USA crowned World Champions after thrilling win over Aussies
May 21, 2017
It all came down to this. The Final of the 2017 IFA Women’s Futsal World Cup in Lloret De Mar was contested by the USA and Australia. In their last meeting in the Pacific Cup, USA overcame their Aussie counterparts, who were on a revenge mission. Both sides overall were the outstanding teams at this World Cup and deservedly reached the final. It really was set up to be an incredible match.
The game began at a ferocious pace, both sides playing Futsal exactly how Futsal should be played. The USA had the better of the chances in the opening stages. Jessika Cowart coming close with a strike that flew past the post.
Shortly after Veronica Cashman was baring down on goal, Melissa Khoury raced from her goal grabbed the loose before just before Cashman could get any sort of effort on goal.
Australia grew into the game as the half went on. Pollicina battled well to keep the ball in midfield before feeding the ball wide to Chelsie Winchcombe. She opened her body and fooled Gabriella Batmani in the USA goal as she went for the near post, and she hit the outside of the upright and out for a goal kick. The closest the Aussies have come in the match.
You couldn’t separate these sides as half time approached. Pollicina struck one from distance for the Aussies that flew just wide of Batmani’s post. Maricela Padilla also tried her luck from distance but Khoury had it covered.
With less than three minutes remaining before half time, the USA almost broke the deadlock, twice. Raylene Larot fired a terrific strike towards the top corner, but Khoury tremendously tipped it over the ball. Padilla then tried her luck, but Khoury produced another stunning save to keep the scores level.
Half Time: Australia 0-0 USA
The first chance of the second half fell to the USA. Padilla chipped the ball into Katelyn Nebesnick, who laid the ball off to Raleigh Loughman but her shot was deflected wide. A good move by the USA at the beginning of the second half.USA were looking the more likely team to score. Loughman again played in Erika Lum with a fantastically weighted pass, Lum took one touch and tried to stab the ball between the legs of Khoury, but again the big keeper was equal to it and blocked the shot with her body.
Khoury was again called into action when Lum launched the ball forward to the unmarked Cashman. She spun and fired a shot towards goal but Khoury blocked it again. She was having an excellent game.
The stalemate was soon no longer as the USA took the lead. Australia were pushing forward and left a huge gap at the back. Padilla won the ball back, nutmegged Shannon Day, drove forward towards goal and stabbed the ball with her toe through the legs of Khoury who couldn’t get down quick. The large USA support were sent into raptures, as were the players. Maricela Padilla gave the USA the lead.
Australia almost immediately equalised less than a minute later. Shannon Day found space and struck towards goal but Batmani stood up to the task and palmed the ball away, top save!
Moments later Batmani was called into action again when Chelsie Winchcombe drove through on goal, squared the ball to Day, she cut in on her left foot and shot low but Batmani got down to her right very quickly to beat the ball away.
The Aussies hit the post for the second time in the game midway through the second half. Jasmin Kent played it into the box, it bobbled around with Hargreaves trying to get something on it. Pollicina ghosted in at the back post and got a strike on at goal, it beat Batmani but not the post as it crashed off the upright and away to safety.
The USA goal lead a charmed life a few times in the game, but it did no longer as the Aussies levelled the scores. Winchcombe received the ball on the left, switched the ball to Pollicina on the right, and Batmani was left with no chance as Pollicina, famous for her long range strikes in this world cup, hit a venomous strike that nestled sweetly in the top corner. With only five minutes remaining, who would prevail victorious?
The score wasn’t level for long as the USA got themselves back in front. Jessica Cowart from the kick in played the ball back to Loughman. She then squared it to Jessica Sanchez, who in turn played in Raylene Larot in space, and the little number one for the USA struck low and the ball crept in under the arms of Britt Hargreaves in the Aussies goal. Every member of the USA team and coaching staff joined in the jubilant celebrations.
The literally seconds remaining, Australia came within an inch of equalising. Pollicina cut inside from the left and curled her effort towards the top corner, but Batmani through herself through the air and tipped the ball over the bar, and that was that, the USA had won the 2017 IFA Women’s Futsal World Cup in Lloret De Mar.
Full Time: Australia 1-2 USA
Australia: 1- Britt Hargreaves (GK), 2- Lindsey Jobling, 3- Lori Depczynski, 4- Jasmin Kent (Captain), 5- Chelsie Winchcombe, 6- Sophie Jones, 7- Shannon Day, 8- Andrea Preiato, 9- Caitlin Jarvie, 10- Rhianna Pollicina, 11- Melissa Khoury (GK), 16- Jessica Lindquist.
MVP: Rihanna Pollicina – Scored a wonderful goal, and influential in the game as a whole. Unlucky to be on the losing side, but being the youngest player in the Aussie squad she has a very bright future ahead.
USA: 1- Raylene Larot, 2- Veronica Cashman, 3- Gabriella Batmani – GK, 5- Julie Meurer, 6- Emily Kuo, 7- Katelyn Nebesnick, 8- Maricela Padilla, 9- Erika Lum, 10- Jessica Cowart, 11- Alejandra Palominos Maldonado – GK, 12- Raleigh Loughman, 13- Ellie Pope, 17- Jessica Sanchez, 18- Jillian Jordan.
