Welcome to Australia & New Zealand 2023! This year’s Women’s World Cup is going to be the biggest ever, with 32 nations competing for the first time, in packed stadiums in nine beautiful cities, and people watching on TV all over the world. It also looks like being the most competitive ever. Women’s football is developing at a rate, and teams that might not have put up much of a fight a few years ago now look capable of going the full 90 with the big guns – and maybe even causing an upset. The USA, winners of the last two tournaments, will again begin as favourites, but England, European champions, will pose a real threat to the Americans’ domination. And they won’t be the only ones. As the Netherlands’ Jill Roord points out in these pages, there isn’t much difference between the top half a dozen teams now. As a contest, this World Cup really is wide open. Here we bring you in-depth profiles of 100 of the world’s best players from each of the competing nations. We’ll tell you all you need to know about who they are, where they come from, how they got from there to here, and how they can go from here to global fame and glory. We hope you enjoy this publication and, win or lose, we hope you enjoy the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
