{"id":625511,"date":"2023-07-24T15:00:20","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T19:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=625511"},"modified":"2023-07-24T12:10:58","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T16:10:58","slug":"2023-womens-world-cup-early-observations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2023\/07\/24\/2023-womens-world-cup-early-observations\/","title":{"rendered":"2023 Women&#8217;s World Cup Early Observations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2023 FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand began on July 20. A few days into the tournament, it seems appropriate to comment on some of the early trends and developments of the competition. One of the major storylines going into this Women\u2019s World Cup was of course about whether or not the USWNT would be able to do what no team of either gender has done before by winning the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2023\/07\/19\/uswnt-become-the-goats-international-football\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">global tournament three three times in a row<\/a>. But there are many other great topics as well.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Analysis and Opinion on the Early FIFA 2023 Women&#8217;s World Cup Games<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><strong> Opening Day Recap\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">HISTORY! \u26bd \ud83c\uddf3\ud83c\uddff <\/p>\n<p>The Football Ferns open the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/FIFAWWC?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#FIFAWWC<\/a> with a MASSIVE win \ud83d\ude0d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/kDLLVRQwsP\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/kDLLVRQwsP<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Sky Sport NZ (@skysportnz) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/skysportnz\/status\/1681953051131641858?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 20, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Day one headlined each of the hosts\u2019 opening fixtures. Both the Football Ferns and the Matildas ultimately came away with 1-0 victories, albeit in a significantly different fashion, at least based on prior expectations. First New Zealand deservedly defeated Norway, a traditional powerhouse of the women\u2019s game to claim their only win in WWC history to date. Australia on the other hand, had surprising difficulty against first-time qualifiers Republic of Ireland, ultimately scoring from a Steph Catley penalty kick to defeat the newcomers.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Unusually Many Penalties Given<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Speaking of spot kicks in general, they were a major theme in the first few days of the competition. In fact, each of the first eight matches of the tournament saw the referee award a penalty to one of the teams involved. Just as strangely, only half of those went in.<\/p>\n<p>Another talking point early on in this competition is that many games have been far more competitive than one might expect based on previous Women\u2019s World Cups. Even just four years ago in France, the United States defeated Thailand by an incredible 13-0 score. Before that, Germany had beaten Argentina by 11-0 in the 2007 World Cup opening match. So far in this tournament, there have been many encounters that experts might have feared a similarly lopsided result. Yet, as of this writing, no game has ended in anything approaching a double-digit result. The most one-sided match until now was Japan\u2019s 5-0 victory over the Women\u2019s World Cup newcomers from Zambia, Germany beat Morocco 6-0, and Brazil beating Panama 4-0. Besides that, only two matches finished 3-0 (Spain defeated Costa Rica, and the USWNT overcame Vietnam by that score).<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ MORE:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2023\/07\/11\/lionesses-world-cup-preview\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Will This Trip Down Under Become Known as the Lionesses\u2019 World Cup?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, European champions England narrowly escaped with a 1-0 win against Haiti, thanks to a penalty kick goal by Georgia Stanway. Elsewhere, Jamaica earned a point in a scoreless draw with France and Sweden came from behind to defeat South Africa 2-1. For now, at least, that shows that many nations with fewer resources and less pedigree in women\u2019s football have improved by leaps and bounds when it comes to the defensive side of the game. Though not all teams have entered the tournament as of this writing, judging based on the early evidence, FIFA\u2019s decision to expand the competition to 32 teams for the first time may have been a correct one, but only time will tell. It certainly promises to be an exciting rest of the tournament. While we can say that play has been too cagy at times, it will surely open up, as the competition progresses.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Photo Credit: Jenna Watson-USA TODAY Sports, of a USWNT Headshot, on July 22, 2023.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 2023 FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand began on July 20. A few days into the tournament, it seems appropriate to comment on some of the early trends and developments of the competition. One of the major storylines going into this Women\u2019s World Cup was of course about whether or not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4762,"featured_media":625531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2535,161,7007,2132],"tags":[211,3689],"class_list":["post-625511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uswnt","category-international-football","category-womens-football","category-world-cup","tag-international-football","tag-womens-world-cup"],"modified_by":"Raheem Bashir, Site Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4762"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}