July 19 () –
Group D of the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand is home to one of the favorite teams to lift the title on August 20, England, current European champion and in a great moment of play, which will be the rival to beat for another European level team like Denmark, the competitive China and a rookie like Haiti.
The English team is undoubtedly the great candidate to take first place in this group, supported by the great growth it has undergone at a sporting level and which culminated in its first major title last summer, where, yes, it did not waste its host status.
This success, won against Germany, the only one that put it in trouble along with Spain, and which was accompanied by that of the new ‘Finalissima’ against Brazil, also with the heat of a packed Wembley, ended up causing a bigger ‘boom’ in the country about women’s soccer and a great expectation about what a team that has already been in the final rounds in the last editions of the World Cup can do.
In fact, the current number four in the FIFA world ranking only has third place in 2015 as the best World Cup result, but four years later in France they also reached the semifinals, losing to the United States and later to Sweden to finish fourth.
England practically arrives with the block with which they were proclaimed European champions, led on the bench by the Dutch Sarina Wiegman, whose landing has had a positive impact. They will be missing an important player like striker Beth Mead, second to the Ballon d’Or after Alexia Putellas and top scorer at EURO, who is still recovering from a serious knee injury, but with players of the stature of the blaugrana Lucy Bronze and Keira Walsh , Leah Williamson, Georgia Stanway or Lauren Hemp.
For its part, Denmark will try to make things difficult for the English in what is their return to a World Cup, a tournament in which they had been somewhat surprisingly lacking in the last three editions, despite having shown potential in the Old continent.
The Danes were runners-up in Europe in 2017 and their record includes two presences in the quarterfinals in a World Cup, in their first two participations (1991 and 1995), but neither in 1999 nor in 2007 did they manage to get past the group stage. The same thing happened to him in the last European Championship in England, although then he was included in the ‘group of death’ with Germany and Spain.
The team led by Lars Sondergaard, whose good moment was slowed down in the friendly against Spain, has its best weapons in its offensive part where the presences of captain Pernille Harder and Signe Bruun, a recent signing from Real Madrid, also contribute to Sofie Svava.
Denmark will also compete for one of the tickets for the round of 16 with a team with a history in women’s football such as the Chinese team, although it has been away from the best for several years, a condition that it wants to recover in an appointment in which it arrives after being champion of her continent again 16 years later.
Despite this success, they are still the third best team in Asia, after Australia and Japan, and fourteenth in the world ranking, but their improvement allows them to think about fighting to be at the crossroads, a round in which they have never lacked in their previous seven participations. Runner-up in the world in 1999 in a record final with more than 90,000 spectators against the United States, in France 2019 they lost in the round of 16 against Italy, they arrive at this World Cup with the illusion of a football legend like Shui Qingxia and with a squad who plays almost entirely in his country.
Lastly, and seeking to continue gaining experience will be the modest Haiti, the 53rd in the world and that debuts in a World Cup after overcoming an intercontinental play-off where they beat Senegal and Chile. Under the command of French coach Nicolas Delépine, she will want to be a deceitful ‘Cinderella’.
