It seemed strange when the Women’s World Cup draw was made, but it looks even odder now as the two best teams on the planet are set to meet in a heavyweight semi-final while two teams outside the top three—one of them admittedly the reigning champions—clash in the other.
Why would you have four of the world’s top five-ranked nations in one side of the draw? It meant that, barring a mighty shock or two, No. 1 team Germany or third-ranked France would face off in the quarter-final and then take on the USA, ranked two, in the semi.
And that’s how it transpired, the Germans beating Les Bleues on penalties in the last eight and the USA comfortably knocking out 16th-ranked China despite the narrow 1-0 scoreline in that match.
The host nation Canada fortuitously landed in the easier half of the draw and, in another slice of good fortune for the Canucks, the route on which they were placed on to potentially win the trophy included a quarter-final and the final in Vancouver, where the squad has its permanently base.
So far, so good; but it all went wrong in the quarter-final when England, birthplace of the Canada coach John Herdman but not the Lionesses’ boss Mark Sampson, who is Welsh, turned up at the BC Place Stadium without having read the script and won 2-1.
If that was sad for the Canadians, and sad it was because Herdman and his players had given their all and represented their country with dignity, it was happy days all round on the opposite side of the Atlantic as it meant that England had reached a World Cup semi-final for the first time.
Not only that, it was only the third time in World Cup history that any English team—male or female—had made it to the last four. The managers of the previous two sides to have achieved the feat, Alf Ramsey in 1966 and Bobby Robson in 1990, were knighted. So, when the Queen’s Honours next come around, it will surely be ‘Arise, Sir Mark.’
Perhaps not, but the exploits of Sampson’s team have sparked a rising groundswell of support back home, with the great and good adding their backing as England celebrates the success of what one newspaper dubbed the ‘Wonderwomen.’
The Twittersphere has been buzzing with messages of admiration, from family and friends around the women’s football community to footballing royalty such as David Beckham and lower-ranked members of the nobility like Prince William.
How long the England players will stay in this unprecedented glow of celebrity remains to be seen. Interest in the past has always spiked around major tournaments and then fallen away after them. At the 2009 European Championship, for instance, media interest exploded when England reached the final, though unhappily they lost 6-2 to Germany in Helsinki.
The final was heavily covered by the media, but two days after the event women’s football was notable only by its absence in the sports pages and at England’s following home game a paltry crowd of 3,681 turned out to watch them play a World Cup qualifier against Malta.
There will a much higher attendance, and indeed media coverage, at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium for their World Cup meeting with Japan. England are the odd woman out in the last four, the other three having the prefix ‘champions’ to their name—World Cup for Japan, Olympic Games for the USA and European for Germany.
England on the rise
Winning the tournament will be against the odds for Sampson’s team, who at sixth in the world are ranked two places lower than Japan. They are almost certain, however, to leapfrog Sweden into fifth spot when the new rankings list is published after comfortably outdoing the Swedes in Canada.
That will be the highest ever ranking spot for England, as Sampson noted when I spoke to him a couple of days before the semi-final. “For us to be in a position where we’ve never been before would be a huge achievement,” he told me. “We want to keep rising, we know that if we win this tournament it would put us in a position where we’re right up there in the rankings, and that’s our focus.”
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Sampson is quietly but determinedly confident that his side can go all the way, but if they are to do so they may have to set yet another new record. If Germany beat the USA and face England in the final, then the Germans would be clear favourites having never once lost to an English team.
Clash of the Titans
But can Germany overcome the USA? It will be an intriguing encounter, a repeat of the 2003 semi in America. Germany won on that occasion and they now take on their biggest rivals six months after deposing them as the world’s top ranked team—a position the Americans had held for seven years.
The USA have reached at least the semi-finals of the World Cup in every one of its seven editions, having gone on to win the inaugural competition in 1991 and again eight years later in what was the competition’s most famous final.
At the Pasadena Rose Bowl in front of a still record crowd of 90,185, the Americans beat China in a penalty shoot-out that ended with the winning spot-kick celebrated by its scorer, Brandi Chastain, with her now iconic sports bra revealing moment.
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In Canada this year the USA are attempting to lift the trophy for what would be a record third time, having come close in Germany in 2011 when they were beaten on penalties by Japan in the final. Germany too are twice World Cup winners, in 2003 and 2007, and were hot favourites on home soil four years ago but surprisingly lost to Japan in the quarter-finals.
It’s difficult to call which of the two teams will win this year’s semi-final, to be played at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, but whoever it is will be favourites to lift the trophy in Vancouver on July 5.
Post-mortems already underway
While the last four nations prepare for battle to make it the last two, the 20 teams that have now returned home are reviewing and assessing their performance in Canada.
Some of them, for instance Australia who unexpectedly reached the quarter-finals—beating Brazil on the way—before losing to Japan, can reflect with pride on a campaign which marked them as a growing force in the women’s game.
For others the aftermath of the finals has been a mess of recrimination, with calls for the dismissal of the coaches of Spain and Mexico and indeed the actual sacking of Nigeria boss Edwin Okon.
Okon had gone into the tournament promising that his team would shock the world; but there was also a veiled warning when Nigeria Football Federation Association executive Dilichukwu Onyedinma said as the team headed for Canada, “You must not let yourselves and the country down.”
It was obviously deemed that Okon and his team had in fact let the country down, so after a bright start to the tournament with a 3-3 draw against Sweden the only shock Okon got was getting fired.
In the cases of Spain and Mexico it was not the countries’ football federations but dissension amongst the ranks which caused an uproar. The Spanish players went as far as publishing an open letter demanding that Ignacio Querada, head coach since 1988, be removed from his position after the team went out of the finals at the group stage.
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Charlyn Corral wants change for Mexico.
Querada has been a figure of controversy at times over the years, with more than one player calling time on their international career due to disputes with the boss. "We believe an era has come to an end and we need a change," the 23-player squad said in their statement.
In Mexico, where former international player Leonardo Cuellar has been in charge since 1998, one of the team’s most high profile players Charlyn Corral voiced her disenchantment with her team’s coach after finishing bottom of their group with just one point from their three games.
“I believe that Cuellar has done a lot for the program but we need new ideas,” Corral said in a filmed interview, adding “I do not do for me, it is for Mexico and the growth of women’s football.”
Player power has cost any number of managers their jobs over the years, more often than not in the men’s game but in the women’s game too. Are we therefore perhaps soon to see Spain and Mexico, as well as Nigeria, seeking a new person at the helm of their women’s national team?
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