Four Nations women’s football tournament build up continues
The anticipation for the Four Nations womens soccer tournament in China continues to build.
The England team have arrived and the USA have been in the country for some time already. In fact they have already played one full warm up game against the China team that they will be facing in the tournament proper so are already acclimatised well to the conditions. The USA came out of the game with a 1-0 victory and there are a couple of photo’s from this game in the forum world women’s football gallery section if you would like to see.
British Eurosport 2 will have live coverage from the Four Nations Tournament in China this month, as the teams prepare for the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
England and World champions Germany will travel to China to join the FIFA Women’s World Cup hosts and the United States in Guangzhou between 26 and 30 January.
After qualifying for the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup, the side were brought back to earth with a bump when they were beaten 5-1 by Germany in October.
With the USA also ranked second in the world, England will be under no illusion about the challenge awaiting them.
However, with Head Coach Hope Powell adamant that her side will not be travelling to China in September to make up the numbers, the three games will be invaluable match preparation, as well as helping with a cultural introduction to China, its people, customs and climate.
The match schedule has been altered over the weekend, with England’s first two games now having different kick-off times.
Friday 26 January
5.30am - China vs England
Sunday 28 January
8.00am - England vs USA
Tuesday 30 January
5.30am - Germany vs England
British Eurosport 2 is available on Sky (Ch 411) and ntl:Telewest (Ch 525)
Full time year long training camps
News recently that some of Canada’s top teams will be losing all selected national team players for the full season to a full time residential training camp to prepare for the World Cup in China in September. The Vancouver Whitecaps, Ottawa Fury and Laval Comets have all agreed to release their players for the camp.
Interesting thoughts of the Canada coach Evan Pellerud - “This camp will provide us with the best opportunity ever to attend a World Cup final with with an optimum level of preparation,” said Pellerud. “For the first time, the team, in principle, will be run like a club team. The program allows us to set up daily, weekly and monthly schedules and team programs that include fitness, tactics, skills and psychology.”
Sounds like a great idea to give the nation the very best possible chance of doing well in the women’s World Cup finals in China. Maybe other countries should take note ! Not sure that I can see this taking off in England though. Clubs seem to be reluctant to release players just for the odd international match. Club versus Country debate anyone ?
Ingestible thermometers in women’s football
Further evidence of the advancement of science into sport with this story about the University of Florida womens’ soccer team using ingestible thermometers to detect who’s overheating and needs a rest.
Story from the Bradenton Herald in the USA :
Take HQ Inc., the Palmetto company whose claim to fame is a ingestible core body temperature pill that senses when athletes are getting overheated and need a time-out.
Temperature readings from the silicone-coated pills are picked up by athletic trainers stationed on the sidelines with hand-held monitors. The pill stays in the body up to 30 hours.
“It’s a great way to tell who’s hot and who’s not,” said Susan Smith, marketing director for HQ.
In fact the University of Florida’s women’s soccer team also is now using the ingestible thermometers to protect against heatstroke.
So what next for their women’s football counterparts in the UK ? Any ideas ?
Forum Gallery and Links
In case anyone hasn’t spotted yet there have been a couple of additions to the website in the past two weeks. I have added a basic photo gallery and also a directory of links.
I am posting a few images I have into the gallery to get it going and members are welcome to add their own favourite photo’s of women’s football or women football players too. The categorisation is pretty basic to start with as I am not sure how popular it will be so if you really want a new category or think I should add a seperate section for something please let me know !
The links directory will be kept up to date with the latest women’s football related links that I come across but again members are more than welcome to add their own or suggest them for me to add. If you find a link that is broken please let me know and I will remove it or investigate why it doesn’t work anymore.
If you have any ideas for improving the website further then please let me know !
Four Nations Tournament brings England Women’s Football publicity
A nice piece today in a Burnley paper (and also appearing in other Lancashire papers) with England goalkeeper Rachel Brown and the forthcoming World Cup and Four nations tournament, both taking place in China.
The World Cup draw takes place in March and then England will find out who they will face in the group stages. The last place at the competition is still to be decided by a play off between Mexico and Japan.
Before then at the end of this month England have a great chance to get to know what they face in China with their participation in The China Cup at the Guandong Olympic Sports Centre. England Women have been invited to take place in this four nation tournament alongside Germany, the USA and the hosts China.
It will be a useful acclimatisation exercise as the weather and atmosphere of China can take some getting used to, especially for athletic activities, and the more time England can have to acclimatise the better for later in the year when the real big one kicks off.
Some have expressed concerns about the strength of the opposition for this tournament and that England might be looking a three defeats to start a World Cup year which might be confidence draining after the euphoria of France was tempered by the 5-1 defeat by Birgit Prinz Germany side in the friendly game recently. However it will be a good opportunity to see how far the English women’s game has come of late and the excitement level for the World Cup later in the year could receive more much needed boosts with some media attention that more articles like this will bring.
Here’s hoping that results will be good and the media will start to recognise that many people are interested in women’s football and want to see, hear and read a lot more about it !
Women’s football movie stars
In the course of scouting for stories that might be of interest to forum readers I came across a piece about admissions to US colleges. It was talking about how they are now using DVD’s of young players to select who they take and don’t take and how the market for such video production is taking off. Apparently girls are starting to compile videos when they are in ninth grade and starting sending them out in their junior year to try and attract interest in themselves.