MVP: Raleigh Loughman – As she has been for the whole tournament, she was tremendous both going forward and defending. A real team player and a joy to watch playing Futsal.
https://www.ifaworldcup.com/single-post/2017/05/21/USA-crowned-World-Champions-after-thrilling-win-over-Aussies
Australind Junior Soccer Club
Female players born 2000-2009 we need to know your availability for the Girls' Carnival July 8th. We have more than…
Posted by Australind Junior Soccer Club (Official) on Sunday, 14 May 2017
The Girls’ Soccer Team That Joined a Boys League, and Won It
Members of AEM Lleida after winning the championship of a junior regional boys’ league.
Samuel Aranda for The New York Times
By RAPHAEL MINDER
May 11, 2017
LLEIDA, Spain — The ponytailed forward cut through the rain and the defense and drove a low shot past the outstretched arm of the goalkeeper. The pinpoint strike — her 38th of the season — confirmed Andrea Gómez as the top scorer for her championship team.
The boys Gómez left in her wake, though, were not the first ones forced to retrieve one of her shots from their net. Gómez, 13, and her teammates had been confounding boys all season, playing so well that their girls’ team recently won a junior regional league in Spain over 13 boys’ teams.
“I always try to show that soccer isn’t just for boys,” Gómez said. “If you’re technically better, you can compensate for being perhaps physically weaker.”
In the United States and a handful of other countries, it is not uncommon for women to upstage their male counterparts when it comes to soccer success. But in Spain, women’s soccer, despite the country’s first Women’s World Cup appearance in 2015, remains a sideshow. Spain’s top women’s league did not sign its first major corporate sponsorship deal until last summer — three decades after the league began — and the country’s most successful club, Real Madrid, does not field a women’s squad.
Gómez plays for an amateur club, AEM Lleida, that decided almost a decade ago to focus on coaching girls. In 2014, coming off another season in which its girls dominated other girls’ teams, AEM registered one of its teams in a boys’ league for the first time.
“To push these girls, we felt they had to play against boys because you need strong opponents to make real progress,” said José María Salmerón, the club’s general director. AEM took advantage of a Spanish soccer federation rule that allows clubs to field players of any sex — including mixed teams that combine boys and girls — for junior league competitions until age 14.
Back then, not everyone was convinced the decision was a wise one.
“A few parents called us crazy when we registered the team,” said Sergio González, AEM’s president. “If this had gone very wrong, we would have been held responsible for humiliating the girls.”
The transition was not easy. The girls finished 12th in an 18-team league in their debut season. But as the team improved, and began to beat boys’ teams with more regularity, its progress generated unpleasant reactions.
“It’s really been more a problem for parents rather than their boys,” Salmerón said of comments directed at the team during matches. “It’s strange, but most of the macho comments and insults have come from the mothers of some of the boys we play.”
It is not just opponents who have struggled to adapt, however. Daniel Rodrigo, the AEM coach, recalled a recent match when the referee asked him before kickoff whether his team had not traveled to the wrong field. During another match, the referee upset the AEM players by regularly referring to them as “las princesas” — the princesses — while he directed play.
In AEM’s final home game, Gómez led her team past its toughest rival this season, the boys from La Noguera, a club from about 12 miles away. La Noguera fields teams in different age groups from an overall squad of 113 players. Only one of them, a 7-year-old, is a girl.
“We just don’t have a tradition of girls,” said Pere Clarisó, La Noguera’s technical director. He highlighted AEM’s superior discipline as one reason for its success.
“Tactically, you can see that these girls listen to every word from their coach,” he said. “They really try to do as they’re told.”
After the match, the AEM girls celebrated their title by tossing Rodrigo into the air and holding up their trophy as the stadium loudspeakers blared “We Are the Champions.” The boys from La Noguera looked dejected but were quick to offer praise, too.
“It’s hard to lose against girls,” said one player, Oriol Marchal. “But these ones really are very good.”
AEM officials said they were planning to use this season’s success to start a crowdfunding campaign that the club hopes will raise about $10,000 for its coaching program. The extra money is needed, the officials said, because the Spanish soccer federation provides little support for grass-roots girls’ soccer, and because the club has been unable to persuade any company to come aboard as a sponsor.
“Women have made real progress, which is amazing when you look at the big difference in how the money is allocated,” González said. But unequal treatment persists. In youth soccer, he said, “I know some clubs that only use their vehicles to transport their boys; the girls have to fend for themselves.”
Inside the club, initial objections faded once the team showed it could outplay boys’ teams. Ana Maria Biela acknowledged that she had been reluctant to allow her daughter, Cristina, to play matches when she was younger, especially against boys.
“I delayed as long as possible because I was afraid that she would get hurt by the boys,” Biela said. “She kept answering that she could also hurt boys.”
Now Biela and other parents are reveling in their daughters’ accomplishments, and the team’s success has helped increase the club’s female membership to more than 25 percent of its overall roster of players, the largest ratio in Lleida Province in northeastern Spain.
“They are young, so they aren’t perhaps aware that they’ve done something quite extraordinary,” Biela said.
Gómez, the captain and top scorer, said she was proud that her team helped promote the image of women’s soccer in Spain, even if her own ambition is to move eventually to the United States to play there instead.
“I want to play where women’s soccer is really valued,” she said. “The paradise is in the United States — not here, unfortunately.”
Perth Glory Coaches Awards 2016/17
Congratulations Natasha Rigby!
What a breakout season it has been for the girl from Margaret River! Tash has won the Prestigious Perth Glory Women Coaches Award for Westfield W-League Season 2016-17.
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