Fan Guide
The FIFA Women’s World Cup is coming to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time in the summer of 2023 with history on the line when the ball gets rolling in Australia and New Zealand.
The United States women’s national team — winners of four of the eight Women’s World Cups that have been played, and the reigning champions of CONCACAF — can become the first national soccer team, male or female, to win three consecutive World Cups. To do so, they’ll need to fend off some of the stiffest competition the tournament has ever seen, including England’s golden generation that won the UEFA Women’s Euro in 2022.
The Women’s World Cup will kick off with the host nations’ opening matches on July 20 and air exclusively on FOX Networks through the final on Aug. 20.
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New Zealand vs. Norway, Jul. 19
The opening match of any World Cup is special. It certainly will be for the co-hosts, who meet former world, Olympic and European champion Norway in the July 20 curtain-raiser.
It’s the sixth time the Football Ferns are appearing at the main event; they’ll be hoping that competing on home soil will help them to advance to the knockout stage for the first time. Beating the Norwegians would help.
That’s a realistic goal against a side that’s regressed heavily over the past two decades; even with former Ballon d’Or winner Ada Hegerberg back in the fold, England beat Norway 8-0 at Euro 2022, the largest defeat in program history.
United States vs. Netherlands, Jul. 26
The second group game for both nations is a rematch of the 2019 Women’s World Cup final in France, which the USWNT won 2-0 on goals by Megan Rapinoe and Rose Lavelle. Much has changed for the two teams in the almost four years since.
The Americans have a revamped roster; Rapinoe, the joint-top scorer and Golden Ball winner at France 2019, won’t be likely to start at age 38. Meantime, the Dutch have been overtaken by rising European counterparts England and Spain, dropping from third to eighth in the FIFA ranking and stumbling at the Euros last summer after winning the continental title in 2017.
Big things are expected from the Lionesses after they won the European title last summer, just the second major tournament title for England, men’s or women’s, and the first in more than half a century.
Sarina Wiegman’s side opens against a to-be-determined opponent (either Chile, Haiti or Senegal) and faces a good Danish team in their second match. But the marquee game is the Group D finale against 15th-ranked China, who have advanced to the knockout stage in each of the six Women’s World Cups in which they’ve participated.
Two of the most technically gifted teams in the competition will meet in this delicious Group B encounter. Spain, which upset the top-ranked U.S. earlier this month, boasts a golden generation of talent led by Alexia Putellas, the world’s consensus-best player and Ballon d’Or winner in 2021 and ’22. La Roja is a contender to win it all despite a disappointing quarterfinal exit at the Euros, where they lost in extra time to eventual champ England.
This game against No. 11 Japan, the 2011 World Cup winner and 2015 runner-up, will tell us plenty about where Spain stands.
Heavyweights in the men’s game, Brazil and France have evolved into elite teams on the women’s side over the last quarter-century despite somehow still having no World Cup or Olympic titles between them.
That could change in summer 2023. The fifth-ranked Les Bleus still have a chip on their shoulder from that narrow quarterfinal loss to the United States in Paris in 2019, a defeat that also prevented them from qualifying for last year’s Tokyo Olympics. Brazil has to like its chances after winning its first Copa América Femenina crown earlier this year. Oh, and both teams play beautiful soccer, too.
