Post by staggerstag on Jul 26, 2021 19:33:39 GMT
I was going to watch the 9am game on Tuesday between USA and Australia Women Olympics.
Table looks interesting with 1 group game to play. If Australia beat USA by two clear goals, the USA is out, and it could be a fiery encounter.
That is until you realize that there are only 3 groups and of the 12 teams in the 3 groups, 8 go through (top two plus two best 3rd place finishers)
You'd have to say that if you are going to watch any games at all, better to start with the knockouts, for crying out loud.
Table looks interesting with 1 group game to play. If Australia beat USA by two clear goals, the USA is out, and it could be a fiery encounter.
| PLD | PTS | GD | |
| Sweden Women | 2 | 6 | 5 |
| USA Women | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| Australia Women | 2 | 3 | -1 |
| New Zealand Women | 2 | 0 | -6 |
That is until you realize that there are only 3 groups and of the 12 teams in the 3 groups, 8 go through (top two plus two best 3rd place finishers)
You'd have to say that if you are going to watch any games at all, better to start with the knockouts, for crying out loud.
Football’s Olympic status is too much of a joke for it to remain in the Games
For all the undoubted apathy out there, let’s not pretend there isn’t an audience for this stuff. Four years after London, I sat in the top deck of the Maracanã to watch Neymar’s Brazil claim gold against Germany: arguably, the only one of the host nation’s 19 medals it truly cared about. But even this moment of cathartic grace came at the end of a painfully forgettable tournament defined by half-bothered teams and the sight of Serge Gnabry running at a terrified Fiji defence on the way to a 10-0 Germany win.
This, perhaps, is the biggest problem with Olympic football: a problem that feels specific to men’s football, but may in time come to subsume the women’s game too. Nobody really seems to know what it is: a development competition, a star vehicle, a sideshow knockabout.
So Spain, with Pedri, Marco Asensio, Pau Torres and Dani Olmo, have sent pretty much an international-strength squad. France have a bunch of academy prospects captained by the 51-year-old Tigres striker André-Pierre Gignac. New Zealand have called up Chris Wood and Winston Reid. Manchester United seem quite happy to relinquish control of Eric Bailly to Ivory Coast for several weeks.
What is the meaning of all this? What does football add to the Olympics other than swelling an already packed programme in a variety of distant satellite venues? What does the Olympics add to football other than stuffing a few more fixtures into an already packed calendar?
Naturally, whenever anyone suggests scrapping any longstanding event or convention you get the usual howls of protest. And perhaps there are ways of reforming Olympic football: a dedicated slot in the calendar, a more intelligible qualification process, doing away with over-age players.
But the acid test of its worth is this: if, somehow, the rest of the Olympic men’s football tournament were quietly shelved, the medals put back in a drawer, the players discreetly spirited back on an overnight plane, would anyone really notice? Exactly.
www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/26/footballs-olympics-status-is-too-much-of-a-joke-for-it-remain-games
For all the undoubted apathy out there, let’s not pretend there isn’t an audience for this stuff. Four years after London, I sat in the top deck of the Maracanã to watch Neymar’s Brazil claim gold against Germany: arguably, the only one of the host nation’s 19 medals it truly cared about. But even this moment of cathartic grace came at the end of a painfully forgettable tournament defined by half-bothered teams and the sight of Serge Gnabry running at a terrified Fiji defence on the way to a 10-0 Germany win.
This, perhaps, is the biggest problem with Olympic football: a problem that feels specific to men’s football, but may in time come to subsume the women’s game too. Nobody really seems to know what it is: a development competition, a star vehicle, a sideshow knockabout.
So Spain, with Pedri, Marco Asensio, Pau Torres and Dani Olmo, have sent pretty much an international-strength squad. France have a bunch of academy prospects captained by the 51-year-old Tigres striker André-Pierre Gignac. New Zealand have called up Chris Wood and Winston Reid. Manchester United seem quite happy to relinquish control of Eric Bailly to Ivory Coast for several weeks.
What is the meaning of all this? What does football add to the Olympics other than swelling an already packed programme in a variety of distant satellite venues? What does the Olympics add to football other than stuffing a few more fixtures into an already packed calendar?
Naturally, whenever anyone suggests scrapping any longstanding event or convention you get the usual howls of protest. And perhaps there are ways of reforming Olympic football: a dedicated slot in the calendar, a more intelligible qualification process, doing away with over-age players.
But the acid test of its worth is this: if, somehow, the rest of the Olympic men’s football tournament were quietly shelved, the medals put back in a drawer, the players discreetly spirited back on an overnight plane, would anyone really notice? Exactly.
www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/26/footballs-olympics-status-is-too-much-of-a-joke-for-it-remain-games