I thought it was a great match. Definitely one of the best matches I've seen in a WWC in a long time. I think Neville made a mistake not having Barnsley in goal.
For the the guff that Naeher has gotten trying to replace arguably the greatest women's keeper of all time (Hope Solo), she was huge today. I had no problem with the penalty call. It was obviously not intentional or a standard takedown, but it was a foul that kept a scoring attempt from happening. So it was correct. The VAR decision to take the goal off the board was also correct based on what was shown here. She was only a few inches off, but off is still off.
As far as VAR on the whole, I'm as critical as anybody. I think an easy way to "fix" it is to put a few limitations on it. To me, the objective of VAR is to correct "clear and obvious mistakes." So I would put a 30 second timer for the booth to review. If they can't determine if the call on the field wasn't correct in that amount of time, then it wasn't a clear and obvious mistake. They either change the call to the official or tell the official to go look at the monitor. Again, the official only gets 30 seconds. So other than how long it takes the official to get to the monitor, a max of a minute of stoppage.
Now for the arrogance of the USWNT (and some of the fans), I am not a fan of the actions of several of the players. In particular Rapinoe. She's a hell of a player. Better now than she was 4 years ago which is crazy. But her on field and particularly her off field actions are offensive to me. I love to watch her play, but hate the baggage that comes with it.
I don't know that I agree with everybody saying that England was the better team despite the score. That happens, of course, but the reality is that the US had the same game plan for England that they had for France. It wasn't about holding the ball or passing numbers, it was about setting up the counter and making life difficult in the final third. So the numbers will always be in the favor of the opponent, that is what is expected. As City fans, we have gotten used to having the ball and being the better team. But there are other ways to play and win. Its sometimes ugly, but it can be effective.
Side note: the US group was the last to play. So the US had one day less rest than Spain in the knockouts. Then the US had one day less rest than France in the quarters. Today the US had one day less rest than England in the Semis. Playing every 3rd day when the opponents are getting 4 days is not easy. So I would guess that there was a fatigue difference between the the teams. Fortunately that won't be the case in the final.
England was very good. I don't know if they were better than France, but either way, they were in the discussion for the best team in this WC.