The Women’s Kirin Challenge Cup match between the United States Women’s National Team and the Women’s National Team of Brazil had some questionable refereeing. For USA fans, the biggest potentially blown call is when Alex Morgan had a disallowed goal in the 68th minute, off of a free kick.
Continue reading “Alex Morgan’s Disallowed Goal: Blown Call? (Brazil, April 2012)”
(Note: I’ll have an in-depth review/analysis of the two matches, sometime next week.)
The United States Women’s National Team, finished the Women’s Kirin Challenge Cup earlier than expected, today, as their match against Brazil was moved up four hours. In the first match, versus host Japan, Alex Morgan scored a second-half equalizer in a 1:1 draw. Against an unorganized and less-than-full-strength Brazil, the USA won rather easily, with a 3:0 score, with all goals by Carli Lloyd, Shannon Boxx, and substitute Amy Rodriguez all coming on set pieces.
The United States Women’s National Team will play Brazil in the USA’s second match of the Women’s Kirin Challenge Cup on April 3rd, in Japan. The last time these two teams met was just eight months ago, in the 2011 Women’s World Cup. Since that match, Brazil has changed its head coach, changed its captain, and changed its federation’s president. The one thing that has not changed is Brazil’s reliance on a three-back formation. Continue reading “USWNT: Brazil, Since Last We Met…”
Earlier today, Japan released its roster for the 2012 Women’s Kirin Challenge Cup, which begins April 1st, with Japan taking on the United States Women’s National Team. The 23-player roster is loaded with ten defenders, which is three more than were on Japan’s recent Algarve Cup roster. From the Algarve Cup roster, head coach Naori Sasaki made five changes, although two are due to medical reasons.
The additional defenders may indicate that Sasaki is unhappy with his defense, which gave up four goals (3 during the run of play, 1 via a PK) versus Germany in the Algarve Cup final.
Continue reading “USWNT Opponent: Japan’s 2012 Kirin Cup Roster Is Loaded With Defenders”
(Note: Some of the player’s positions have been corrected. The corrections are mostly due to a minor translation error on my part. Also, positions for other players have been updated, based on additional information.)
Last Wednesday, March 14th, the CBF released the names of 33 players who could be called up for Brazil’s Olympic team roster. This list is required to be submitted to the IOC, but I do not think that it is in anyway binding.
Since the CBF website does not maintain biographical pages for its players, I have listed those 33 players below, with details such as height, birthday, position information, plus relevant links to Wikipedia, FIFA.com competition summaries, etc., where available. Also, a quick summary of the list is provided as a table, which includes whether the player was rostered for recent matches, going back to the 2011 Women’s World Cup in Germany.
Continue reading “USWNT Rival Watch: Brazil’s Player Pool, 2012 Olympics (Detailed)”
Last Thursday, Brazilian Women’s National Team head coach Jorge Barcellos announced the team’s preliminary roster for an upcoming friendly versus Canada (March 24th, at Gillette Stadium outside of Boston) and the Women’s Kirin Challenge Cup in April. Twenty-one players were called, including several overseas-based players such as Marta, Christiane, and Fabiana, who did not participate in the squad’s prior two training camps this calendar year.
Update, 18-Mar-2012: Upon further research, I can fairly confidently confirm all the player names for the roster, thanks to the CBF releasing a player pool list the day after I posted this, originally.
Continue reading “USWNT Rival Watch: Brazil’s Kirin Challenge Cup Roster”
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