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If Spain didn't score a lot of goals its because teams refused to play with them. The Spanish midfield is the finest I have ever seen. To their credit....Germany did try and they were thoroughly dominated.

But the women.....

I don't disagree with you that they are playing they way they need to play. But there's the indictment on development!!! We had no one the equal of Louissa in terms of technical ability and creativity.

I disagree that the French team had more talent. The US women have been the perceived big dogs for years. Clearly one of the top 3 teams in the world for years.

We won the game...but not one who watched it could say we weren't outplayed.

Germany was killing people on the counter attack the entire tournament, but one of the biggest pieces of their counter (Muller) wasn't able to play. If he did, it would have completely changed the game. His replacement was awful, and Muller was having an outstanding tournament. Also was ironic Germany got beat off a set piece header when that is Spain's biggest weakness and generally one of Germany's strengths.

I don't necessarily think development is the main blame. It seems to be the biggest complaint on here though because everyone wants to see "attractive" soccer when so few teams play it. You can't really teach creativity. That is something you are born with imo. Completely agree that Louisa Necib is a fantastic player. And I think she'd be fantastic whether she was born in France, USA, England, Japan, Ghana, wherever. Her vision and intelligence is amazing, and again I don't think coaching did that for her. It helped with her technical skills, but I've seen a lot of extremely talented technical players who aren't good soccer players. In order to be elite, you need the technical skills (coaching/development) and the creativity/vision/intelligence (more natural imo but some people think coaching gets you this). So even if we had a great development system, we aren't going to be turning out Nacib type players unless we are fortunate to have someone that talented born here. No one but Brazil had someone on par with Nacib in terms of technical ability and creativity.

Even Ajax has taken some heat recently for turning out nothing but defenders recently (Vermaelen, van der Wiel, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, etc). All very good players which is a testament to Ajax, but they are taking criticism for not developing more attackers and creative mids. So even in a proven system, arguably the best development system in the world, they are having problems developing top creative players. But again I'd argue it's not Ajax fault (they have proven they can develop those type of players), more the fact that someone with Wesley Sneijder type creativity and intelligence hasn't been there recently.

France has more talent. The fact that you are saying how much better they are technically kind of shows that. Just because we are the perceived big dogs doesn't mean we are more talented. France had better players on the ball. More comfortable with it, better vision, etc. 10 of their players were on the team that won the women's Champions League. It would have been 11 but they cut the GK due to chemistry reasons, which I'm sure they are regretting with how bad the GK played. Their fullbacks were great, the only ones I've seen make threatening runs the entire game. All the announcers kept talking about was how France is going to be a force to be reckoned with from now on due to their skill and age.

We were outplayed, but not nearly as bad as anyone is saying. When I watch a game, I look at who creates the most legitimate scoring chances. France, for as much as they dominated possession, didn't create that many that scared me. Most of their shots were from outside the box, and that's not scary with Solo in goal. They hit the crossbar, but so did we. Their goal wasn't even a shot, it was a lucky cross that went in. They could have very easily been shut out. Even though we were outplayed, we still created scoring chances which is what matters, not how long you have the ball.

I see nothing wrong with how we have played style wise so far. Smart, organized, high effort, well conditioned, physical, competitive, etc. Those are all good things and shows we are well coached. Sure you'd like a little more flair, but I'd rather have players with the qualities above than someone with a ton of technical ability due to good development but no soccer IQ. For instance, Joe Cole (who was blasted by Mourinho for being great technically but not knowing how to play soccer). And Mourinho is fine playing boring, effective soccer which is how we can be described in the tournament.

What's been obvious this tournament is we have the best player in the world on our team, and she's been the difference. If you put Solo on France, they advance. In the very next semi final game, Sweden's GK makes two terrible mistakes which lead to goals. Solo is the only competent GK I've seen all tournament.