Hugely one-sided scorelines, including the Lionesses cruising through qualifying, have become all too common – something has to change
After scoring 70 goals without reply in their nine victories during qualification so far, England’s pathway to securing a spot at next summer’s Women’s World Cup has been a prime example why the current format should never be used again in the women’s game.
More than half of the Lionesses’ qualifiers have been won by an 8-0 margin or greater, and that’s before Tuesday evening’s concluding fixture at home to Luxembourg which is heavily expected to end in a similar fate.
These hugely one-sided scorelines aren’t the fault of the Latvian, Luxembourg or North Macedonia players, who have conceded 147 goals between them in Group D, as they do not have the opportunity to train full-time and do not deserve the ridicule that humiliating results like last November’s 20-0 hammering in Doncaster inevitably see sent their way.
The resources available to them, and dozens of other smaller women’s footballing nations, render the current process futile. At the same time, England are not at fault for simply outclassing opponents ranked 112th 117th, 134th respectively, nor are they by any means alone. Across Europe, after 207 matches played in qualifying in all of the groups, 29 at the matches have finished with a 8-0 scoreline or more, while nearly 8 per cent of the games [16 fixtures] so far have seen a team hit double figures.
They are flaws that have been evident ever since the first goals began flying in at the beginning of this process 12 months ago and this situation was entirely predictable; It has been going on for the past four Women’s World Cup qualification cycles.
Copying the format that European men’s teams have traditionally used to qualify for major tournaments in the women’s game had good intentions but it has ultimately proven to be a big mistake because of the vast contrasts in investment being made by the leading nations compared to their amateur opponents.
Uefa’s head of women’s football, Nadine Kessler, acknowledged in 2021 that these heavy scorelines were "not good for the development of women’s football" and that changes would be made when a new international women’s football calendar is agreed from 2023 onwards, and told the Guardian last year that a Nations League-style format was one of several options under consideration.
Those discussions are understood to still be ongoing, as the women’s footballing world continues to wait for Fifa’s new revamped calendar, but what has unfolded in the qualifying process since then, and the competitiveness of this summer’s Euros, has all served as a fine advert for the prospect of a women’s Nations League.
More regular fixtures between teams of similar standards are an absolute necessity. A women’s version of the Nations League would be one such way to change that, except Uefa should go one step further than the men’s competition and actually use such a Nations League as the primary process for qualifying for tournaments too rather than an additional set of fixtures.
However, the powers that be in the women’s game should find the creativity to develop their own unique solution rather than replicating what the men have done, because the state of play in the women’s game is so different financially.
Organisers are understood to have considered more than half a dozen different potential ways of resolving the situation so far. Here’s another for them:
Group A: Germany, Iceland, Belgium, Ukraine
Group B: England, Denmark, Switzerland, Poland
Group C: France, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Wales
Group D: Sweden, Italy, Scotland, Finland
Group E: Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic
That idea above will have its flaws too, no doubt, as no solution is perfect, but one thing is certain: On Tuesday the group-stage of Europe’s existing qualifying process will come to end and, for the good of the entire sport, it needs to be ‘goodbye, good riddance, and farewell’ to this mismatch-creating format.
We rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism.
We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future.
Thank you for your support.
Need help?
Visit our adblocking instructions page.