The 2025 women’s world championships begin in Singapore next week. The U.S. is in the same group as the Netherlands.
Netherlands without their star goalie Laura Aerts. Completely different team without imo the best goalie in the world.
First game for the US women tonight versus China at 9:10PM PDT on Peacock.
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Netherlands are chewing up Argentina like a dog on a bone
Does anyone know if games other than USA games are available in the USA?
I watched the USA vs China game last night on Peacock and see future USA men’s and women’s games listed, but cannot find other games on peacock or NBC sports.
Thanks in advance for any insights.
Hi,
No, only the USA games will be on peacock/NBC. For remainder you have to purchase a pass. The worst part, is purchasing a pass, you can get a single day, 7 day or 28 days. Then, when you go to purchase the credits, they sell them in set amounts, that don’t equal the amount of credits you purchased and you have to overpurchase. anyways, worth it? I enjoy the water polo (and watching Britain last night actually win against a real water polo team was amazing in itself).
Other than myself and a handful of people in England that turned into the game, did anyone catch the defense that England/GB was running? Tony mentioned it was a defense created by someone and I missed the name, but he was very positive about it.
I am going to try to explain it and someone please correct me if I get it incorrect.
Running a M defense, (This was not run as a 5v6 situation, but 6v6) the dropping defender will front the hole set, once the front begins, the original defender will slide into the goal, creating a second goalie; if the offense attempts to drop the ball into the hole set between the goal and hole set, the defender slides out of the goal and attacks the ball; if the offense attacks the space created by the fronting of the hole, the original defender has covered one half of the goal, allowing the goalie to focus on the other half.
When I saw this defense ran against France and they stopped France two times with this defense, I am hooked. Is anyone else aware of this style of defensive adjustment?
Next, offensively, what would you do to overcome this two goalie situation? This was run beautifully if I may say so.
It looks like you can only watch the USA games on Peacock.
After the USA-China games last night, I wanted to watch the GB-France game. I couldn’t find it on Peacock, so I downloaded the Eurovision Sport app and used a VPN to access the game for free. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to mirror to my TV. The announcers were Tony and the same British guy as the USA-China game.
All the men’s games for this evening are showing as “upcoming” on the app.
One handed field player in goal can’t effectively cover even half the cage I would think? Assuming field player goalie covers 4/5 side of cage, 3 should attack high right or even center cage high between the two goalies? Skip probably works best. Usual risk of counter w 3 shooting vs an M but 2 and 4 stay back to defend counter.
Or - push 5 into 0m and enter to inside water vs the front. Field player goalie unlikely sufficiently experienced to come out and take away inside water and also does not have two hand privileges to facilitate ball under steal.
Curious to hear other thoughts!
I believe this is the same defence that was popularised by the Canadian women’s team a few years ago, it’s a modified M-zone. I believe the Haris Pavildis (the current Greek women’s coach) was the architect behind it, he ran it for several years while he was at the helm of the Canadian women’s program. I note that he’s running a slightly different version of it with a Greek women (based on their game against Hungary). The X6 defender seems to step back later in the shot clock once a shot from the outside becomes more likely. It’s a great, innovative defence. I’ve run it a bit with my teams and it’s been very effective. It’s a defence that you can run early in a game to create some hesitation and confusion with your opponents and help put pressure on them however if you don’t execute it perfectly, it can be costly. I usually find that skip shots against the blocking arm work well to win trying to defeat it.
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Any reason why she’s not taking part in this world championships? I agree, she’s the best goalie in the current womens game, I assume taking a break after the Olympics last year?
So, if you watched this morning, you saw how ineffective that defense is as it pertains to creating counter attacks. The 1st quarter was the Greeks worst period of play during that game. When they brought that defender out they created a lot of counter-attack opportunities and really buried the Americans by the middle of the 4th.
I wouldn’t call the “extra goalie” anything more than a gimmick. I’m sure it works against lesser opponents that already don’t have much of a chance, but against solid opposition it grinds your offense to a halt. Watch that first quarter again and tell me how often the Greeks get into the front tank with quality scoring opportunities.