The odd year 2019, so no Olympics, no World Cup or European football? The 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup is the most interesting one of the summer and takes place in France until July 7.
2019 FIFA Women's World Cup marks a turning point in the women's football movement. The eighth edition of a tournament that has taken place since 1991 brings to the field in France the best international football players who have arguably peaked in their fan base following and how much spotlight they now receive.
This is the first time in the history of women's football that 24 teams have played for the final success, for a total of 54 matches divided into nine stadiums: media coverage, sponsors, the public, the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup will be a milestone, setting records in the future. Budget for the prizes is $ 50 million, three times more than the previous edition in Canada when it was 15 million.
It is a constant, continuous, healthy, organic growth of women in football. A match less than thirty years ago with the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup of 12 teams in China. Women's World Cup culminates today in the challenge of France '19 for the representatives arrived across the Alps from all over the planet.
It's a football that grows also and above all at the level of the women's club, with matches that also in Italy are followed by tens of thousands of spectators: like the 40,000 who attended Juventus - Fiorentina on 24 March, a final challenge for the championship at the Allianz Stadium in Turin.
Teams at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup
Who participates in the FIFA Women's World Cup in France? Among the 24 teams there are the reigning champions - and among the favourites for the final victory - the United States. There is the total beginners of Jamaica, South Africa and Chile who have never attended a world cup before. Finally, teams who are sure to go ahead with ease such as England, France, Spain and Japan - winner of the last edition.
Italy's national football team as a football system and thus at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup has been a bit 'behind' other European nations with Spain falling behind the most. After a golden moment in the 90s between '99 and 2014 there was a fifteen-year slowdown, where “Italy stopped and the rest of Europe ran," explained the coach of Azzurre Milena Bertolini. Despite this setback, the movement is back on track and the FIFA women's world cup is the testing ground to see how far the Azzurre have come.
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The battle already begins in the group stage of the FIFA Women's World Cup, where italian national team is part of Group C with Australia, Brazil, and Jamaica. The carioca and Australia, in 6th place in the FIFA ranking and strongest of the stars Samantha Kerr, are particularly fearsome, with Jamaica as the absolute rookie in the FIFA Women's World Cup: but we know that forecasts are made to be denied.
So many new faces that we will soon get used to seeing on the front pages of sports newspapers.
Italy arrives at the FIFA Women's World Cup in 15th place in the Fifa Women ranking and twenty years after the last qualification, which took place in the United States in 1999. Today the representative coach Milena Bertolini puts on the field at the World Cup women's football players who come from Juventus, Fiorentina, Milan, and Rome and has a great desire for redemption.
The premises for doing well at the FIFA Women's World Cup are all there, thanks to a team united with the right mix of individuality and strength of the collective: and with many new faces that soon we will get used to seeing on the front pages of sports newspapers. One of them is the captain of Istrian and Congolese origins Sara Gama, the face of global Italy, perfect for representing an inclusive, open and contemporary sport at the FIFA Women's World Cup.
Favorite teams in the final victory of the FIFA Women's World Cup
Favourites for the final of the 2019 Fifa Women's World Cup on 7 July at the Parc Olympique in Lyon? Let's start with the United States team, reigning world champion and ranked first in the world ranking. In the USA, women's football has been a solid reality for decades and has always been good or bad at the Olympics. Even the women's world cup: with three titles, in fact, the US team is the equal of Brazil's pentacampeao in men's football, no one has won more than them.
Athletes of the United States Soccer Federation can admire on their wall the beauty of eight women's championships CONCACAF and ten Algarve Cups won between 2000 and 2015. In the past, players and champions such as Hope Solo and Brandi Chastain have become planetary celebrities and names that are well known beyond the sports news, the same will happen in France '19: lights on Megan Rapinoe, midfielder and team leader, beloved LGBT activist on and off the field.
It is a constant, continuous, healthy, organic growth of women in football.
Another favourite to go on in the tournament is certainly France, host country, 4th place in the ranking Fifa and now in the group stage "office" just like it happens in men's football. The home team is coached by Corinne Diacre: raised in a working-class family, the Diacre is one in the blues for twenty-five years now, first as a player and then with a long career in the technical staff.
In the past, she was also the coach of a male team of professionals - the Clermont Foot - like every commonsense leader Corinne Diacre puts the team of individuals first and the group before the individuals. To some, Diacre's style on the bench reminds them of the former Juventus player and selector of the French men's national team, Didier Deschamps. On the home courts of the women's football world cup, all France awaits the feats of Eugénie Le Sommer as a striker in Lyon, where he has 193 goals out of 172 appearances, as well as the beauty of 74 goals in the national team.
Remaining in Europe, even the representative of women's Germany has excellent opportunities to make way for the World Cup for women's football. In 2nd place in the FIFA ranking, the Deutsche Fußballnationalmannschaft der Frauen is a compact, renewed, titled team - two world championships won against three in the United States - and is also the only qualified team in the women's world cup to have raised the cup with both a men's national team (1954, 1974, 1990, 2014) and a women's one (2003 and 2007).
Trained by Martina Voss-Tecklenburg, the German girls arrive in France with the Olympic title won in 2016 to defend and are one of the teams to beat. The spearhead of the Teutonic national team is Dzenifer Marozsàn, offensive midfielder of Hungarian origin, born in 1992.
Canada's women's team is also well suited to the women's football world cup: 5th place in the FIFA world cup, a tradition that comes from far away, a team that in the past was also trained by "our" Carolina Morace and a movement that, strange as it may seem in our latitudes, is driving the men's one. Yes, in Canada women are the real protagonists of the world of football, not men.
At least, they don't fear comparisons results: John Herdman, coach of the women's team, in 2018 passed to follow the men's team. It was not a downgrade: the women's team was stronger. It was the men who needed a hand.