Football has been bumped up to the front pages over the last week; sadly for the wrong reasons, with the FIFA corruption scandal casting a sombre cloud over the worlds' most popular sport, not to mention the silly lads who've been getting their knickers in a twist over the fact that the FIFA 2016 video game will feature (gasp) women's teams.
Thankfully, 500-odd white knights are cantering over the horizon in the form of the 24 teams taking back in this year’s Women’s World Cup as they get ready to take part in the most high profile women’s football event in history.
Here’s your cheat sheet for all things W.W.C 2015
The Where/Who/Whens
The World Cup is going down in Canada, the first time the country has hosted a major football event. 24 teams are taking part, with eight of them playing making their debut for the first time. You wanna know who? FINE: Cameroon, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand. Kick off is this Saturday (6th) and the competition will run a day shy of a month with the final being played on the 5th July, at the 54,320 capacity BC Place stadium in Vancouver.
Six cities are hosting 52 games between them - Ottawa, Moncton, Montreal, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Turf Wars
The tournament has been beset by controversy ever since the organisers decided that this would be the first ever major football tournament to be played on artificial turf. Players (quite rightly) rallied against being used as footballing guinea pigs and, last October, 84 players filed a complaint of gender discrimination with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
Some of the world’s biggest players put their name to it, including the USA’s Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan and Spain’s Veronica Boquete, whilst even professional simple guy Tom Hanks got behind it. Sadly, the withdrew the complaint in January when it became clear FIFA just weren’t going to play ball. Oh FIFA.
YOU-ESS-AY! GERM-AN-AY!
The traditional heavyweights of Women’s football/everything in the world ever, are USA and Germany. Since the first World Cup in 1991, both have won the the World Cup twice and there has yet to be a final without one or the other in.
This is actually the first time USA have gone into a finals not being top of the FIFA rankings with the Germans - boasting a 100% record in qualification and the dynamic 23 year old Dszenifer Maroszan poised to be one of the tournament’s stars - just out front as favorites.
The Best Of The Rest
Japan were the shock winners in 2011, dropkicking American hearts with a shock win on penalties. They take an experienced side to Canada, lead by captain Aye Miyama who won MVP at last year’s Asian Games (that Japan won), and have a nice looking group with Switzerland, Cameroon and Ecuador all World Cup debutants.
Elsewhere, Pia Sundhage’s Sweden suddenly came into the equation when they beat Germany 4-2 back in March’s Algarve Cup, though the good vibes from that win were somewhat dulled by a subsequent 3-1 loss to Switzerland and 3-3 draw with their Scandinavian sisters, Denmark. Their game on 12th June against USA is undoubtedly the plum match of the group phase, with the two teams one half of the Group Of Death that also includes 2014 African Champs Nigeria, and an Australian team with a nickname we’re pretty sure has nothing to do with Roald Dahl: The Matildas.
Elsewhere, don’t rule out France who enter third in the World rankings ,with the strikers with the top number of goals and assists in European qualifying (Gaetane Thiney and Louis Necib, respectively), with the whole team keen to make an impact ahead of hosting the World Cup in 2019.
Taxi For England?
Ahhhh, England. Sixth in the World, feeding off the good vibes brought along by the return of Katie Chapman- out of the set-up since falling out with last coach Hope Powell in 2011- a 100% qualifying record and the Rach Of The Rovers leadership of Steph Houghton.
Despite drawing France in their group they’ll be confident of getting through to the knockout rounds with Colombia and Mexico taking up the other spots. A Big Gun free second round match looms, so they’ll be confident of getting the quarter final spot that would represent a relevantly successful tournament.
Girls On Screen
This isn’’t directly related to the World Cup as such, but the hullabaloo that followed the announcement that the computer games FIFA 2016 will contain (shock! Disgust!) 12 international woman’s teams wasn't great. The reaction to it from certain members of the Twitter ‘intelligentsia’ who believed a woman’s place is anywhere but their computer screen was so deliciously stupid.
Anyway, their inclusion shows that the game is ever gaining in profile, so pull yourself up a chair, some arm-sized beers, and tune in to the next month’s sporting soap opera.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.