FIFA WOMEN'S WORLD CUP

The 'FIFA Women's World Cup' is recognized as the most important International competition in women's football and is played amongst women's national football teams of the member states of FIFA, the sport's global governing body. Contested every four years, the first Women's World Cup tournament, named the 'Women's World Championship', was held in 1991, sixty-one years after the men's first FIFA World Cup tournament in 1930. The current format has sixteen teams competing every four years for the winner's trophy.

Contents

History

Format

Impact

Tournaments

All-time performance

See also

References

External links

History

The tournament was originally the brainchild of the then FIFA president João Havelange.^[1] The inaugural tournament was hosted in China in 1991, with twelve teams sent to represent their countries. The 1995 FIFA Women's World Cup was held in Sweden with twelve teams. Over 660,000 spectators attended the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup in the United States, ^[2] and nearly one billion viewers from seventy countries tuned in to watch sixteen countries vie for the title.
Of the first four tournaments held, the United States has won the championship twice, Norway once and Germany most recently in the 2003 tournament.
In the 1999 edition, one of the most famous moments of the tournament was American defender Brandi Chastain's victory celebration after scoring the Cup-winning penalty shot against China. She took off her jersey and waved it over her head (as men frequently do), showing her muscular torso and sports bra as she celebrated. The 1999 final in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California had an attendance of 90,185, a world record for a women's sporting event.^[3]
The 1999 and 2003 Women's World Cups were both held in the United States; in 2003 China was supposed to host it but the tournament was moved because of SARS. ^[4] As compensation, China retained its automatic qualification to the 2003 tournament as host nation and was automatically chosen to host the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup. The host country for the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup will be decided by vote in November 2007.
At the 2007 World Cup in China, U.S. captain Kristine Lilly will participate in her fifth world cup, making her the only woman and one of three players in history to appear in five world cups.^[5]

Format

The participants qualify through the regional football confederations of Oceania (OFC), Europe (UEFA), North America, Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF), South America (CONMEBOL), Asia (AFC) and Africa (CAF).
The competition takes place over the course of three weeks. In the group stage, 16 teams seeded into four groups (A,B,C, and D) compete against each other in a round-robin tournament.
In the knockout phase, the top two teams from each group advance to the quarterfinals, a single-elimination tournament in which teams play each other in one-off matches, with extra time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. The winner of Group A plays the runner-up of Group B, The winner of Group B plays the runner-up of Group A, etc.
The winners of the four quarterfinal games move on to the semifinal matches, which determine the contestants for the championship game. The losing semifinalists compete to determine third place.

Impact

Since its conception in 1989, the Women's World Cup has continued to grow in popularity. FIFA estimates that there are currently forty million girls and women playing football around the world, and the number of women will equal the number of men by 2010. Planning for the 2007 Women's World Cup in China reflects the growth.

Tournaments

Year	Host		Final				THIRD PLACE MATCH
			Winner	Score	Runner-up		3rd Place	Score	4th Place
1991 ''Details''	China		'United States'	'2–1'	Norway		Sweden	'4–0'	Germany
1995 ''Details''	Sweden		'Norway'	'2–0'	Germany		United States	'2–0'	China
1999 ''Details''	United States		'United States'	'0–0' asdet '(5–4)' on penalties	China		Brazil	'0–0' asdet '(5–4)' on penalties	Norway
2003 ''Details''	United States		'Germany'	'2–1' asdet	Sweden		United States	'3–1'	Canada
			Match decided on golden goal
2007 ''Details''	China
2011 ''Details''	''to be determined''

★ 'Key:'

★
★ aet - ''after extra time''

★
★ asdet - ''after sudden death extra time''

All-time performance

Main articles: National team appearances in the FIFA Women's World Cup

Team	Titles	Runners-up	Third-place	Fourth-place
	2 (1991, 1999 ★ )	-	2 (1995, 2003 ★ )	-
	1 (2003)	1 (1995)	-	1 (1991)
	1 (1995)	1 (1991)	-	1 (1999)
	-	1 (2003)	1 (1991)	-
	-	1 (1999)	-	1 (1995)
	-	-	1 (1999)	-
	-	-	-	1 (2003)

See also

★ Women's football (soccer)

★ FIFA World Cup

References

1. Women's World Cup History
2. FIFA Women's World Cup - USA 1999
3. Women's World Cup History
4. FIFA moves Women's World Cup from China because of SARS Naomi Koppel
5. U.S. Women Still Have One Link to the Past

External links

★ FIFA official site

★ UEFA's page on the FIFA Women's World Cup

★ RSSSF's pages