World Cup in Australia, NZ to feature 32 teams

Fifa, football’s governing body, has released the breakdown for the 32-team Women’s World Cup tournament New Zealand and Australia will host in 2023.

New Zealand and Australia, as hosts, have already qualified.

Europe will get 11 direct slots, Asia gets six, Africa four, North and Central America four, South America three and Oceania one in addition to the hosts.

Two more teams from the North America-Central America region will have a chance to join the World Cup field via a 10-team playoff tournament. The United States, Canada, and Jamaica represented that confederation at the 24-team World Cup in France last year.

Four teams will be seeded in the 2023 playoff tournament, based on the latest Fifa world rankings prior to the draw, with a maximum of one seeded team per confederation.

The teams will be divided into three pools – two of three countries and one of four – with sides from the same confederation kept apart.

The playoff tournament will serve as a test event in Australia and New Zealand, with both hosts taking part in friendly matches against the teams in Group 1 and Group 2, ensuring all teams play two matches during the competition.

The first Women’s World Cup, held in 1991 in China, had 12 teams.

In other tournament news, Fifa has cancelled the Under-17 and Under-20 World Cups scheduled for next year due to the pandemic. The next editions are now due to be staged in 2023, with Indonesia still hosting the U20s and Peru the U17s.