Saturday, February 23, 2008

El Tri wins

No, not the ones who played in Queretaro.

The Mexican women's national team downed USC on Friday 3-1. The women too are hopeful of qualifying for the Olympics, but they will likely have a tougher go at it than the men.

5 comments:

  1. I enjoyed this game, if only because the tickets were ridiculously cheap ($3!). The first half was pretty choppy--USC particularly looked out of practice. USC settled down in the second half and started passing the ball better, but Mexico had more class on the ball. And Iris Mora looked about twice as fast as anybody else on the field.

    It was weird in the stands with the stadium filled to 5% capacity. The LA Times calls the crowd "pro-Mexico," but I'm not sure if that's true. It seemed about half and half to me, but it was hard to tell with most of the seats empty. The more enthusiastic fans definitely seemed to be Mexican, but then they had more to be enthusiastic about, especially toward the end.

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  2. [Apologies if this is a duplicate--couldn't tell if my first effort succeeded.]

    I enjoyed this game, if only because the tickets were ridiculously cheap ($3!). The first half was pretty choppy--USC particularly looked out of practice. USC settled down in the second half and started passing the ball better, but Mexico had more class on the ball. And Iris Mora looked about twice as fast as anybody else on the field.

    It was weird in the stands with the stadium filled to 5% capacity. The LA Times calls the crowd "pro-Mexico," but I'm not sure if that's true. It seemed about half and half to me, but it was hard to tell with most of the seats empty. The more enthusiastic fans definitely seemed to be Mexican, but then they had more to be enthusiastic about, especially toward the end.

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  3. Thanks for the post, jon e

    Thanks for the post, jon e ;)

    Actually, these are usually the most enjoyable games - the cheap matches you go because it's so stinkin' affordable.

    So you saw them, jon. Did Mexico look like Olympic material to you?

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  4. >So you saw them, jon. Did Mexico
    >look like Olympic material to you?

    Honestly, I don't know women's soccer well enough to say. (And I think Mexico was missing at least a couple stars, no?) But the scoreline flatters the Mexicans a bit. Neither side looked all that fluid in the first half, and my totally impressionistic (i.e., not backed up by having match stats) sense is that USC actually controlled play for good chunks of the second half.

    Still, unlike USC, Mexico always seemed to be only one good touch away from creating danger, and eventually they made those touches and scored their second & third goals.

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