2021-22-23-24 News Thread
- Thread starter jeffbear
- Start date
Spanish FA President Luis Rubiales refuses to bow to pressure to resign amid a FIFA probe into his conduct after Spain won the World Cup. He continues to insist his kiss with striker Jenni Hermoso was consensual. He also told an assembly of the FA that he has told the FA Secretary General to begin negotiating with women’s head coach Jorge Vilda on a new contract for thr next 4 years at €500k per year.
In other news, the US dropped out of the top spot in the women’s FIFA rankings for the first time since March 2017. They fell to 3rd. Sweden moved up to the top for the first time and Spain moved from 6th to 2nd. England and France remain 4th and 5th, respectively. Despite making a run to the semi-finals, Australia dropped a spot to 11th. Japan, which lost in the quarterfinals, moved back into the top 10, moving from 11th to 8th.
In other news, the US dropped out of the top spot in the women’s FIFA rankings for the first time since March 2017. They fell to 3rd. Sweden moved up to the top for the first time and Spain moved from 6th to 2nd. England and France remain 4th and 5th, respectively. Despite making a run to the semi-finals, Australia dropped a spot to 11th. Japan, which lost in the quarterfinals, moved back into the top 10, moving from 11th to 8th.
Now that they have their winners medals, I'm not sure how many Spanish players are going to willingly put up with Vilda anymore. And on Rubiales, FIFA probes take forever, so sadly any quick resolution is probably down to the players ... again. And look, the men have a dog in this fight as well. Rubiales is as big a clown managing their operations as he is with the women. This is, after all, a man who has sued Wikipedia for damaging his reputation ... which seems almost too Michael Scott to be real.
On the women's rankings ... the US drop to 3rd but the big faller was Germany who dropped all the way to 6th after crashing out in groups. And how typically FIFA that Australia won the hearts of a nation, finished 4th in the biggest tournament in the cycle and still managed to actually fall a slot. Perfect. Never change.
StormChaserBH
Well-known member
re: Australia, is there any subjective component to the rankings to quibble with, or is that just a weird way the rankings points worked out?
Here is what it’s theoretically based on. Despite the run to the semis, it appears the results may be somewhat discounted because they played at home. They were also in a fairly easy group. Canada was only 3 spots ahead of them but Ireland was 22nd and Nigeria was 40th. The beat Denmark in the knockouts and they were ranked lower, then 5th ranked France, but on penalties, then they lost decisively to England.
Women's Ranking Procedures
In the FIFA Women's World Ranking (WWR) teams are ranked according to a value that is a measure of their actual strength. One of the benefits of this is that a considerable amount can be learned about the ranking value (or rating points) of a team.
www.fifa.com
There's a never ending list of subjective complaints about the general logic of FIFA's rankings ... specifically how they fail to weight actual major tournaments more than crapola like the CONCACAF W tournament ... just for one example. England have won the last Euros and finished 2nd in the WC. Arguably those are the two biggest and toughest tournaments in the women's game and yet they not only rank below Spain (fair enough) but also below Sweden ... who finished below them in both tournaments. Did anything else happen to tilt that in the last 2 years? Not really, but we have to weight over 3 years and change for ... no known reason beyond successful lobbying. Same crap happens on the men's side.
On the flip side, there was zero reason the US should have been No. 1 entering the WC. They just didn't have the results to back it up after finishing 3rd in the Olympics and then basically doing nothing aside from winning CONCACAF qualifying against one or two quality opponents and She Believes Cup, which is a glorified friendly. The Germans were No. 2 based largely on results from 3+ years ago as well. Both of them got exactly what they deserved after the WC.
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Not, I feel certain, the only two that actually matter. If and when Barca and Real Madrid want changes, they tend to happen quickly. Funny how that works.
The entire women’s national team quit.
Good on them. Honestly, the behavior of the Spanish federation through this whole thing has been disgusting.
The FIFA Disciplinary Committee has provisionally suspended Spanish FA President Luis Robiales for 90 days, pending the disciplinary proceedings opened against him on Thursday.
www.fifa.com
The FIFA Disciplinary Committee provisionally suspends Luis Rubiales, president of the RFEF
The chairman of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee, Jorge Ivan Palacio (Colombia), in use of the powers granted by article 51 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code (FDC), has decided to provisionally suspend Mr. Luis Rubiales from all football-related activities
www.fifa.com
The Spanish FA doubles down on their idiocy.
“We have to state that Ms. Jennifer Hermoso lies in every statement she makes against the President.”
Umm ... not sure you'll have a men's or women's national team willing to show up for games if you keep this up, but you do you RFEF.
And of course, for people wondering why the Spanish government can't just fire everybody at RFEF and start over, FIFA has pretty strict rules restricting government interference in Federation activities, including personnel issues. Those rules are largely imposed to keep authoritarian governments from meddling in purely sporting affairs and hijacking money FIFA sends to the federations ... but they apply regardless of circumstances. The Canadian government has run into similar constraints trying to deal with financial mismanagement in their soccer federation. There have been occasions when governments have defunded their soccer federations, changed the locks on the buildings and started from scratch and I suspect that RFEF may well be making authorities in Madrid angry enough to do just that.
Roberto Mancini is not going the club route, he was appointed manager of the Saudi Arabian National Team.
But wait, there‘s more! Remember this?
According to Colin Miller from the Mirror, the Spanish FA is calling for UEFA to expel them because the Spanish government, through the Sports Council, suspended Rubiales.
Best job in soccer ... other than the 3-4 months you have to spend in the Kingdom every year