Although they started relatively recently -the first was held in 1991 in China-, the women’s soccer world cup They have become a global event.
And through the tournaments, the soccer players are reaching records and feats that remain inscribed in the history books of this sport.
The dominance of the United States -with four world titles-, the surprising performance of the Asian teams (Japan was world champion and runner-up, China was runner-up in 1999) and the European efficiency led by the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom have become aspects highlights of this tournament.
Of course, the comparisons -always odious- with the men’s soccer world cup are inevitable, but in many ways the women’s tournament has been as epic and even more epic than the men’s, and heroines like Marta, Nadine Angerer or Formiga have surpassed the male records.
At BBC Mundo we show you the records held by women in the soccer world cups.
1. 17 World Cup goals… and counting
Marta Viera Silva she’s brazilian. And she is also a soccer legend.
And it is for several reasons: she was chosen for six years as the best soccer player on the planet by FIFA, she is the all-time goalscorer for her team and has participated in five World Cups.
But perhaps for what will remain forever in the history books of football is that he has scored 17 goals in World Cups, a record that no other footballer, man or woman, has reached.
Marta, who is a native of Dois Riachos -a town in eastern Brazil-, surpasses legends like the German Miroslav Klose, who scored 16 goals in the four World Cups he participated in.
When it comes to football in his country, he also surpasses Ronaldo Nazario de Lima, perhaps the best Brazilian player in history behind Pelé, who managed to score 15 goals in the four World Cups in which he took to the pitch.
Another mark held by the Brazilian is that of having been the first soccer player to score in five different World Cups, a record that was matched by Cristiano Ronaldo in the last championship, Qatar 2022.
Marta is expected to be part of the team that will participate in the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand where she will be able to further expand this record, which will become almost impossible for her male colleagues to match.
2. Formiga’s seven world championships
Perhaps the name Miraildes Maciel Mota doesn’t say much… but if we say Formiga, as she is nicknamed, we know that we are dealing with a player who makes the pages of statistics resound.
The Brazilian, who is 45 years old and still plays with Sao Paulo in the first division, has several records to her credit: she is the oldest player to score in a World Cup (she was 37 when she did so) and the oldest to participate in a World Cup (41 years old in France 2019).
But that is only at the women’s World Cup level, because Formiga carries another incredible record on its shoulders: it has played in seven World Cups, which no footballer on the planet has achieved so far.
she was in Sweden 1995, USA 1999 and 2003, China 2007, Germany 2011, Canada 2015 and France 2019.
Far away are the five world championships for the German Birgit Prinz and the American Kristine Lilly.
However, Lilly holds another World Cup record: she has played a total of 30 matches. He is followed by Formiga with 27 and the German Lothar Matheus with 25.
In the men’s tournament Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lothar Matheus, Antonio Carbajal, Rafa Márquez and Andrés Guardado have five appearances in World Cups.
Although Formiga is not in the squad that will play the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, the truth is that his record is already installed in gold letters on the planet of the ball.
3. 13-0 the biggest win
During the morning of June 11, 2019, the players of the Thailand national team were anxious: they were going to play their second World Cup in history and the first rival in this new adventure was the almighty United States.
What the Thais perhaps never thought about was how that match would end: 13-0 against them, the biggest win in the history of the tournament.
But, above all, the biggest goal difference in all the world cups.
Scoring came from Alex Morgan five times, Samantha Mewis and Rosel Lavelle twice each, and then Megan Rapinoe, Lindsey Horan, Mallory Pugh and Carli Lloyd each scored one goal to complete the final score.
That win already surpassed another record held by women: the 11-0 that Germany had given Argentina in the 2007 World Cup in China.
Both scores are clearly above the 10-1 that Hungary scored against El Salvador in the 1982 World Cup in Spain or the 9-0 that Yugoslavia gave Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in Germany in 1974.
4. The clean arc… the entire tournament
You hear a lot in football that the best defense is a good attack. But no coach or player can escape the temptation to boast that he was able to leave the goal at zero.
In fact, in the history of the men’s world championships, no team that has been crowned champion has been able to keep a clean sheet throughout the competition.
The best numbers in this regard are those achieved by France in 1998, Italy in 2006 and Spain in 2010, whose teams only conceded two goals during the World Cups that they ended up winning.
However, among women there is a team that has been crowned world soccer champion without scoring a single goal: Germany, in China 2007.
The team’s goalkeeper, Nadine Angerer, had a lot to do with this, who curiously started because a few days before the tournament began the chosen goalkeeper had been seriously injured.
Angerer managed to prevent Germany’s unbeaten record from being broken and even saved a penalty from Marta in the final, which ended in a win for the Teutons.
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss out on our best content.
BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-65977044, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-07-21 03:50:06
#Womens #World #Cup #records #women #surpass #men