This year at Plot the Ball, I’m using data to try and better understand the landscape of international team sport. For some background to this project — which I’m calling ‘Rank the Nations’ — you can read my introductory post here.
In today’s edition of The Week in International Sport:
🇨🇦 Canada winning a world title in women’s flag football
🇺🇸 The USA winning a world title in men’s flag football
🇺🇸 The USA winning a Pan-American title in men’s volleyball
📊 Chart of the week: assessing squad turnover in Dutch women’s field hockey
⏪️ Highlight of the week: Duco Telgenkamp’s smash hit
💭 A few other interesting things I learned
As a reminder: the team ratings used in this newsletter are on a zero-to-10 scale, and are calculated based on a nation’s performance in competitive fixtures in a given sport since the start of the 2022 calendar year. (For more detail, click here.)
Will flag football be two automatic gold medals for the host nation at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028? Not on current evidence. After last week’s World Championship, the landscape on the women’s side of the sport is particularly interesting.
The USA (7.9) do come out as the top-rated team below — just — but Mexico (7.9) are essentially level with them in second. (I use win rate as a tie-breaker, and the Americans are a few points ahead.) Between them, they had won the last five major global tournaments. However, it was Canada (6.8) who won this year’s Worlds: they beat Mexico in the semi-finals by 20 points to six, before defeating the USA 27-20 in yesterday’s gold-medal game. All three have now confirmed their places at LA28.
How am I thinking about the Americans’ Olympic chances? A reason to be optimistic about their potential is the fact that they introduced a new quarterback — 17-year-old Hawai’i native Akemi Higa — at this tournament. It’s a decision that could pay off at the Games — especially if her twin sister, who she played with on the junior national team last year, breaks through at wide receiver. “When we need it,” Higa says, “we are able to find each other on the field.” It turns out the USA might just need it.
The USA (8.4) did manage to win the men’s Worlds in Düsseldorf at the weekend, but had one hiccup — and another close call — along the way. In the group stages, they lost to minnows American Samoa; Japan (6.1) then ran them close in the semis.
In general, though, the competitive picture is less compelling on the men’s side of flag football. Mexico (6.8) are the second-best team in my ratings, and came fourth at the Worlds — but there’s clear daylight between them and the Americans for now.
The USA (6.1) didn’t take any of their men’s Volleyball Nations League finals squad to last week’s Pan-American Cup in Mexico. Instead, they sent a 14-player squad with seven current student-athletes in it — and still won the competition outright.
This strategy isn’t always sufficient for success; at the same competition in 2025, the Americans finished sixth. The international calendar rolls on next month, with the USA competing again in the NORCECA Championship — last held in 2023 — in Canada.
Over the next few weeks, the Netherlands will be hoping to win their fourth straight women’s field hockey World Cup. Their recent record is formidable — but how many of this year’s squad were also part of their successes in 2014, 2018 and 2022?
Xan de Waard is the one player to have appeared at all four World Cups over the last 12 years; four played in both 2018 and 2022, and five won their first title in 2022. 10 returners is one fewer than they brought last time around: 11 of their 2018 squad also played four years later. However, their starting line-up remains experienced. Only two World Cup rookies started the team’s first game against Chile, and one of them — 29-year-old forward Marijn Veen — scored one of the team’s goals in a 2-0 victory.
The men’s field hockey World Cup runs simultaneously with the women’s in Belgium and the Netherlands this August. The Dutch got off to a strong start, with a 5-1 win over New Zealand — and a clip of their second goal yesterday stopped me mid-scroll.
After the Black Sticks kept out a penalty corner attempt early in the second half, Duco Telgenkamp — who had been attacking the right-hand goal post — controlled the rebound with a smart first touch. His second protected the ball from the defender over his left shoulder; his third brought it into space towards the centre of the ‘D’. With his fourth touch, he made a sublime connection on his reverse side and rifled the ball into the left corner. Just like that, the co-hosts had their first lead of the tournament.
You can watch a replay of this goal on Instagram here.
For ESPNCricinfo, Alex Malcolm investigated what Australia’s bowling attack in men’s test cricket might look like after their current first-choice pace quartet — all 33 or older — retires. There are several exciting out-and-out quicks coming through the system; their issue has been staying fit — in particular, avoiding stress fractures to the back. “Some people say it’s like a rite of passage,” said 20-year-old Callum Vidler. “But I was kind of hoping I wouldn’t have to go through it.”
For The Cutback, Neel Shelat analysed Nigeria’s surprising quarter-final exit from the women’s soccer African Cup of Nations. Their defeat by Cameroon followed a loss to Malawi; South Africa then beat them in a play-off, so they will miss the World Cup for the first time. Shelat wonders if the country’s federation might have started to take the team’s success for granted; ahead of WAFCON, “[t]he NFF scheduled friendlies against three African opponents ranked outside the top 70”.
For her newsletter, Katie McInerney wrote up a visit to Harvard Stadium to watch one of the first games ever played in the Women’s Lacrosse League — the field lacrosse competition newly set up in the USA as a counterpart to the PLL, a men’s franchise league. For now, the PLL’s owners have elected to tether the two closely together: “The WLL and PLL played alongside each other this summer, with women’s games sandwiched between the men’s at most tour stops.”
The next edition of the newsletter will be published in two weeks’ time, on Monday August 31st.
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