Ambitious World Cup a wonder goal for women's game

MELBOURNE : Scheduled in a far-flung time-zone and carrying eight extra teams, the ninth Women's World Cup kicked off in Australia and New Zealand a month ago with some doubts it could deliver on lofty ambitions.

Those concerns eased well before Sunday's final where Spain were crowned first-time champions by beating England 1-0 at a packed Stadium Australia in Sydney.

Less than a year after a player revolt tore the Spanish squad apart, La Roja's triumph was only one of the surprises for record crowds and TV audiences through the month-long festival of women's football.

Fears the first 32-team Women's World Cup might suffer for its size proved groundless, as did predictions of another processional victory for the United States.

Sunday's final was the first without either the U.S. or Germany involved, the four-times champion Americans dumped out of the round-of-16 by Sweden and the Germans exiting before the knockout phase.

The U.S.'s exit via penalty shootout ended a dynasty after back-to-back titles in 2015 and 2019.

U.S. forward Megan Rapinoe, the face of 2019, bowed out of international soccer with a wild kick over the bar in the shootout.

Long the benchmark, American women's soccer is now at a cross-roads as investment and talent flows to Europe, which produced three of the four semi-finalists.

Australia were the outliers in the last four, their thrilling run helping to draw nearly two million people to the games, far more than the previous record of 1.35 million for the 24-team tournament in Canada in 2015.

Home fans agonised over captain Sam Kerr's calf injury but her wonder goal in the semi-final was some consolation in the defeat by England.

Co-hosts New Zealand crashed out much earlier but the nation of 5 million warmly