La Roja overcome chaos in the Women’s World Cup
The Lionesses roar is put out
The Women’s World Cup, hosted by Australia and New Zealand, is over
Across 64 matches, the world’s best players demonstrated just how good the women’s game has become now that gaps in funding, sponsorship and match attendance are starting to narrow (although still not at parity)
Who won the competition?
Congratulations to Spain on their victory in the final
They achieved this despite a strike in September 2022 involving 15 of their players, only 3 of whom were called back up to the squad for the tournament
Their 18 goals in the competition was higher than any other team, plus they averaged 71% possession prior to the final. The only blemish was a 4-0 loss to Japan during the group stages (despite Spain achieving 77% possession during that game)
This meant that Japan holds the record for having the lowest possession while winning a match in both men’s and women’s world cups - the Japanese men’s squad also beat Spain 2-1 at Qatar 2022
Despite the setbacks, Spain outplayed England during the final with more possession (57% vs. 43%), shots (13 vs. 8) and expected goals (2.2 vs. 0.5)
What happened to England?
That’s an impressive feat considering how strong England’s team had been in the couple of years running up to the tournament
The Lionesses had strolled into the competition following their 10 qualifying matches, in which they scored 80 goals and conceded 0 goals (including a 20-0 thrashing of Latvia), although their top scorer during qualifying (Beth Mead, 13 goals) was out with a knee injury for the finals
Wiegman’s record, more generally, since she starting in the role has been impressive. Her win rate before the competition was 79%, higher than Gareth Southgate’s 62% (itself a reasonable feat) or Sir Alf Ramsey’s 61% (the last England manager to win a World Cup)
And this should come as no surprise, considering she also won the European Championships with the Netherlands back in 2017
What is even more impressive is that this has all been achieved despite women being banned from playing competitive football in England until c. 50 years before
Back in 1921, the FA believed “The game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged” - quite astonishing considering where women’s game is at right now
In reality, this is likely to be more because of the competition women’s football brought to the men’s game following WW1
The women’s game had flourished while the men were away and would sometimes draw larger crowds, such as the 53,000 fans that watched Dick, Kerr’s Ladies and St Helens play at Goodison Park on Boxing Day 1920, believed to be one of the highest attendance figures recorded at the time
The ban remained in place for 50 years until the FA offered to affiliate the Women’s FA in 1971. Despite this, scant resources were initially provided relative to the men’s game which meant that progress was slow (something that has improved, but is still an issue relative to the funding available in the men’s game - see more further down)
Which other teams performed well?
A number of other players and teams over achieved in the competition:
- Japan’s Hinata Miyazawa was the top scorer with 5 goals
- France’s Kadidiatou Diani was involved in 7 goals, the most in the competition (4 goals and 3 assists, 58% of all of France’s goals over the competition) and also had the most expected goals (5.1)
- England’s Alessia Russo proved her ability in front of goal scoring 3 goals. In doing this, she took the most shots in the competition (22), and had more shots on target than any other players (12 on target)
- Casey Phair of South Korea became the youngest player to ever play at a Women’s World Cup at 16 years and 26 days old
- Panama’s Marta Cox scored the fastest goal of the tournament (68 seconds, against France)
- South Africa and Morocco both qualified for the knockout stages for the first time, meaning that 3 African teams qualified for the latter stages - making them the second most represented continent in the knockouts behind Europe (with 8 teams)
- Spain led most of the passing stats, with Teressa Abelleira topping most of them. She had the highest number of passes into the final third (67), crosses (55), corner kicks (46) and created more shot-creating actions (39) than any other player. Despite all this, she only got one assist across the competition
But not all teams performed so well. The United States, normally considered as the favourites, failed at the last 16 stage, their worst performance in the history of the competition
Brazil didn’t even qualify for the knockouts, the first time this happened in 28 years, while Germany didn’t get out of their group for the first time ever
And how successful was the competition more broadly?
It was a record competition in terms of viewership:
- Almost 2 million fans watched games from inside one of the 10 host stadiums, averaging over 30,000 per game - more than 9,000 more per game than the 2019 version of the competition in France
- The highest match attendance was 75,784 for the four matches at Stadium Australia in Sydney. However, the highest ever attendance at a Women’s World Cup match was 90,185 at the 1999 final in the USA
- Around 2 billion people watched at least one of the matches, a big increase on the 1.1 billion who watched in 2019
- In England, the final was watched by 14.4 million people between BBC’s and ITV’s coverage, plus another 3.9 million streams on the BBC Sport App. This is a record for a women’s football match and not far behind the 17.4 million who watched the men’s Euro 2022 final
- Spain’s equivalent for the final was 5.6 million viewers, also a record for a women’s game in the country
- On top of this, the BBC’s coverage across the competition was watched by over 21 million people
Despite this progress, there were still more of examples where the game still is not fully equal:
- Financially, this world cup has also broke records, generating $570m in revenue, earning more revenue than any other competition on earth (other than the men’s football world cup). However, prize money in this competition was 4 x lower than the men’s competition ($110m vs. $440m)
- Each of the 23 person Lionesses squad received almost £200,000 in prize money from FIFA for winning the competition (with a further £1.4 million going to the FA). However, the players’ request to the FA for an additional £100,000 in prize money had they won the competition was rejected before the competition started, despite the men’s team having a £500,000 bonus per player had they won the Qatar 2022 World Cup final
- And its not just the players. When it comes to managers, women are still under-represented here, with only 12 of the 32 managers in the competition being women
What else should I know about the competition?
- Spain vs. England was the first final in 32 years (and the first ever final) to feature two teams who hadn’t won the competition
- There were 164 goals scored in the competition. While this is more than in any previous world cup, this was also the first expanded version of the competition with 32 teams
- The final in Sydney was the 7th consecutive Women’s World Cup final to be played outside of the host nation’s capital (which is Canberra in Australia), since Stockholm hosted the final in 1995
Check out more GoodStats on Football and Sport:
- Qatar 2022-It’s been a Scorcher! FIFA’s experiment produces a thrilling finale
- City take home the Treble! They’ve finally broken their Champions League curse
- Coming Out to Play; Putting the LGBT+ into FIFA, NBA and IOC
