The Netherlands, Sweden and France are the groups to observe on Sunday, the fourth day of the Girls’s World Cup. Sweden, the world’s third-ranked staff and a semifinalist ultimately yr’s European Champion, are a daily contender at main tournaments. The Dutch had been the runners-up on the 2019 World Cup, they usually nonetheless have a lot of their core gamers from that event on their roster. The French have a brand new coach however are acquainted faces in late levels of worldwide tournaments.
Sweden vs. South Africa
By no means rely out Sweden.
The Swedes reached the semifinals of the European Championship final yr solely to lose to England, the eventual champion. A yr earlier than they that, they received the silver medal on the Tokyo Olympics. That got here after a run to the semifinals on the World Cup in France, and a visit to the ultimate of the Olympic event in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, when Sweden surprised the US within the quarterfinals.
Lengthy story brief, Sweden involves play.
Desiree Ellis has coached South Africa’s nationwide staff again from obscurity, main it to an Africa Cup of Nations title in 2022, its first victory in that continental championship. She additionally coached the staff to its first World Cup berth in 2019. South Africa didn’t win a single recreation and didn’t advance previous the group stage, nonetheless, and it faces a tall job in opposition to Sweden right now.
Netherlands vs. Portugal
The Netherlands have been a drive in worldwide soccer for a number of years. It received the 2017 European Championship, reached the World Cup ultimate in 2019 and took the US to a penalty shootout within the quarterfinals of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Its first opponent on this World Cup is Portugal, which wanted 13 qualification video games to clinch its spot within the 32-team discipline, essentially the most of any staff competing. Portugal is without doubt one of the eight groups showing within the Girls’s World Cup for the primary time.
That have hole favors the Netherlands, however in fact the matchup’s placement in Group E — with the US — places heavier strain on each groups to publish an early win in the event that they need to make it to the knockout rounds.
The Dutch, who misplaced to the Individuals in that World Cup ultimate 4 years in the past. will face the U.S. once more on Thursday in Wellington, New Zealand (Wednesday night time Jap time). The sport is without doubt one of the most extremely anticipated matchups of the group stage, and the winner will face a far simpler path within the knockout rounds. However first issues first, and that’s Portugal.
France vs. Jamaica
Regardless of a profitable run in worldwide play over the previous few years, France has been in turmoil behind the scenes. In March, the French federation fired its longtime coach, Corinne Diacre, after gamers complained of an unhealthy setting on the staff.
Hervé Renard, a well-traveled coach however one who had by no means led a ladies’s staff, has labored to regular the ship. But when his pedigree teaching ladies is skinny, his World Cup pedigree is lengthy: Most just lately, he coached Saudi Arabia within the males’s World Cup in December, a run that included a well-known win over Lionel Messi and Argentina.
France misplaced a disappointing semifinal to Germany within the 2022 European Championship and didn’t qualify for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. After what they’ve been by, a win within the first recreation in Australia might assist stabilize the staff — and set it on the trail for a deep run.
Standing in the way in which is Jamaica, a staff enjoying in its second World Cup. Jamaica had to make use of crowdfunding web sites to boost cash for the staff’s journey to Australia and New Zealand. The Jamaicans misplaced all three of their video games within the group stage in 2019.
France arrived in Australia as a World Cup favourite on the mend. Torn aside by bitter feuds, it has in latest months misplaced gamers, welcomed them again, after which misplaced them once more. It has modified coaches, modified approaches and adjusted ways. And now it has requested Hervé Renard, a revered 54-year-old with a adorned males’s World Cup résumé however no earlier expertise teaching ladies, to hold it a minimum of so far as the semifinals.
He began the method, he mentioned, by being open about what he didn’t know.
“For me all the pieces was new as a result of I didn’t know ladies’s soccer, tips on how to handle the women,” he mentioned. “I used to be fortunate as a result of on our employees lots of people had been already working with ladies’s soccer. So I used to be listening.”