Date: 19 January 2022
KO: 19:30 GMT
Competition: Conti Cup quarterfinal
Venue: Victoria Road (fmr. Chigwell Construction Stadium)
Welcome to the /r/chelsealadiesfc match thread for the Continental Tyres Cup quarterfinal against West Ham! This is the stop for pre-match news and a match preview, as well as line-ups and live updates when we kick off.
###MATCH PREVIEW
It’s been a while! Chelsea have not played since the 4-0 loss to Wolfsburg in mid-December that ended a successful 2021 on a sour note. The first fixture back is one of the Continental Tyres Cup quarterfinal matches, against the Hammers in Dagenham.
West Ham are coming off a draw with Tottenham in the league Sunday evening and are full of confidence having gone six matches unbeaten in all competitions. Kate Longhurst equalized at the death against Spurs last weekend, adding to that excitement. The Hammers were on top of Group E in the Conti Cup with a perfect nine points out of nine.
The Blues qualified to drop in at this stage because of the club’s participation in the Champions League. These two sides have not met yet this season and have eight total meetings all-time.
Chelsea are without six squad players. Melanie Leupolz is still recovering from COVID, Lauren James and Maren Mjelde are out, and Magda Eriksson is still recovering from an injury picked up against Wolfsburg. Sam Kerr and Ji So-Yun are participating in the Asian Cup and are thus unavailable.
Emma Hayes, she of the OBE and the Best FIFA Women’s Coach Award, said she is excited to see us play again and remarked how much she enjoyed spending so much time in training with the recent paucity of matches.
“We’re excited!” Hayes said. “We want to play football and we’re just really looking forward to the game. We’ve all learned to deal with the fact that things change, and you can’t spend time procrastinating or moping, we just have to stay in a good mindset every day. The group have done really, really well. We’ve had some great training sessions, I’ve enjoyed this training block and the chance to develop.”
Other quarterfinal matches are Manchester City-Bristol City, Arsenal-Manchester United, and Totten
... keep reading on reddit ➡
PSA: Liverpool Women vs Aston Villa Women are kicking off at 7pm in the first game of the Continental Cup group stage. The Continental Cup is basically the Womens equivalent of the League cup but it starts with a group stage. You can watch live now on the LFC YouTube channel!
To replace the Premier League, this autumn we will have continental cups for national teams. These will be quick, straight knockout cups, all using AutoManager for this first edition to speed things up. The top two, four or eight countries from each continent will take part (depending how many countries there are from each continent in the World Rankings). Using the World Rankings as seeding, here are the draws for the first rounds of each cup.
European Cup: Quarter-Finals
Great Britain v Czech Republic
France v Ireland
Hungary v Portugal
Russia v Denmark
North American Cup: Semi-Finals
United States v Mexico
Cuba v Canada
Asian Cup: Semi-Finals
Israel v Phillipines
India v Japan
South American Cup Final
Colombia v Brazil
African Cup Final
South Africa v South Sudan
Oceanic Cup Final
Australia v New Zealand
###South American Cup Final
COL 395-425 BRA (Shakira 230, Vergara 165) (Lima 213, Baccarin 212)
###Asian Cup Semi-Finals
ISR 514-276 PHI (Gadot 270, Portman 244) (Aznobody 152, hayleyxyz 124)
IND 433-357 JPN (Chopra 231, Patani 202) (Kawaii 179, Baba178)
###North American Cup Sem-Finals
USA 1,241-1,459 MEX (Olsen 622, Johansson 619) (Gonzalez 838, Hayek 621)
CUB 1,280-1,420 CAN (de Armas 884, Cabello 396) (McAdams 796, Dobrev 624)
###European Cup Quarter-Finals
GBR 563-357 CZE (Watson 298, Clarke 265) (Caprice 231, Li 126)
FRA 495-425 IRL (Green 282, Farach 213) (Ronan 233, Debnam-Carey 193)
HUN 506-414 POR (Palvin 321, Jakabos 185) (Sampaio 237, love_lilahh 177)
RUS 477-443 DEN (Lee 292, Fox 185) (Agdal 241, Skriver 202)
Curling Canada announced Tuesday that the 2022 Continental Cup will be held in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
The press release also indicates that the format will again be Team Canada vs. Team Europe. I'm disappointed that they're sticking with this format because it's the least interesting or exciting to me. Additionally, the event will be about a month before the Olympics and it would've been great for audiences to see a broader array of teams going to China. Even Curling Canada notes the appeal of seeing some of the teams going to the Winter Games.
I know some Continental Cup apologists will say that the plan at some point was to alternate between this format and the much more common Team North America vs. Team World. However, in all the years of this tournament, 2022 will be only the third time that they've done Canada vs. Europe.
Ultimately it's Curling Canada's event and I respect that it's up to them to decide the format. Hopefully, they'll return to the more open format of the event sooner rather than later.
Any one know where I can watch the cup games happening this weekend?
