Gianni Infantino takes credit for expanded Women's World Cup - ESPN

SYDNEY, Australia — FIFA president Gianni Infantino hit back at critics and took a victory lap at the FIFA Women's Football convention on Friday, saying that expanding Women's World Cup has turned out to be a success and «FIFA was right» to do so.

The tournament had 24 teams competing in its previous edition in 2019 in France, but this edition in Australia and New Zealand expanded to 32 teams. Two teams remain, England and Spain, who will play in the final on Sunday.

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«We decided to increase the number of participating teams in the World Cup from 24 in France to 32 now,» Infantino said in his opening remarks of the convention. «I remember when we decided to do that, of course, the usual critics — which are less and less by the way, but there are still a few — they were saying it's not going to work.

»The level is too different. You will have 15-0 scores. It will be bad for women's football. It will be bad for the image of women's football.' I'm sorry, but FIFA was right. As it happens quite often in the last years, FIFA was right once more.

«From the 134 countries that entered the qualification for the 2015 Women's World Cup before I became FIFA president, we have now 188 countries in the FIFA ranking because everyone believes now there is a chance to sign on the global stage.»

In this tournament, eight teams made their World Cup debut, with first-timer Morocco reaching the knockout stage before being eliminated by France in the round of 16.

An unprecedented number of upsets also featured at this tournament with No. 2 FIFA world-ranked Germany, No. 7-ranked Canada and No. 8-ranked Brazil all getting knocked out in the group stage by lower ranked teams.

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