I've searched down 3 pages to find a women's football thread?

[Janik]

Huge win, both in importance and margin, for West Ham at Reading today. 5-0 or rather 0-5. It was three only 11 minutes in and the scoring was done for the day well before half-time. Not bad for a side who were bottom with just two previous wins all season. They move up to 10th on the back of it, Aston Villa dropping to the foot in their place.

[Janik]

The two Man United vs Brighton games yesterday had roughly the same meaning for the Manchester club’s men and women, both needing points to maintain their Champions League qualifying spots for next season, but different outcomes - whilst the Men’s team somewhat luckily came back from going 1-0 down to win 2-1, the Women couldn’t find the target at all and suffered a big defeat. That allowed Arsenal, who won 4-0 at Bristol City, to climb ahead of Man U. It’s only goal difference between them, but Arsenal do have an extra game to play, and that against a team near the bottom of the league; they are now strong favourites for the last European spot.

The top two both won, but notably Chelsea put six past Birmingham whilst Man City ‘only’ won 3-0 at Spurs. That makes the gap not just 2 points but now also +5 GD in the defending champions (and CL semi-finalists) favour.

At the bottom Aston Villa lost 3-1 at Everton. Which means they stay at the foot, and that three of the bottom four all lost, so West Ham get full value for their win at Reading (see post above).

[Janik]

Oh, and Leicester City are now uncatchable at the top of the Championship, so their promotion to next season’s Super League is confirmed. I really should mention that!

Both the WSL and Championship now go on to a three week hiatus - internationals from midweek coming to the one after, then FA Cup R4 on Sunday 18th (R3, which is the last round without teams from the top two Divisions, is next Sunday).

[ursus arctos]

Further evidence of Leicester being a very well run club

[Nocturnal Submission]

Oh, and Leicester City are now uncatchable at the top of the Championship, so their promotion to next season’s Super League is confirmed. I really should mention that!

Both the WSL and Championship now go on to a three week hiatus - internationals from midweek coming to the one after, then FA Cup R4 on Sunday 18th (R3, which is the last round without teams from the top two Divisions, is next Sunday).

Chelsea play Man City towards the end of the month which, with three games remaining, looks like a title decider, though you do get the occasional slip-up against lower-placed sides.

Sam Kerr seems to have found her WSL feet now. Her finishing in recent games has been astonishing. Fran Kirby's also in a rich vein of form. They're both making Harder look ordinary, which is no mean feat.

[laverte]

Chelsea's win over Wolfsburg didn't feel as clean as the scoreline suggested, but i think they did everything right, and got lucky when they needed to. Certainly it was an improvement on past encounters.

i don't know if a date has been fixed yet for the fourth champions league quarter-final, which was postponed when five PSG players tested positive for covid. There's a very short amount of time between the international matches this coming weekend and the deadline for the game (versus OL) to be played.

It's hard to know what to make of the middle tier of D1. Reading defended very well in their previous game at Manchester City and almost held out for a draw; then they went and got blasted by West Ham. Brighton did it the other way round, getting soaked 5-0 before beating Manchester United. Despite the occasional upset, the Big Four still play too many one-sided matches, and not just against the bottom teams.

[Nocturnal Submission]

From what I saw and heard, Chelsea were very lucky against Wolfsburg, especially in the first leg. Their attack ripped our defence to shreds on a number of occasions. It was an excellent display between the sticks by Berger that kept us in the game.

[ursus arctos]

PSG-OL has been scheduled for 18 April. PSG have a league match on the 17th, but will presumably play reserves.

Though OL has had several positives of its own, and reported another this morning, so . . .

[Janik]

Despite the occasional upset, the Big Four still play too many one-sided matches, and not just against the bottom teams.

Hopefully the unusually equitable spread of funds under the new TV contract will do something about that. Though my guess is this is likely to mean more international players along the lines of Morgan at Spurs and Iwabuchi at Villa rather than the best of the local talent being spread out more evenly across the WSL.

[jefe]

NWSL is going to trial concussion substitutes. 2 per game.

[Uncle Ethan]

As mentioned on the other thread in September-ish, Sam Kerr is such a quality player that she was always going to be a superstar once she settled in. Delighted to see her showing the UK and Europe what the W-League and NWSL have known for many years.

[ursus arctos]

Just what you would want to see before a home World Cup

[Uncle Ethan]

Yes - very exciting times for Australia. Will be interesting to see how the new coach goes.

[jefe]

2 mini women's club tourneys in the summer in the US, both July 18-21: One in Portland-Thorns, Houston Dash, Barcelona, and Lyon. The other in Louisville-Racing, Red Stars, and likely Bayern and PSG.

[jefe]

Chile fly to Cameroon and get a scoreless draw, sending them to the Olympics 2-1 on aggregate.

