Championship Will Test the Elites' Quality

Women's bigwigs' progress has slowed recently as gap with underdogs narrows

- Michael Cox

ZURICH - Two years ago, before the first 32-team Women's World Cup, there was widespread anticipation of one-sided matches. The 2019 World Cup featured 24 sides and the United States recorded a 13-goal win over Thailand in the group stage. Surely, including eight weaker teams would prompt similar results?

Such fears were misplaced. Granted, the Netherlands beat Vietnam by 7-0, but the gap between the elite and the outsiders had narrowed.

Traditionally strong nations, including Germany, Italy and Brazil, crashed out at the group stage. Colombia, South Africa and Nigeria were impressive. Smaller nations, such as Haiti, New Zealand and Jamaica, were genuinely competitive. But what if there was another factor? What if the traditional elite are not as good as they should be?

The 2025 European Championship, which began on July 2 in Switzerland, will be the latest test.

Among the 16 teams who qualified for Euro 2025, there are a half-dozen realistic contenders, distributed somewhat unevenly across the four groups—none in Group A, Spain in Group B, Germany and Sweden in Group C, and England, France and the Netherlands in Group D. All but the Netherlands, ranked 11th, are in Fifa's top 10 positions in the global standings. Yet none of the six appears to have improved significantly over the past couple of years.

World champions Spain are the favourites, but they are not perfect. They produce more technically gifted players, like Alexia Putellas, than any nation but have few ruthless goalscorers.