The 2023 Women’s World Cup is the 9th Women’s World Cup following the first Women’s World Cup that took place in 1991. A World Cup takes place every 4 years and has a different host country each time. This year’s World Cup was co-hosted by New Zealand and Australia and had 32 nations competing. The World Cup consists of some of the world’s best soccer players who compete for a world championship. The World Cup final took place in Sydney, Australia on August 20, 2023 between England and Spain, with Spain taking the victory. This women’s World Cup was known as the “unpredictable world cup” as no one had any predictions who would win.
The 2023 Women’s World cup is one for the books. For the first time in World Cup history, FIFA (Fédération internationale de football association) allowed 32 nations to qualify for the women’s World Cup. The teams that qualified are: New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Switzerland, USA, Vietnam, Netherlands, Portugal, Australia, Ireland, Nigeria, Canada, France, Jamaica, Brazil, Panama, Spain, Costa Rica, Zimbwa, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, Italy, Argentia, England, Haiti, Denmark, China, Germany, Morocco, Colombia, and Korea. Out of the 32 teams, 8 teams made their first World Cup debut: Haiti, Philippines, Morocco, Ireland, Zimbwa, Vietnam, Portugal, and Panama.
All teams played a minimum of 3 games in their group stages. There are 8 groups, A-H, the top two teams with the most points from each group advanced to the round of 16, which started the elimination round. Each team was awarded three points for a win, one point for a tie, and zero points for a loss. The winner of the round of 16 moved onto the quarter finals, the winner of that moved onto the semi-final, and the two teams that won in the semis played in the final.
Every year the women’s World Cup gains more and more popularity. Craig Jaffe, a soccer coach at Hart High School, believes, “getting to watch women play at an extremely high level only increases the popularity.” He recalls that, “players around the world who are [getting] global attention and the more popular the best women’s players are in the world, the more popular the game is going to be, and the more inspired young athletes are going to be.”
Due to the women’s world cup being held in New Zealand and Australia, the game times in the United States were very random. Most games were at 1:30 am or 3:00 am, but some games were held at 6:00am. Sami Robinson, a high school soccer player, believes the early games times, “cost them more money because there is less viewing” while Craig Jaffee believes that, “the women’s world cup this year has recorded record viewing numbers which I think comes back to the quality of play and how good all of the players are now.” FIFA ended up selling 1.6 million tickets for the 2023 women’s world cup. That is a record breaking number of tickets sold for a women’s world cup.
During this world cup there have been a number of broken records and many firsts. For the first time in history the United States Women’s National Team loses in the round of 16. The past 8 world cups they have been a part of they have made it to at least the final four. The match between the USA and Sweden ended in a 0-0 tie after overtime. Sami Robinson stated, “ they should have played a lot better and they had plenty of chances to win during that penalty kick shootout but they just couldn’t do it.” The Swedish took the 5-4 victory in penalty kicks.
New Zealand wins their first ever world cup match while having the privilege of being one the co-host for the women’s world cup. They won their first match against Norway, defeating them 1-0, as the first match of the world cup. Spain also breaks a few records during this unpredictable world cup. They not only make it to the women’s world cup final for the first time in history, they also get to bring home a trophy for the first time in history. Spain defeated England 1-0 in the World Cup Final to be the champions of the new world champions.
