UKH

England scrape through on penalties! There’s a headline you’d never thought you’d hear.

A really tough game, Nigeria were fit and fast and England struggled at times to cope with the pace. They are multiple African champions after all. The standard of international women’s football is getting higher and higher every year, Germany, Brazil and USA all out at the group stages tells you how good some teams are now.

The Daly penalty/non-penalty was unfortunate. It was clear she was going down and she knew it too. Her body was forward of her feet and there’s no recovery from that usually. She knew she was going down but had time to turn her body to land on her back rather that hitting the ground on her front for obvious reasons (this is women’s football after all) The trouble is, by doing that she made it look like a dive. If it was men’s football, you can bet your house that a premier league player would have added a few dramatic rolls for increased effect.

James red card, again unfortunate but I don’t feel there was intent there. She was in a tangle and wanted to get up and crack on, her right foot landed on the other player yes, but you can see she does that thing we all do when you realise your foot isn’t on the floor as intended - Watch her left, she does one of those super quick steps while her body is in ‘mid air’ to avoid bearing weight on her right. Nigerian player wasn’t even injured. Contact was there though and therefore had to be a red. I’m disgusted by the BBC sport website thought who called it a ‘stamp’, an ‘outburst of frustration’ and called James ‘petulant’. Remember when Beckham was sent off for England? Effigies of him were being burnt in the street! Thank goodness those days are gone.

It the end, Wiegman’s tactical change in extra time to have 5 across the back and play for the penalties worked but it was worrying nonetheless. England being no strangers to super high pressure moments probably saw them through the shoot-out.

The world cup and women’s football in general is brilliant, get on it you claim to be a football fan, you may well be very surprised. 

Im confident that all of my assessments are 100% correct as I am a random bloke on the internet and know far more about football than anyone in the world ever.

😉

You're joking aren't you? She clearly deliberately stands on her as she steps over.

please explain how it was clearly deliberate, i’ve explained how in my opinion I thought it wasn’t. Of course non of this matters anymore, all we can do is say what we see and I did agree it’s a straight red as there is no denying the contact, deliberate or not.

An entirely undeserved win for England but a win nonetheless. England really need to up their game if they want to win the tournament as so far they haven't shown the form they had in the Euros. Nigeria looked really good - the speed at which they covered the pitch was impressive and they could easily have won by 2 or 3 goals. Thank god for Mary Earps! She must be in contention to be the best keeper in the women's game? Great performances actually by both keepers, good to see so much improvement in an area so long been considered a weakness in women's football. 

Agree the penalty decision was unfortunate but then we also could've conceded a pen in extra time so I reckon it evens out. Dunno about James. It looked deliberate to me but it's hard to gauge intent. Either way it was monumentally stupid and she'll learn a hard lesson from it as she'll likely be out for the rest of the tournament now.

I saw the Lionesses at the Finalissima earlier this year so I had faith in their shootout ability but I was still watching through my fingers. That experience must've given them confidence as they looked much more composed than the Nigerians when it came to penalties. 

I think that they are really missing Williamson, Mead and Walsh. They will miss Lauren James is the next game and any after that if they go further.

Just watched it again, not a stamp or vicious but definitely trod on her on purpose, you’re being very kind, it’s wasn’t an accident.

All very exiting and good to watch though and I’m not a fan of football.

Cheers

Toby 

Fair enough Toby, if it was indeed deliberate, she’s needs to learn from it obviously. We’ll never know for sure I guess 

It was clearly a red card.

England win on penalties. Ha, Ha, this is obviously fake news again! Then again, if you can't win well, win ugly!

England played below par which helped Nigeria - England had more possession and had more shots on goal. Down to ten, defend like mad, get to  pens, and we have a great goalie and better penalty takers. So I reckon England probably deserved it more than others think.  The ‘stamp’ was deliberate, fear she might get 3 match ban. 

Football is full of cliches - many of which are true - including ‘beating a team when you’re not playing well is the sign of a really good team.’  

It was a very odd place to put her foot down if she was just innocently trying to move forward. You move forward by placing one foot in front of the other, not by putting it down parallel. Hard to interpret innocently to my eye.

Having said that, I'm not condemning the person. She's relatively young and inexperienced and she was under great pressure. I'm sure she'll take the consequences, learn the lesson and come back better.

Missing Walsh? She played from ko, didn't you watch it? 

The thing that surprised me was that in the extra 30 mins the Nigerians didn't seem to want it. You hardly noticed we were a player down and it was as if they were playing for pens as well. Everyone looked a bit knackered, bit like in the USA match. 

The 120mins plus, of course, another 15 minutes or so as we increasingly get 6-10 minutes added on the halves means that the game tends to degenerate a bit, mens or womens. Not sure what the answer is but I wouldn't be averse to straight to penalties.

Well the England camp seem to know, nobody has even tried to suggest or pretend it was accidental, including the Manager who I think would have spoken to James about it before coming out and giving interviews.

Maybe the Beckham thing scarred me for life and i’m too forgiving of these things now 

The answer is to train for a longer period of endurance instead of training to play for 90 or 120 minutes. Surely very similar to a runner changing their training to cope with a longer distance.

This might surprise you but the Chloe Kelly penalty was thumped home against Nigeria at 111km per hour, it was more powerful than any Premier League goal in 22-23. I though it looked a superb penalty. Top drawer!

Wow! That's incredible!

Who came up with that stat - i hope its true!

It also supports my view that you don't have to be too clever with the placement; if you welly it hard enough on target nobody is going to stop it.

Apart from our first one, thought they were all great penalties. Possibly good news for the next 3 games….

Edit: and that speed did surprise me!  

And game management - playing in these contests will put you against good opposition = lots of games running into an extra 30 minutes. So don’t waste energy, time wasting (the teams that regularly win the World Cup etc are masters of this), substitutions etc. it’s in the game!!  

My father in law, currently sat next to me for his Wigan Holiday, was at that game (he lived in St Etienne for a good while).  Said it was bonkers working out what happened. 

Be interesting to see the penalty speeds in the lower leagues. Reckon more of a ‘hit it hard but true’ mentality.  

Although I was pissed we lost on sat (Derby) was delighted you’ve already recovered 3 points. You can have 3 more at your place as long as that’s all we give away. F**king EFL nearly destroyed our club with points deductions 😳

Nope, still partial to a good Beckam roast hereabouts

If you stood on someone by accident, you'd likely stumble and be very apologetic to them. If you stood on someone on purpose, you'd pretend you didn't. Which did James do?

I’ve calculated that if you added up all our point deductions in the last few years, we’d have finished in a champions league place. Maybe even higher. 

I’d like to see you make that argument in a court of law - ‘likely’ and ‘pretend’ doth butter no parsnips

I'm not really following the competition, but this post violates the sports code in that you don't post results in case people havent been able to watch live. 

The court of law in this case will be the one reviewing what happened and appointing the appropriate sanction.
I'm rather assuming that it will be a bit more spicy than a root vegetable...