2019 FIFA Women's World Cup

[Diouf]

The UEFA draw starts in 5 minutes. http://www.uefa.com/womensworldcup/seas ... index.html

[Lorric]

Very happy, we got the bottom ranked 2nd seed, Russia. We avoided Finland and avoided Portugal as well. It will be interesting to see if BiH put up as stiff resistance as they did last time. Wales might give us a game, but we should be too strong for them, as we were last WCQ. Kazakhstan should be swept aside easily.

[Lorric]

Looking at the draw I think all top seeds should go through. Maybe Netherlands might trouble Norway or Denmark trouble Sweden or Belgium might trouble Italy. Italy got lucky, they'd have been in serious trouble if they'd go one of the top 4 Pot B teams (except Scotland.)

For the rest of the World, Asia is down to 8 teams at the Asian Cup in Jordan, of which 5 will qualify.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_AFC_ ... _Asian_Cup

It'll be a year before the tournament is played though. In qualifying, despite hosting the qualifying group, Korea DPR were eliminated by Korea Republic. Still paying the price for that doping, as since seeding is based on performance in the previous edition, they were in the bottom pot of seeds and drew the strongest top seed. (Australia, Japan and China auto qualified as top 3 from last time.)

[Lorric]

Actually, looking at Italy's group again, it has four teams in it that came second in their euro qualifying group. So it could potentially be a big slugfest between Italy, Belgium, Romania and Portugal. Doesn't seem likely this group will produce a top four runner up.

[Lorric]

I notice they reduced the size of the groups from 6 teams to 5 teams, thus an extra 7 teams eliminated in the preliminary round. I also notice though that 7 teams last WCQ were on the wrong end of double digit scorelines, so I wonder if that's why this was done.

However, this I feel is a wasted opportunity. It's disappointing that there will only be 8 competitive matches for England (likely less to actually watch as some away games didn't even make it into a BBC stream, and now Channel 4 I think have the rights, and I think they'll show less, and in inferior quality.)

But back to the wasted opportunity. Before there were 14 MDs, 10 for groups, 4 for playoffs. Wouldn't it be great if we could use all 14 MDs for group games? Eliminate 3 more teams and have 4 groups of 8, top 2 to the World Cup. Right now you might be a good team in Pot B, but you're fucked if you draw Germany (or France if they weren't hosting.) Those teams can potentially smash you right out of the top 4 ranking of 2nd place teams. That won't happen here.

There's a middle ground option too. Eliminate one extra team and have 6 groups of 6 teams, this way all runners up get a shot. The group winners go through, the bottom 4 runners up meet and the winners face the top 2 runners up for the other 2 spots. So we're back to 10 group MDs and 4 playoff MDs with all runners up getting a shot. Right now luck of the draw can stop a good team from rising, Switzerland could well have been held down if they'd got Germany or France as their top seeds.

[Thunder_PT]

A shame Portugal missed on the 3rd pot (none of the 3rd pot teams are in the Euro, unlike Portugal), but it doesn't look like a bad draw on paper.

[AnelZ]

Kazakhstan is from the last pot and had to go through preliminaries but the away match will again most probably be very hard for our girls. I can see us being able to snatch a point or three from Wales while I also see a possibility to upset Russia as well on home turf if we play at our maximum and with good strategy. England is, in my opinion, two leagues above and in the last qualifications we managed to have low scoring losses against them purely because we threw everything in defense which is always hard to break if it is at least a decent team.

[Ricardo]

Again Norway

[Maribor]

We should be looking to beat Faroe Islands and Czech Republic at home and to try and win one of the two away.

Iceland and Germany will be heavy defeats i fear.

[Malko]

theseare not all the European groups i suppose......

[Nixda]

theseare not all the European groups i suppose......

UEFA had 46 teams that entered the qualification and 8 places to give away (not counting France as 9th spot). Chosen format was:

Preliminary round to get down to 35 teams -> top30 teams advance directly; Lowest 16 play in 4 groups a 4 teams, 4 winner and the best 2nd advance.

Main phase: 7 groups a 5, winner advance to wc, top4 2nd play in 2 rounds for the final spot.

[Ricardo]

3 EC-semifinalists were in pot B, these 3 could cause serious problems I guess for their pot A teams....

[Lorric]

3 EC-semifinalists were in pot B, these 3 could cause serious problems I guess for their pot A teams....

England's group looks about the same as it did before the Euro, though Russia look a bit more of a threat now. Btw, we play all our home games before we play any away games, and start with Russia.

Group B now looks like a softer group with Switzerland's poor performance. Scots in with a chance to top it? They did beat Spain who are better than Switzerland.

C has been flipped on it's head with Netherlands now looking like the favourite over Norway.

D now looks like it could be a real struggle between the surprising Danes and the Swedes. One of two groups with two teams that reached the KO stage.

E looks like an even easier ride for Germany with Iceland's poor showing.

F was always the most interesting group, I think it looks more interesting now with Italy, Belgium and Portugal all getting 3pts at the Euro and worst runner up from qualifying Romania in there as well.

G also looks much more interesting with Spain and Austria set to bump heads again and the Finns in there looking to recover from their surprise displacement by Portugal as well. This is the other group with two KO stage teams.

[Diouf]

It is still unclear whether there will be a Danish team in time for the first World Cup qualifier in Hungary on tuesday. There is a giant conflict between the football association and the player's association, which means the players haven't turned up for the national team yet. The friendly against Netherlands, which were to be played last Friday, was called off, and the two parts do not seem closer to a solution. Part of the dispute is about the financial gains, but the biggest issue is that of the status of the players. The players would like to be employees, so they can negotiate salaries together and have more rights. The football association instead wants each player to be considered an individual company, which means they can push down the salaries by negotiating individually. The FA has even said that under this scenario it would be illegal for the players to demand the same price as that would be cartel behaviour.

Hopefully, a last second deal can still be reached, perhaps most likely a temporary agreement that gives more time to negotiate. Other than that, there are two options. Either, the Danish team does not show up, which likely means they will be thrown out of the qualification and miss the chance of the 2019 FIFA World Cup and 2020 Olympics. Or the FA manages to collect a team of players, that are not part of the players association, perhaps some very young players, recently retired players or those low in the football hierarchy. The FA is apparently also trying to get UEFA to delay the match, but that seems unlikely.

[Lorric]

Mark Sampson has been dogged by racism accusations by Eniola Aluko, but now, Nikita Parris, who is black, opens the scoring for England against Russia, and then runs into Sampson's arms followed by most of the team.

And now Jodie Taylor, who publicly defended Sampson, makes it 2-0. Sampson said before the game it's brought the team closer together rather than driven them apart, the accusations, and it looks like those words were true. 2-0 lead in 13mins.