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U.S. women draw familiar foes for Olympics; Mexico men get favorable draw

USWomen (Reuters Pictures)

This summer will be a bit similar to last summer for the U.S. women's national team.

The U.S. women drew France, Colombia and North Korea for their group at this summer's Olympic tournament — three teams that they beat during last year's run to the World Cup final. Colombia and North Korea were in the same group as Pia Sundhage's side during the World Cup, while the U.S. women topped France in the semifinals.

On the men's side, Mexico was drawn into a group with South Korea, Switzerland and Gabon, while Honduras drew Spain, Japan and Morocco in a difficult Group D.

The top two finishers from each group advance to the quarterfinals on the men's side, while the top two teams in each group and the top two third-place finishers make it to the knockout round on the women's side.  

Here are the compete draws for the men's and women's Olympic tournaments:

MEN'S OLYMPIC SOCCER DRAW

Group A

Team Great Britain, Uruguay, United Arab Emirates, Senegal

Group B

Mexico, South Korea, Switzerland, Gabon

Group C

Brazil, Belarus, New Zealand, Egypt

Group D

Spain, Honduras, Japan, Morocco

WOMEN'S OLYMPIC SOCCER DRAW

Group E

Team Great Britain, Cameroon, New Zealand, Brazil

Group F

Japan, Sweden, South Africa, Canada

Group G

USA, France, Colombia, North Korea

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The U.S. women will open group play against France on July 25 at Hampden Park in Glasgow before facing Colombia three days later at the same venue. They'll close group play against North Korea at Old Trafford in Manchester on July 31.

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What do you think of the draws? Liking the U.S. women's chances? How do you see the CONCACAF qualifiers from the men's side faring? Do you think the U.S. men would have been able to get out of either the group that Mexico or Honduras is in had they qualified?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. Favorable draw? Both S. Korea and Gabon are champions of their qualifying area. This Switzerland team is the same generation that won the u17, its only behind Spain in terms of quality players.

    Reply
  2. The team that dominated Mexico had standout performances from players like Morales, Agudelo, and even Gatt. The players that did play throughout qualifying should have won, but it’s possible the difference in talent was not as exaggerated as it was when all of our top talent in that age group was assembled.
    I’m less upset about not playing in the tourny, but rather what playing in the olympics could have done for some of our lesser-known players looking to make transfers to bigger leagues.

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  3. However, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands compete as separate teams at the Olympics, despite their citizenship. I’m not sure of the exact logic, but the UK has one Olympic committee rather than the 4 FIFA associations.

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  4. We may not have made it to the Olympics, but at least we didn’t compromise on playing the 4-3-3!! That’s a victory in its own way, right? Right?? I mean how terrible would it have been if we had switched to ugly Bradley-esque 4-4-2 ball vs Canada. It’s much better to let their five midfielders overrun our three and win, because WE KNOW that the moral victory is still ours!

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  5. I could so care less about the women’s soccer tournament. I don’t particularily enjoy women’s soccer, sure I’ll root for America just as I would for the American track and field competitors or the archery competitors or whatever, but I probably won’t watch them.

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  6. Me too. I still want Caleb Porter’s head on a platter. But if you’re gonna go with a college head coach to run a college system then you have win like a college team does–through the use of superior recruited talent. That wasn’t possible, our youngsters aren’t that much better than those of Concacaf just because we’ve heard of them. Throw in there the loss of someone like Gatt who was one of our better players but held out, and then the Agudelo injury and we were ripe for defeat. A lack of good defense hurt us, but a lack of playing a system that could hide that problem was a death knoll. You can’t run a three man midfield and protect your weak back line unless you have three defensive minded beasts in midfield and we didn’t.

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  7. Under Olympic rules you enter as your political state, therefor they are Britain, much as they are in the UN. Fifa uses an outdated system in honor of England and Scotland’s historic role in the development of the game, including the first “international” friendly I think, which was Scotland vs England. Likewise FIFA recognizes places like Peurto Rico as a seperate team than the United States although they are an American territory.

    All of this is part of the reason why there are more teams in FIFA than nations in the United Nations, a fact they repeat often.

    Reply

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