England 1: Germany 0 :-)

[ik9000]

I haven't watched any women's football so far, but I am a bit curious. I mainly want to know is if the sportsmanship is better (less of the diving and trying to play the ref).

it's mixed. Saw some crunching tackles and staying on the feet, but also a dive for a pen in the France Germany match. The ref had none of it. It was the same French player who then missed her penalty in the shoot out so guess there's some justice in it all.

[satrow]

I haven't watched any women's football so far, but I am a bit curious. I mainly want to know is if the sportsmanship is better (less of the diving and trying to play the ref).

Examples of diving were rare, refs were definitely on the lookout for it and in this tournament, the fans were also very quick to show their displeasure at any unsporting behaviour. 'Professional fouls' appeared to be less common but most games featured a few.

This follows what seems to be a common trend in all NA football matches, fair play is expected and good skills are appreciated by the fans.

Playing the ref otherwise was much more common in the later stages of the games where the ref had already made some bad/inconsistent calls - this was all too frequent, though of a less hostile nature than we see in the men's game in Europe; the refereeing was generally below acceptable standards, the officials for the final being an exception.

The pitches weren't great (though probably better than Andorra's), inconsistent bounces were fairly common, leading to a number of occasions were the 'receiving' player was made to look 'bad' and at least one goal where a 'mistake' by a defender led to an unexpected goal.

[Tyrannosaur]

I haven't watched any women's football so far, but I am a bit curious. I mainly want to know is if the sportsmanship is better (less of the diving and trying to play the ref).

It's creeping in more these days, especially for those teams where they've turned professional.

[Galant]

Here's a thought - do the women dive as much as the men do? If not....

World Cup Fever (WCF): a pathological condition wherein normally strong and healthy individuals manifest augmented and inappropriate physical responses in the presence of minor noxious stimuli.
This psychosocial transference and somatization phenomenon is more prevalent in males and has the propensity to form cluster outbreaks on a quadrennial basis. The effects are synergistically compounded with alcohol and parochial success/failure.

Treatment
Treatment protocols vary from country to country.
Verbal de-escalation is not advised. This approach has been shown to prolong the symptoms of WCF and often results in the extreme responses of paradoxical rebound aggression or whimpering catatonia.
The Utopian College of Emergency for Medicine (UCEM) suggests the first line management modality of choice is pharmaceutical. A single course of Growacet tablets has a 98.7% efficacy in symptom reduction.






EDIT: Ooh look - "After the first women's World Cup in 1991, referees who were accustomed to the men's game reported being more fatigued after reffing women's games," said Anson Dorrance, coach of the women's soccer team at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "I thought that was a wonderful statement about the way women play the game."

"Any time a male player is nicked, there's rolling around, grabbing body parts, trying to sell the ref on some egregious fall to get a yellow card" or other penalties for the opposing team, he added. "Women play the game with greater personal integrity and honor."