combines both in-game and shootout penalties, so almost certainly misleading, given what we've seen above.

I dimly recall research on penalty power vs success rate - higher power increases chance of missing, lower power increases chance of penalty being saved.

Anyway, I'll have a think of how to properly test the assertion. Think you'd need data of where the ball was meant to go and how hard it was kicked. My initial take was that, in both penalty shootouts I watched, there was a lot less power and placement in the penalty kicks - but with one or two outstanding outliers.

[stealthpapes]

I think part of the problem may be that the overall standard of goalkeeping in the women's game is pretty poor - so players never really have to develop penalty-taking skills to any great standard in order to be successful with penalties.

But when they come up against 'keepers at the top clubs/countries who are genuinely good their penalty taking skills are shown up a bit.

Fair.

Plus I think there's certainly something hiding in that 'world cup shootouts have a lower success rate' that could be teased out.

[Ark Royal]

Watching the team's parade was great viewing until Alex Scott asked Sarina Wiegman to dance for the crowd. Embarassing, demeaning, cringeworthy.

[The Cube]

As a gentleman of leisure I went to the victory celebration and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was much better in person than on the TV, particularly the open-top bus. It's interesting that most people wanted to see the players, but what I really wanted to see was the trophy. All good practice for next year, of course.

Footnote - on my last visit to The Mall Fabian Cancellara won, but Switzerland were nowhere to be seen today...