11/26/2023 0 Comments Fifa womens rankings![]() (Photo by Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images) Spain has a chance to bring home a trophy this summer despite internal strife and an injury to its top star Alexia Putellas. We explained all that and more in our all-encompassing USWNT World Cup preview. It’s a shell of its 2017-2021 self, with more injuries and holes than young stars emerging to fill them. But that’s not to say this team is in a good place relative to past iterations. 1 almost by default, just like betting markets and the general public have. ) 2023 Women’s World Cup contenders, ranked (Numbers in parentheses are a team’s FIFA ranking and its BetMGM title odds. We’ll rank the contenders from most to least likely champion - but this exercise, in 2023 more so than ever before, is admittedly a crapshoot. A first-time winner could step through it. The reigning Olympic gold medalists, meanwhile, have been fighting with their soccer federation, which is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Two of Europe’s other immensely talented teams have been rocked by coach-created chaos. The reigning World Cup champ and reigning European champ have both been rattled by injuries. What makes this ninth edition so enticing is that not a single one of the 11 has separated itself from the pack. They hail from five different continents, and speak eight different languages, and comprise the most unpredictable Women’s World Cup field ever. There are 11 of them in 2023, 11 teams that could realistically travel to Australia and New Zealand this month and return with a trophy (or, in Australia’s case, celebrate on home soil) in late August. What’s changed, though, in the very recent past, is the depth of the top tier - of the true Women’s World Cup contenders. Germany, nowadays, is no less likely to pummel Latvia or Bulgaria. ![]() and Central American minnows hasn’t shrunk. But so have the traditional powers - most notably the United States - at an arguably even steeper rate. Yes, the sleeping giants of international women’s soccer have been waking up and improving. Or, rather, it’s been incomplete and deceptive. And for most of the 21st century, it’s been wrong. Experts tell casual fans that “the world is catching up,” that investment in the women’s game is paying dividends, that the gap between haves and have nots is narrowing. It bubbles up every four years to manufacture intrigue. The narrative of newfound parity has been a Women’s World Cup staple for as long as many around soccer can remember.
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