Treasure trove of talent on display

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This article was published 18/08/2023 (798 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are many ways to analyze a very good team.

Leadership, both on and off the field, is obviously an important measure, as are physical and mental fitness, ingenuity in training and execution, and coaching acumen that both positions the line-up to succeed and makes adjustments when it fails.

In the end, however, there’s really just a single overarching quantifier that shades all manners of appraisal.

“My ambition,” once remarked Louis van Gaal, “is that I have the best players who can collaborate with each other to form the best team in the world.”

You could even shorten the former Ajax, Barcelona and Netherlands manager’s statement to simply, “have the best players.” It sums up every yardstick, assessment and analytic that combine in evaluating a performance – or in previewing one.

To that end, Sunday’s FIFA Women’s World Cup Final (5 a.m., TSN) puts a number of outstanding footballers front and centre.

Having so far conceded just three times in Australia and New Zealand, European champions England continue to lean on exceptional centre-back Alex Greenwood. The 29-year-old, who won a league, cup and Champions League treble with Lyon in 2020, has played every minute of the tournament to date (goalkeeper Mary Earps and fellow defender Millie Bright are the only other Lionesses to do so), keeping things tidy in the defensive third while playing accurate passes out of it.

England has also relied heavily on Barcelona midfielder Keira Walsh, particularly given the absence of veteran Fran Kirby through injury.

In fact, there’s an argument to be made that no player has been more important to their team at this World Cup than the 26-year-old. She’s like a metronome — keeping things ticking in the centre of the park and bringing her teammates into the tempo she sets. Her country held its collective breath when she took a knock against Denmark in the group stage and sat out the match against China, but her displays in the knockout rounds suggest she hasn’t missed a beat.

Her manager will no doubt be hoping that Lauren James can similarly pick up where she left off after a bit of a layoff.

The Chelsea forward was scoring her way to the Golden Boot before an ugly stamp on Nigeria’s Michelle Alozie in the round of 16 earned her a two-game suspension. Sarina Wiegman, who would otherwise prefer to have her XI settled going into a major final, will now have to decide whether to reinsert her most electrifying player at the expense of Ella Toone, who opened the scoring in the semifinal against Australia.

Wiegman’s counterpart, Jorge Vilda, has a similar selection conundrum, but so far the Spanish boss has actually made a point of rotating his team. One position he won’t dare change, however, is that of Aitana Bonmati, the likely frontrunner for the 2023 Ballon d’Or.

While flashier teammates such as Jenni Hermoso and Alba Redondo have inevitably garnered a bit more attention, it’s nevertheless been Bonmati behind the wheel of a Spanish machine that has tallied an tournament-leading 17 goals over the past four weeks. She, herself, has scored three of them, although it’s her distribution that has been her most important contribution.

The Barcelona playmaker is passing at an impressive rate of more than 86 per cent and has also picked up two assists through six matches.

Hermoso, for her part, is the only Spain forward to have started every World Cup game. She also hasn’t found the back of the net since the 5-1 drubbing of Switzerland in the round of 16, but as La Roja’s all-time leading goal-scorer is probably due to break out in the final.

Her partnership with Redondo has been a good one, and if Vilda is to spring yet another surprise against England it’ll surely be in the third attacking position of his 4-3-3, where Mariona Caldentey and Esther Gonzalez have been shuffled in and out.

But perhaps the most intriguing decision Vilda will make in the hours before kickoff in Sydney concerns Alexia Putellas — the consensus best player in the world, at least when healthy.

The reigning two-time Ballon d’Or winner, she suffered a torn ACL shortly before last year’s Euros and missed most of the club season while undergoing a rigorous rehabilitation regimen designed to have her back in the Spain set-up for this World Cup. Not surprisingly, her journey to full recovery didn’t end with her ultimate inclusion in the squad, and her position in Sunday’s XI is essentially a toss-up.

That said, the best players tend to bring their best performances to the biggest occasions, and Putellas will never play a bigger game than this.

Nor will anyone who features at Stadium Australia. Yes, the managers will design strategies to reduce the opponent’s effectiveness while elevating their own, but in the end it’ll be the players who determine the winner. And in a game like this, where everyone’s a superstar, the best of the best of them will lift the World Cup.

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