Kris Shannon outlines five reasons why women’s football is the ultimate World Cup winner.
1. Prime time television
World Cups are a zero-sum game: for every winner, there must be losers. Watching World Cups is not: the more World Cups, the better.
Except, just as sport would be boringwithout winners, claiming all are created equal would be rather dull. So to treat this like sport and declare a (somewhat premature) winner: the Fifa Women’s World Cup will stand alone in the 2023 cup wars I’ve just made up for content.
There are hopefully five reasons for this. We’ll start with an easy one. The football showpiece, unlike the rest of the main cup quintet, was hosted here.
Well, co-hosted, but for all its faults Australia at least has a convenient enough time zone that all 64 games kicked off at a reasonable hour.
Watching high-stakes international sport in the afternoon and evening is a rare treat. Following major events usually requires Kiwi fans to make concessions in other areas of life, slacking off work or even giving up sleep.
Instead, for a few weeks, we could flick on TV over dinner and watch the world’s best.
Count me among the many wrong about New Zealand’s interest in leaving the house for women’s football in winter.
More than 700,000 tickets were sold for 29 matches in this country, an average attendance of 24,439 filling four stadiums to a combined 76 per cent capacity.
Every code in the country would dream of three-quarter-full stands across a schedule that size. Only the All Blacks and Warriors When Winning can rely on such consistent support.
It’s easy to understand why pre-tournament projections were so definitively cleared. The Football Ferns certainly helped, their historic opening-night victory likely sparking a surge in ticket sales.
But they played three games in this tournament. The other 15 teams based here deserve immense credit for the rest, combining for an on-field product that, like any event, varied in quality but always provided value for money.
3. Level playing field
Fifa president Gianni Infantino had done well to avoid making it all about himself. Unlike the men’s World Cup in Qatar, when he attended every match and instructed broadcasters to show him attending every match, Infantino left the women’s event after less than a week and jetted to Tahiti, no doubt further growing the global game.
Infantino ended his publicity-shy streak before the final, telling women if they want to achieve equality in international football, they just need to try a little bit harder to “convince us men”.
In a typically bloviating speech, Infantino also said of the decision to expand the tournament: “Fifa was right.” And you know what? Gianni was right.
Thirty-two teams is the perfect number for a World Cup. (We must pause here to note Fifa increasing the next men’s edition to an unwieldy 48.) It’s neatly divisible for knockout purposes while offering enough variety and inclusion from around the world, providing the lower-ranked teams rise to the challenge.
And rise they did, in the group stage sending home two-time champions Germany, reigning Olympic champions Canada and general champions Brazil.
The surprise results reached that sweet spot: enough to guarantee a first-time winner heading into the semifinals, but not so many as to deny the two best teams a shot at the trophy.
Sam Kerr scores a worldie against England. Photo / Getty
4. *deep sigh* Aussie, Aussie, Aussie
Spain’s gripping 1-0 win over England on Sunday night capped a knockout stage that almost had everything…except the Football Ferns.
Good thing we had the Matildas, then, and I must have joined countless Kiwis in overcoming general animosity for green and gold to discover what life was like on the other side.
Turns out it’s pretty nice. Australia win a bunch. And the Tillies were involved in probably the best moment of the tournament: their epic shootout against France was described by seasoned football observers as the best they had witnessed.
Then there was Sam Kerr’s semifinal equaliser against England, the narrative surrounding both striker and team combining in a wicked swing of her right foot, producing goalgasms on both sides of the Tasman.
Local interest in the latter stages of a football World Cup was a unique experience for fans down under, one without which this tournament would have suffered in comparison.
5. Forget the rest
Time for those comparisons. Time to stop saying nice things about one World Cup and instead run down a bunch of others.
The Netball World Cup already happened, if you missed it. With games in the middle of the night and the Silver Ferns’ title defence seeming doomed when Grace Nweke went down, the tournament left little impact.
The Basketball World Cup tips off this weekend. Mainstream attention on the Tall Blacks’ tilt centres on who isn’t there, not just Steven Adams but brothers Webster and Greek freak Giannis Antetokounmpo, who otherwise would have been playing New Zealand.
The Rugby World Cup is a couple of weeks away, and from an All Blacks perspective, the tournament dips into a long lull after the opening blockbuster against France.
The Cricket World Cup starts in October but is another stricken by unfavourable time zones, drawing few punters with the promise of eight-hour games beginning at 9.30pm.
The evidence is clear, the case unassailable. Just as we all predicted, women’s football takes the crown.
Kris Shannon has been a sports journalist since 2011 and covers a variety of codes for the Herald. Reporting on Grant Elliott’s six at Eden Park in 2015 was a career highlight.
