On October 13th, FIFA unveiled the latest round of FIFA women's national team world rankings. It is worth noting that although the Chinese women's soccer team's points remain solid, they jumped one place in the world rankings to secure 15th place and fourth place within the Asian region.
Unlike the men's soccer rankings, the FIFA women's soccer rankings are updated only once a year. According to the established schedule of FIFA, this year's ranking update took place on March 25th, June 17th, August 5th and December 9th respectively.
The FIFA Women's National Team Rankings will be used as an important reference in the group draw for the upcoming draw for the 9th Women's World Cup Finals between Australia and New Zealand to be held in Auckland, New Zealand on October 22nd. For this reason, FIFA has released the latest rankings.
Looking back at the last rankings, the FIFA Women's Soccer Rankings released on August 5 ranked the Chinese Women's Soccer team 16th in the world and fourth in Asia with 1,862.87 points. Despite playing 11 warm-up matches in the United States in the past scoring cycle, the Chinese women's soccer team moved up one place in the world rankings and remained unchanged in the Asian rankings due to the lack of international A-level matches.
Within Asia, the rankings are, in order, North Korea, Japan, Australia, China, South Korea, Vietnam, Taipei, Thailand, Uzbekistan South, Taipei, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Myanmar. North Korea is the only Asian team in the world's top 10, and the top five Asian teams are all in the world's top 20. Teams ranked 11th through 20th in the world include the Philippines, India, Jordan, Iran, Hong Kong, Laos, Bahrain, Malaysia, Guam and Indonesia.
The United States, Sweden, Germany, Great Britain, France, Spain, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil and North Korea top the list of the top 10 teams in the world rankings. While teams ranked 11 to 20 include Japan, Norway, Australia, Italy, China, Iceland, South Korea, Denmark, Austria and Belgium.
FIFA's latest announcement shows that the teams participating in the final of the 9th Women's World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023 will be staged based on FIFA rankings. Below is the staging (FIFA rankings in brackets):
Tier 1: Australia (13, host), New Zealand (22, host), USA (1), Sweden (2), Germany (3), England (4), France (5), Spain (6);
Level 2: Canada (7), Netherlands (8), Brazil (9), Japan (11), Norway (12), Italy (14), China (15), Korea (17);
Tier 3: Denmark (18), Switzerland (21), Ireland (24), Colombia (27), Argentina (29), Vietnam (34), Costa Rica (37), Jamaica (43);
Tier 4: Nigeria (45), Philippines (53), South Africa (54), Morocco (76), Zambia (81), winner of play-off A, winner of play-off B, winner of play-off C.
