Just finished watching the Women’s World Cup after having watched all of the games through the entire tournament. One thing is for sure, the women’s game across the world is getting better and better. Even the under developed countries are improving. The skill level especially for the individuals technical ability was amazing.
As far as the actual final, it was a very good game. US should have put the game out of reach in the first 20 minutes but their shooting was abysmal. Those things always come back to haunt you. They let Japan back into the game and once that happened, I thought that the individual technical ability of the Japanese players might be enough to give them the win. So it proved out with the late equalizer in overtime and the penalty shoot out.
Penalty kicks are always a troublesome way to end a game but after their display against Brazil, you would have expected more from the US but to miss the first three really put them in a hole which they were unable to dig out of. Either team could have won it and even though I was rooting for the US team, I couldn’t help to feeling good that Japan, with all of the troubles that the country and the people have gone through in the past few months, lifted the Women’s World Cup. What a boost and shot in the arm for the Japanese people at a time when they really need it.
On a separate note, I have never heard such biased reporting and commentary as was heard from the ESPN crews. For a neutral looking in, it must have been very disturbing. Even when the US team was not playing, there was a non stop mentioning of them and they appeared in every halftime show. I thought it extremely bad mannered to talk about US when two other teams were actually playing. I was really disturbed in the prejudicial way the whole thing went down. I expected better.
But then again, this is America…
Frank – Your comments about the American-focused commentary underscores what I find is true whichever country is telecasting a game–that the comments will see to discuss more about the commentators’ national team than the teams playing. Watch Sky Sports, and is there any other team than England or league other than the EPL? Any Spanish commentary on any game will inevitably turn to El Tri! Watching German television while seeing the US first round games there, I couldn’t help but notice there was more commentary about the benching of Prince than about the games at hand. Discussion of the German team only slowed down AFTER they got knocked out.
I was disappointed that ESPN never even showed any highlights of the semifinal that Japan played in. They talked about how skilled their passing game was but never showed any clips. I like to have an idea of what the team is like you are about to watch…oh well.