Three Reasons To Watch The FIFA Women’s World Cup

If you haven't been tuning in to watch the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in France, you may want to reconsider. So far, it may have been the treatment of women in football and the huge pay gap between men and women in the sport that has grabbed headlines, but it is the football on the pitch that is commanding attention.

Here are three reasons why the 2019 Women's World Cup is shaping up to be a big hit.

Goals, Goals And More Goals

The group stage matches of the tournament so far have witnessed 106 goals scored across 36 games. That's an average of a little under three goals per game. Compare that to the men's tournament that took place around the same time last year, and it suggests that the Women’s World Cup is turning out to be better entertainment. By the end of the group stages in the FIFA Men's World Cup 2018, the tournament saw 122 goals, scored across 48 games. That's an average of 2.5 goals per game. That’s true even though the women's edition has only 24 teams participating, eight less than the men's edition.

The Women Are Doing What Men Couldn't

Of the 16 teams that qualified for the knock-out stage of the Women's World Cup, six are countries that had no representation in the men's event.

Women from U.S., Canada, Netherlands, Norway, China and Cameron are giving football fans, who missed the opportunity to cheer for their country at last years men’s tournament, a chance to celebrate a world championship.

What also stands out is the difference in quality of some of these teams.

Take the Top 5 for example. According to FIFA, the men's ranking is led by Belgium followed by France, Brazil, England and Portugal. Not only are Belgium (20) and Portugal (30) ranked outside the top 10 in the women’s game, they also failed to qualify for the 2019 World Cup. The women's top five is headed by the U.S. — three-time world champions — followed by Germany, England, France and Canada. The U.S. men's team failed to qualify for the 2018 tournament.

‘VAR’ Drama

The concept of VAR or Video Assistant Referee made its debut at the 2018 FIFA Men's World Cup and it created quite a stir — disallowed goals, overturned decisions and sending-offs. And it looks like that trend is continuing in the Women's edition too.

There have been 18 VAR reviews so far in the Women's World Cup. Nine have led to goals while seven have had no impact on the scoreboard. However, the two instances where the VAR review has created a lot of controversy is the referees' decision to issue penalty re-takes for goalkeeping breaches. A VAR penalty review handed France a crucial win against Nigeria while a similar review handed Argentina all three points against Scotland. Though Nigeria did make it through to the next round, Scotland was denied the chance to progress to the knockout stage in its first ever World Cup appearance.

The Women’s World Cup has all that the men’s tournament did. And then some. So tune In.