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USA squeeze into World Cup knockout stage after surviving late Portugal scare
(www.theguardian.com)
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On the one hand, I’m American and dominance in the women’s game is my birthright (or would be if I weren’t way older than the Women’s World Cup and Olympic tournaments), so it’s frustrating to see the team struggling to mesh as we ease into the next generation.
On the other, it’s good to see competition increasing and other countries investing in their setups. A lot of this is down to opponents improving rather than the Americans cratering. It’s good for the game and makes for better storylines.
I think the Americans do seem to be performing rather poorly this go round. Really hoping Sweden can pull off the upset (I'm originally Swedish myself) in the knockout rounds, though.
Yeah we're going to start to see a lot of that with a lot of EUFA clubs having mirrored women's programs on a professional level. Like over half the EPL teams having a WSL squad (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, etc). And US women's pro soccer just can't seem to take a foothold despite it being the most popular sport for young girls here.
Mostly it's the horrible coaching, other big teams are performing as expected