FIFA Women's World Cup

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The FIFA Women's World Cup is the most important international competition in women's football. It is contested by the women's national football teams of the member states of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's largest 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.

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). Of the first four tournaments held, the United States has won the championship twice, Norway once and Germany most recently in the 2003 edition.

1 History
2 Format
3 Impact
4 Tournaments
5 All-time performance
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

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 FIFA Women's World Cup 1995 was held in Sweden with twelve teams. Over 660,000 spectators attended the FIFA Women's World Cup 1999 in the United States, ^[2] and nearly one billion viewers from seventy countries tuned in to watch sixteen countries vie for the title.^{[citation needed]}

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 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 FIFA Women's World Cup 2007. The host country for the FIFA Women's World Cup 2011 will be decided by vote.

Since 1999, the finals have been contested by 16 teams. There are two stages: a group stage followed by a knockout stage. In the group stage, teams compete within four groups of four teams each. Each group plays a round-robin tournament, guaranteeing that every team will play at least three matches. The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage.

The knockout stage is 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. It begins with the quarter-finals, in which the winner of each group plays against the runner-up of another group. This is followed by the semi-finals, the third-place match (contested by the losing semi-finalists), and the final.

Since it's 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,^{[citation needed]} and the number of women will equal the number of men by 2010.^{[citation needed]} Planning for the 2007 Women's World Cup in China, reflects the growth.^{[citation needed]}

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

Key:
- aet - after extra time
- asdet - after sudden death extra time

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

Team	Titles	Runners-up	Third-place	Fourth-place
USA	2 (1991, 1999*)	-	2 (1995, 2003*)	-
Germany	1 (2003)	1 (1995)	-	1 (1991)
Norway	1 (1995)	1 (1991)	-	1 (1999)
Sweden	-	1 (2003)	1 (1991)	-
China PR	-	1 (1999)	-	1 (1995)
Brazil	-	-	1 (1999)	-
Canada	-	-	-	1 (2003)