olympic previews: group C

The women’s soccer tournament at the Olympics is, essentially, snorting a miniature World Cup. You take the intensity of global competition, squish it from 32 teams down to 12, and play the whole thing over the course of just seventeen days. It’s gonna be a wild ride, so to help us all prepare, I’ve previewed it all.

Group A | Group B

We’ve been blessed with incredible teams stuffed into three incredible groups in a way that guarantees each game will be a must, and necessary, watch. Below I’ve dropped a quick look at the group overall, then identified two players from each team that I think will be vital to their team’s performance (with help from StatsBomb where relevant), plus ask a key question each team will have to answer.

Lovely, let’s Olympics.

group C at-a-glance

• 🇪🇸 Spain

• 🇯🇵 Japan

• 🇳🇬 Nigeria

• 🇧🇷 Brazil

This group is absolutely terrifying lmao. Obvs the 2023 World Cup champions, Spain, are there, but so is the resurgent Japan, who beat Spain 4-0 in the group stages at that same tournament. Nigeria and Brazil have deeply talented squads but have yet to take the leap Japan took prior to the World Cup. Thing is though, that leap can happen at any time.

Brazil and Nigeria are both integrating younger talent and working on finding a style that suits their new talent. But don’t sleep, Nigeria scrapped with eventual World Cup finalists England, and were a few combined inches away from one of their twenty(!) shots sending them home.

Brazil had the worst World Cup finish of anyone in this group, but uh, look at that squad. They yeeted coach Pia Sundhage and brought in a coach who’s trusted the youth to cook a bit more. Without the 21-year-old Tarciane the average age of their defenders is 30.8, while without the 38-year-old Marta their midfielders and forwards average 25.1.

Spain have the target, Japan weren’t scared in New Zealand and won’t be in France, and Nigeria and Brazil are both on the cusp of growing into teams that are consistently dangerous. Every match could have enough drama for them to scrap the anthems and just play the HBO theme instead.