Women's World Cup 2023: qualification is now complete

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Sorry if this is a duplicate thread - I assume that in due course there will be a whole new forum for threads on this year's women's World Cup - but I couldn't find any relevant thread (from an admittedly lazily half-arsed attempt). Have there been any threads yet about the upcoming tournament?

Anyway, the final match of the Inter-Confederation play off tournament was yesterday - Panama sealed their place by beating Paraguay. The draw for the groups was some time ago (so in advance of the last few qualifiers being identified). Link to the Wiki page on the tournament here:

2023 FIFA Women's World Cup - Wikipedia

I am looking forward to this more than any football tournament for many years. If it is half as much fun for an English audience as the recent women's Euros were, it will be brilliant.

England (current world ranking 4th) are in a group with China, Denmark and Haiti (ranked 14th, 18th and 55th respectively).

Slightly politically awkward draw for the USA in a group with Vietnam.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

D'oh! Just spotted the thread. I wasn't looking for "ANZ".

[Nesta]

Looking forward to it, although I slightly worry that the expansion to 32 teams has come too soon, and we could see too many one sided matches in the group phase. We'll see.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

By reference to FIFA rankings, the prime candidates for potentially embarrassingly one-sided matches would seem to be:

Spain (7) v Zambia (81)
England (4) v Haiti (55)
USA (1) v Vietnam (34)
France (5) v Panama (57)
Sweden (3) v S Africa (54)
Germany (2) v Morocco (76)

Possibly also Canada (6) v Nigeria (45) and/or Brazil (9) v Panama (57)

In general, if the rankings are anything like a fair reflection of level, African women's football has a long way to go. Nigeria, at 45th, are the highest ranked African side. (other confederations' currently highest ranked countries):

CONCACAF - USA (1)
UEFA - Germany (2)
CONMEBOL - Brazil (9)
AFC - N Korea (10)
OFC: New Zealand (24)

Although that list does reveal the quirk that the rankings system seems to take account of some not very recent stuff, as North Korea have (for COVID reasons, apparently) not played a fixture for over 3 years according to the Wiki page on that team, hence their absence from this tournament.

[tee rex]

I watched quite a bit of the qualifying tournament, it was enjoyable in that high-stakes/high-errors kind of way. The teams that missed out were devastated (Paraguay's players slumped to the ground and couldn't move for ages after Panama knocked them out, rather fortuitously). Unlike top pros, male and increasingly female, they don't get to play another big game next week.

The crowds were very small, almost entirely from the migrant communities. To be fair the weather (cyclones and biblical floods) has been a downer.

Anyway, none of the qualifiers have much chance in the tournament, the strongest are probably Portugal but the USA and Netherlands are in their group. More worryingly, New Zealand look like very weak hosts - worse than when they've qualified previously.

[Nesta]

Anyway, shout out to Concacaf- I'd kind of thought that confederation consisted of the US, Canada, Khadija Shaw and very little depth, but both their reps in the playoffs won through