As one coach says “A lot of kids who sit and wait to be recruited: that’s a mistake.”
So is this something that might catch on over here ? Do you know anybody who is already doing it to try and get some interest in themselves ? Are we going to see a spate of family members and video production companies sprouting up on the touchlines filming women’s football games up and down the country ?
I did start work on a website for women’s football video sharing but have been sidetracked with other projects….The idea for this was that girls could take some footage of their matches (on their phones or whatever) and upload it to share with others….Do readers think this would be a good idea ? It wasn’t quite intended to be a showcase of talent but I can see how it could perhaps be made to work like that and it has got me thinking again….
What do you think ? Good idea or not ? And will making DVD’s of talent take off in this country ?
If you want to read the story that prompted this blog then please take a look on the forum here -
Videos Are Becoming An Important Part Of The College Admissions Process
Womens World Cup China 2007
A new board has been added in the World Women’s Football section of the forum called Women’s World Cup. I have moved the exisiting posts into this forum and it seems like a good idea to have a seperate board for discussion of the Women’s World Cup in China in 2007.
It promises to be an exciting time for women’s football and the China 2007 World Cup tournament should give some much needed mainstream media publicity to the sport.
16 nations will participate in the Women’s World Cup finals. As the host, China will automatically qualify, having saved its automatic entry in 2003. The remaining fifteen berths were divided as follows, with at least one going to each of the six FIFA confederations: five to Europe, three to Asia (including hosts China), two to Africa, two to South America, two to North America, Central America and the Caribbean and one to Oceania. The 16th qualifier will be determined through a play-off between the third placed teams from Asia (Japan) and CONCACAF (Mexico).
Come on England !
Korea launches a womens semi-pro football league
Recent news in an item on the womensfootball.eu forum of an attempt at a semi-pro league in Korea and it will be interesting to watch how it goes. They would appear to have high hopes as it seems the intention is to switch
to a professional league within a few years the article says.
The efforts of other countries to get this to work is encouraging and hopefully they will be able to get this off the ground and expand the sport of women’s football globally.
News article below (original can be found on www.womensfootball.eu)
A semi-professional women’s football league will be launched in Korea Republic next year, announced the Korea Women’s Football League recently.
Four teams - Hyundai Steel, Daekyo Kangaroos, Seoul City Amazonness and Ilwha Chunma – will feature in the inaugural league and play up to 15 games each. Previously, the teams had participated in six individual tournaments annually.
The league, expecting to have a newfound team Sangmu as its fifth member in the second half of the year, will shift to a professional league within several years, the KWFL added.
Not quite Bend It Like Beckham
Looking for interesting items for the forum I came across this about a film from last year called THE RAILROAD ALL-STARS. An interesting example of womens football in the media ! Just waiting for the English language remake…but which footy players would star in that ? Hmmmmm…..:)
Estrellas de La LÃnea
Valeria, Vilma and Mercy are prostitutes living in Guatemala. The price for their services is two dollars. All three belong to a group of women who work in the vicinity of “La Lineaâ€, the railway line that cuts straight across Guatemala City and runs to the Pacific Ocean. All of them dream of being treated with respect, and that the violence against them will end.
In order to publicise their plight – that also includes regular police harassment – they decide to found a football team. After weeks of training, they register for a local championship. But they are barred from taking part – simply because they are prostitutes. Their disqualification unleashes some hefty controversy that has a significant effect on their lives.
“We are women and mothers first, prostitutes secondâ€, is the pronouncement at the top of their list of demands. Vilma, Valeria, Mercy and the other women are not inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. They are women and mothers who are struggling to survive in a world full of violence and hypocrisy; women and mothers who have dreams, just like any other. “Women and Mothers†is therefore the slogan on a banner celebrating these female players from the wrong side of the tracks, as the newly-christened “Stars of La Linea†finally walk out onto the pitch to take part in the decisive game…
Womens football media coverage
A post on the womensfootball.eu forum by Billyboy prompted me to get thinking about the coverage of womens football in the media.
Billyboy was asking if anyone knew of any coverage of the womens football National Division (the women’s football Premier League) in the press. Apart from the occasional coverage in the Guardian that can be found on their website if you look hard enough for it I can’t think of any coverage of womens football in the national press. I may simply have missed it perhaps as I don’t get to read every single newspaper daily but I would have expected that as someone with womens football websites who does a lot of Google searching that I would have come across something from their websites by now. Have I ? No.
During Euro 2005 I do remember a piece in the sports pages of the Sun although that seemed to be more of an excuse to print pictures of Rachel Unitt than being a real piece about the burgeoning sport that is womens football. So why is this ? I have seen pieces in various papers about all kinds of obscure sports here and there so it remains a puzzle as to why the media doesn’t cover womens soccer a lot more, especially as the level of interest is increasing markedly now. This year could be a watershed year from women’s football in the UK with the appearance of the England Womens team at the Womens World Cup in China. We can hope that this will finally shake the mainstream press out of their general lethargy about womens football (and also womens sport in general it might be said).
However there is a role that we can play as websites start to spring up with people having a go at promoting the sport. The more support we can gather the better and I hope that everyone reading this will bookmark both the blog and the womens football forum and start to contribute a little to show their support. A lot of little contributions can really add up to that snowball heading down the hill that we hope will be the serious success of womens football !!
I look forward to seeing you here and on the forum !