[laverte]

It has been an eventful month. The continuing pandemic, the complaints at Birmingham City, and the attempted ESL breakaway – in whose press release women's football merited a lone sentence of supreme vagueness – have reminded everyone how women's teams are at once completely dependent on the benefactors of men's football and also still an afterthought to them, peripheral and disposable.

Simultaneously, news appeared that the English FA is progressing with its plan to pull out of financing the domestic women's super league. The original idea was for the Premier League to take it on, but the representatives for WSL teams rejected that last summer. Now the plan seems to be that the clubs and the FA would jointly own a newly created commercial rights company "alongside a new private equity backer". A majority of WSL teams would seem to prefer to remain under the umbrella of the FA for the time being, but under the current set-up, four of the clubs' six representatives on the governing body are breakaway ESL teams, and questions are being asked about their commitment to the WSL as it stands.

Lower down the pyramid, in a head-scratching move, Leyton Orient have dumped their existing women's team*, who play in the fourth tier, in order to start up a new team in the sixth tier. In truly shitty fashion, they announced the decision at the last minute, so that the existing team has only until tomorrow to procure and submit the papers it needs (with funding proposals intact) to remain in the fourth tier under a new name. i don't understand why Orient won't integrate the existing team – the players are suggesting it's about money – but it's another example of the total precariousness of the women's game.

Back at the top, having been eliminated from the Champions League and on course to fail to win Ligue 1 for the first time in 15 seasons, OL sacked their manager (and ex-Saint-Etienne player) Jean-Luc Vasseur and appointed the legendary Sonia Bompastor as caretaker. Her challenge is to defeat PSG in their upcoming league fixture to regain pole position. The Bundesliga title will probably also come down to a head-to-head, with Wolfsburg hosting Bayern next weekend, two points adrift.

Also, Fara Williams retired. A youtube complilation of her best screamers here.


*Link is to a player's twitter feed, in case you're participating in the social media boycott this weekend

[Nesta]

World cup qualifying draw for UEFA starts in a few minutes

• Pot 1: Netherlands, Germany, England, France, Sweden, Spain, Norway, Italy, Denmark
• Pot 2: Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, Scotland, Russia, Finland, Portugal, Wales
• Pot 3: Czech Republic, Ukraine, Republic of Ireland, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland
• Pot 4: Slovakia, Hungary, Belarus, Croatia, Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Israel, Azerbaijan
• Pot 5: Turkey, Malta, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Cyprus, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Latvia
• Pot 6: Montenegro, Lithuania, Estonia, Luxembourg, Armenia, Bulgaria

[Nocturnal Submission]

Chelsea beat Bayern Munich 4-1 in the second leg of their WCLSF to win the tie and make their first final.

[Southport Zeb]

Chelsea will play Barcelona after they beat PSG 2-1 today (3-2 agg)

[Nocturnal Submission]

Yes, I was surprised by that result, Lyon having won the last five finals and seven of the last 10.

TBH, I was surprised by our result too.

I gather that Emma Hayes has just dropped the F-bomb on live TV.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Lower down the pyramid, in a head-scratching move, Leyton Orient have dumped their existing women's team*, who play in the fourth tier, in order to start up a new team in the sixth tier. In truly shitty fashion, they announced the decision at the last minute, so that the existing team has only until tomorrow to procure and submit the papers it needs (with funding proposals intact) to remain in the fourth tier under a new name. i don't understand why Orient won't integrate the existing team – the players are suggesting it's about money – but it's another example of the total precariousness of the women's game.

The way women's clubs are forced to seek partnerships with men's clubs but then are kept completely at the mercy of the caprices of the management of that club while reaping very little in terms of financial rewards for the partnership just shows what a disaster the FA's management of women's football is/has been (at least outside of the top four or five biggest clubs in the country).

Hope Orient WFC can go back to their previous identity as KIKK United.

[jefe]

Mini kinda sorta tournament in Texas in mid June-USA, Portugal, Jamaica and Nigeria.

[Sam]

FIFPro announced on Thursday that they're representing four Argentina players who've made complaints of sexual abuse (in at least one case when the victim was 14 years old) against an unnamed member of either the full or youth national team setup (the previous parenthesis gives you a clue as to which of the two it is; nothing's been said publicly but one of my podcast team knows more details than have been made public for now).

Predictably, the AFA have reacted dreadfully, including claiming they know nothing about it all and don't have a clue who the accused is even though FIFPro say they've asked the AFA to remove him from his position immediately.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Congratulations to the team as a whole, Sam Kerr for winning the Golden Boot and Ann Katrin-Berger the Golden Glove:

[Logan Mountstuart]

Ooer. Chelsea are getting murdered here. Lieke Martens is such a good player.