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    The overall verdict

    Bit early maybe, but so far...

    ...the quality of football has generally been very good in the games I've seen. I think the better surfaces help. But also the standard is better. Play is faster. Passes carry further and the ball moves more quickly. There is hardly any difference between watching this and watching games played by men.

    ...all-female pundit line-ups are so much better than their male counterparts. Ian Wright works as an occasional token male presence. Can we keep this for all tournaments?


    #2
    It's a great advert for 16-team tournaments also. And yeah there haven't been as many mismatches as pre-tournament England (and other) results had led me to fear. Even matches like, say, Germany v Denmark and France v Italy weren't obvious outclassings; they were one team having a very good day and their opponents being a bit off their game.

    We just need a proper humdinger-ish 3-2 or 3-3 now, which we've lacked thus far.

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      #3
      The venues, despite my misgivings, have been ok, though those grounds where there are no fans behind the goal remind me a bit of watching youth level games.

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        #4
        Leigh and the City Academy are the obvious weak links. Places like Bramall Lane and Brentford look to have been perfect venues though.

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          #5
          I've thoroughly enjoyed it and the boy has been massively engaged as well which has made me very happy. As E10 says the only thing that's been missing has been a stand out game. Fingers crossed the remaining 3 games will produce one.

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            #6
            I think quality of the defending/goalkeeping has definitely increased markedly since the last Euros, and things like pressing seem to have just suddenly appeared since the last world cup, although perhaps that's my memory playing tricks with me. I imagine the increased professionalism of the game* is probably the biggest contributor here, allowing for greater tactical awareness and stamina training.

            But anyway, of the matches I've watched, which is all barring half of the final group games, the only real dud in terms of entertainment for close game was the Sweden-Belgium semi. Of course the blow-outs haven't been that engaging once a team has hit the four goal barrier, but thankfully they haven't been too plentiful as E10 suggests.

            Also heartening to see is the attendances. The lowest has been 3,859 (at the Manchester Academy stadium), which probably would have been bigger at a different stadium, but was also larger than six of the games at the previous Euros, including one of the quarter-finals, and also larger than every single group game that didn't contain England when they last hosted in 2005.

            The main negatives for me have been the increased jingoism as "England expects", although that is certainly not unique to this tournament, or, indeed, football.

            Finishing on a positive, we had my partner's family around yesterday, and I was surprised that the normally not very progressive younger brother not only requested to watch the game while they were over (I was thinking I would be watching on catch-up this morning), but also showed a good knowledge of a decent number of games that had already been played. Even better, they didn't make any sexist comments about the quality of the play compared to the men. I know that should be the bare minimum for a decent human being, but it was pleasing.


            *certainly in the English WSL, I'm not completely au fait with other European leagues, but a quick wiki suggests that of the other semi-finalists, the Swedish league has been pro for ages, France since about 2010, while Germany is still semi-pro.

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              #7
              Originally posted by E10 Rifle View Post
              We just need a proper humdinger-ish 3-2 or 3-3 now, which we've lacked thus far.
              Didn't Portugal deliver a pair of those? Opening game was 2-2 against Austria and their second game was a narrow 3-2 loss to the Dutch. Both quite entertaining.

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                #8
                Originally posted by E10 Rifle View Post
                Leigh and the City Academy are the obvious weak links. Places like Bramall Lane and Brentford look to have been perfect venues though.
                Yes the atmosphere seems much better at the 'proper' stadiums.

                I'm sure there's reasons for this (the recent Louise Taylor article suggested not many venues had applied to be Euro stadiums), but it would have been good to have it more spread out across the country, the 3 Greater Manchester venues especially feel a bit much. If there was something as far north as Leeds or York I would have fancied a game but it all feels like it's happening a long away for a home tournament.

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                  #9
                  I think the reason is the tournament is bigger now than it was when the venues were planned a few years back. I doubt they would be chosen if the planning started now... though I don’t think either of them was ever full.

                  For all the general levelling up of standards, each of the eve-of-tournament favourites (i.e. post Putellas and Hermoso’s injuries) won their groups undefeated, and then went on to win their QFs - the SFs are exactly the line-up that would have been the consensus pick. At most we have had two minor shocks - Austria beating Norway and Belgium beating Italy. A big shock is the other thing lacking alongside a comeback win (those two Portuguese games saw them come back but only to draw, and then come back and lose anyway).

                  I would rate it as a major success in general reach and impact, but in specific playing terms only a so-so one due to the lack of truly standout games as the two most memorable were unexpected blow-outs where a supposedly strong team seriously underperformed against a presumed peer.

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                    #10
                    Next job for those selling the Women’s game is to build on the impact, as COVID and err dubious things have accidentally supplied a unique opportunity. It is entirely deliberate that the Women’s Euros and World Cups are in odd numbered years, as the Men had already taken the even ones. However the next Mens World Cup is during the European winter for murky reasons... and without COVID that would have made this summer tournament free for European audiences. But COVID happened, which means for two consecutive summers we have a Women’s tournament taking the prime billing. That is unlikely to ever happen again, so fingers crossed the most is made of it.

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                      #11
                      As somebody who lives in a host town, it's had a big impact here, and you can see interest and engagement growing as the tournament has gone on - which has possibly been helped by the increased focus on England's performance. It's also helped that there's been big travelling fanbases in town, most notably Iceland and then the Dutch yesterday. There's also a quiet recognition that something like this won't come back - there will be international matches of assorted categories at the New York in the future but not major high profile tournaments. I'd like to see the FA attempt a World Cup bid off the back of this - they might actually be able to win this one - but that would be around a decade away still and you'd assume by then the games would be in bigger grounds, unless they stick another 15k seats on the New York which it has to be said is unlikely.

                      All that said, you can see why some clubs and places might not have wanted the event. Rotherham haven't played any home friendlies this summer (same goes for Sheffield United) and from what I've heard have pretty minimal access to the ground as a whole. What with it being a big event there's big anti terror barriers up around town which was a bit of an eye opener, there's a lot of road closures, there's an area round the ground cordoned off for every game, far more than you get for high profile domestic matches and there's a lot of police. Somebody's got to pay for all that and there is the nagging fear it's going to be coming out of my council tax.

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                        #12
                        The lack of friendlies thing could be avoided by starting the tournaments earlier. This is running from 6th to 31st July (and was slated for the same weeks in the original plan for 2021), with the 2017 edition going from 16th July to 7th August. I am assuming this is taking advantage of the Women’s regular seasons starting later, end of August/start of September, as I don’t recall Mens Euros or World Cups nearly overlapping with the start of the following season - going close, yes, but there is usually at least two weeks between the end and the bigger Men’s European leagues kicking off. In this case the Men’s Championship level clubs ‘22-‘23 seasons will be underway before the Final is played as the Men’s World Cup has pushed the start of their domestic season forward.

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                          #13
                          Conversation in work today with two close colleagues, one a woman who says she's not bothered about football but watched last night's England game, the other a man who is a rugby fan and coach and ambivalent about football. Both were very positive about this competition, both the quality of play but also the atmosphere and reporting around it.

                          Male colleague said "oh, yeah, Twitter went crazy" about the third goal.

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