Women's football

[Gingerfinch]

I don't know our best team, but I hope ho does and if so, he's playing it.

[Gingerfinch]

Plenty going on, and slightly in England's favour.

[Durhamfootman]

Well.....

this is a farce

All VAR induced, which is why it has to be better

England score their second and the line judge rules offside. VAR shows that White was onside and so the goal was reinstated.... but they showed the replay on the telly and in the stadium and Cameroon saw that Duggan was in an offside position. Duggan however was on the far side of the pitch and nowhere near the play. For a moment it looked as though the Cameroon players weren't going to carry on playing. Took 6 minutes to restart the game

Fast forward to the second half and Cameroon score a breakaway goal..... but VAR gets involved checking for offside again. This time they don't show replays on the telly... don't show the replay in the stadium...... I had to rewind to see that the girl who made the final pass was offside, so VAR rightly ruled out the goal..... but the players, the crowd, everyone, didn't get to see it, so everything kicked off again

farcical

I've heard pundits saying that it's worth taking as long as it takes to come to the right decision, but it has to be better than this or the game in general will descend into this sort of chaos. These are the women.... and they are all refreshingly naive about the way they play the game...... imagine how much the men will kick off, or worse... try to subvert the VAR process to their own ends?

3-0 England now

[Durhamfootman]

doesn't help that the authorities are making it up as they go along.

It appears they changed the rules mid tournament, because it hadn't occurred to anyone that booking the goalie for moving off her line before a penalty is taken could lead to a keeper being sent off in a penalty shoot out if she moved twice, and so now that rule doesn't apply in a penalty shoot out

imagine what that could have sparked off?

[Gingerfinch]

Implementing new rules in a major tournament is not wise. No pen this time, even if it looked one to me.

[Durhamfootman]

For all England are 3-0 up with 15 minutes to play (probably have to add 8 mins on after the protests), they haven't dominated Cameroon. Duggan continues to be poor, Bright continues to look rusty, Kirby and Parris have been poor. Bardsley has had to be good

and we are back to VAR again

this must be the 4th time

poss penalty to England.... looks a good shout, but I hope they have the sense not to award it

thank goodness for that

I dread to think how much time will be added on at the end

[Durhamfootman]

No pen this time, even if it looked one to me.

makes a mockery of the 'getting the right result' argument, when there have been so many contentious incidents that the ref is under pressure to take a diplomatic view in a VAR penalty shout

[Durhamfootman]

England's final ball has been pretty woeful today

Norway won't be worried if England play like this in the QF

[Durhamfootman]

If they only play the 7 minutes added on time shown on the board, that will be a total of 15 mins of time added on

15 minutes!

[Gingerfinch]

No pen this time, even if it looked one to me.

makes a mockery of the 'getting the right result' argument, when there have been so many contentious incidents that the ref is under pressure to take a diplomatic view in a VAR penalty shout

I was half expecting the Cameroon goal to stand for diplomatic reasons.

[Gingerfinch]

Why wasn't that a sending off?

[Durhamfootman]

turned out to be longer after a Cameroon player tried to break Steph Houghton's leg and then bundled her into the Cameroon coach, before the Cameroon captain verbally abused her, presumably for play acting

cynical or wot?

[Durhamfootman]

Why wasn't that a sending off?

No pen this time, even if it looked one to me.

makes a mockery of the 'getting the right result' argument, when there have been so many contentious incidents that the ref is under pressure to take a diplomatic view in a VAR penalty shout

and a red card shout

don't forget that one of the Cameroon centre backs could have been sent off early in the first half for elbowing Nikita Parris in the face but only got a yellow


and all this adds to my worries about the rules around VAR (I have nothing against VAR in principle) and the way it is managed. I can see a men's team from Costa Rica or Columbia, or somewhere using VAR to turn 90 mins of football into 120 mins of *modded* nonsense. I can already see their players surrounding referees drawing imaginary squares in the air...... I imagine they are already practising the techniques required to pile pressure on refs and officials to take a 'diplomatic' approach to cynical and foul play. And like everything else, once those players take their methods to Spain, it spreads across Europe and in no time at all pundits are calling it 'clever' play

"he was really clever there"

[Gingerfinch]

I never wanted VAR for the reasons of play being stopped too often, and for too long, and so far it's not disappointed.

[Durhamfootman]

If nothing else, this game might just give the authorities a vision of the future, and give them the opportunity to tighten up on when and where and how VAR is used and the new rules that have seemingly been brought in to support it

It needs to be smarter and it needs to be quicker. Football will look a very different game if it has to include umpteen 5 or 6 minute breaks in each half

I've actually lost track of how many times that game was interrupted

stop/start footie..... it's what the world's crying out for