The Women’s World Cup heads to France in June and is set to be another record breaker for the world game. The 2019 iteration of the biggest sporting event on earth will follow the 2015 Cup in Canada which featured a record 1.35 million spectators, as well as a universal television audience of over 750 million. Other than the 2019 hosts France, 143 nations attempted to qualify, a new record for the World Cup which blitzed the 129 that attempted last time around. More and more players are signing professional contracts worldwide the unearthing of the value and quality of the women’s game. Furthermore, an unprecedented pay increase for Australian W-League footballers in 2018 has blazed a trail where the pay gap plaguing football slowly but surely closes. Whilst prejudice and discrimination amongst a litany of other issues still cloud the women’s game, as they have done for many decades, these numbers are proving that the passion and determination shown by the ladies of world football are forcing the powers that be to take notice.
24 brave nations have conquered qualifying and will battle to become the FIFA Champions of the world. Is it time for the Matildas to live up to their searing potential on the world stage? Can nations lower down on the rankings totem pole prove they aren’t just off to France to make up numbers? Can anybody end the dominance of the mighty USA? We will find out answers to these questions and countless others as the France 2019 FIFA World Cup rolls on.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately due to the nature of a 24 team tournament, there will be a lot of confusion surrounding the outcome of groups and what will happen to certain 3rd placed teams in the Groups of this tournament. Therefore, whilst I will make my best effort to predict the outcome of certain groups and the organisation of the round of 16 phase of the tournament, the realistic end result will look almost unrecognisable compared to what I come up with. With that said, I’ve done my best to provide a prediction free explanation of the tournament layout and how it will all unfold in different scenarios, which is available at the back of this article (warning! It gets very complex and scientific and you will likely still be confused). If you wish to see a previous example which features this tournament style you may wish to look at the men’s Euro 2016 or the Women’s World Cup 2015, the former of which saw a third placed group team proceed to win the whole tournament. I did not want to bore you readers by providing my explanation and criticisms of the structure of the 24 team world cup here, so instead I put that part of the article at the end, as well of a layout of how my predictions work. Enjoy :)
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