The Women's World Cup

In 2015, the Women's World Cup was held in Canada and Shana and I drove up from Seattle to catch a couple of games at BC Place in Vancouver, British Columbia. We had the opportunity to see both the hosts and eventual runner-up Japan. This year, by coincidence, the Women's World Cup is again in the country next door, France. When we decided we wanted to attend again, we looked at the cities that were hosting, and decided Reims was the perfect place because it is in the Champagne region, which gave us a great location to celebrate Shana's birthday as well as watch games (more on Reims and Champagne to come).

We left London on the Eurostar train to Paris (of Mission Impossible fame), which whisks you from one to the other in 2 hours, 15 minutes. After a day in Paris, we caught another high-speed train to Reims, which only took 45 minutes to cover a distance that used to take two hours, and allows people to live in Reims and work in Paris -- pretty cool.

For the games in Reims we had bought a ticket package for three games, but were still in London for the first game, so we only got to see two. The stadium in Reims (Stade Auguste-Delaune) normally hosts both a men's and women's team that each play in the top French league. The stadium seats about 21,000 people and is only about a 15 minute walk from the center of town.

The first game we attended, between Norway and South Korea, was fairly sparsely attended, (13,000) although we saw a good game in which South Korea appeared to play better, but Norway won 2-1 on two penalty kicks. Our seats were near one end of the stadium, which was not great, but we had a very good view when the action was on our end of the field:

Norway advanced in the tournament, and after beating Australia in the round of 16 (1-1 (4-1 on penalty kicks)) will play in a quarter-final against England on June 27.

The second game we saw was Canada v. The Netherlands, which was great because the Dutch fans are really crazy and they were out in force, with overall attendance rising to around 19,000:

Although the Canadian fans were significantly outnumbered, they were boisterous, and we had to represent for the Canadian branch of Shana's family (notice the orange-clad Dutch fans to my right and behind us in the upper deck -- they really were everywhere):

After a scoreless first half in this one, the Netherlands scored in the 54th minute, but Canada equalized just six minutes later on a goal by Christine Sinclair who has the second-most international goals of any women ever, and is now only two behind record-holder Abby Wambach. The tie didn't last all that long as the Netherlands scored again in the 75th minute and held on in a game that they deserved to win.

Although both teams advanced to the knockout rounds, Canada was eliminated in the round of 16 by Sweden (1-0), while the Netherlands beat Japan in a very exciting game (2-1) to advance to a quarter-final against Italy on June 29.

The tournament is now heavily dominated by European teams, with 7 of the remaining 8 teams from the Continent, but the US remains the favorite to win. If you have a chance, we highly recommend their upcoming quarterfinal match against the hosts on June 28 from Paris. It should be a barn-burner.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana