Hello and welcome to the third instalment of the Women's Draft World Cup!
For newcomers, the Draft World Cup is a format where players represent the national team of the country they play their football in. For example, Vivianne Miedema is Dutch but plays for Arsenal in the English Women's Super League, so in this tournament she represents England.
Sports Interactive continue to insist that creating a database of female players is too much effort (yet appear to have full player and staff data for hundreds of men's leagues across dozens of countries, including some fairly obscure nations). However, there is the user-created Women on FM database that we used for the 2018 and 2019 editions of this tournament, and will be using this year.
In 2018 we were able to muster 10 teams from the database, and last year we had 12. There's been a big growth in the database this year, and I am able to put together 21 teams. These comprise the following nations:
There are also several other nations with players in the database, just not enough to make up a full squad. So these have been grouped into the following 4 composite teams:
The criteria for representing a team is the same as the 2020 men's DWC. A player represents the country of their club. Players who are out of contract can represent any country they have nationality of. The four composite teams and Australia had slightly too few players to make up a squad, so they have been given low-rated out-of-contract players from the database.
Unfortunately, 21 teams is an awkward number for a tournament, so we are going to have a first in women's DWC football - qualifying! This is what we'll cover next time, so stay tuned!
For newcomers, the Draft World Cup is a format where players represent the national team of the country they play their football in. For example, Vivianne Miedema is Dutch but plays for Arsenal in the English Women's Super League, so in this tournament she represents England.
Sports Interactive continue to insist that creating a database of female players is too much effort (yet appear to have full player and staff data for hundreds of men's leagues across dozens of countries, including some fairly obscure nations). However, there is the user-created Women on FM database that we used for the 2018 and 2019 editions of this tournament, and will be using this year.
In 2018 we were able to muster 10 teams from the database, and last year we had 12. There's been a big growth in the database this year, and I am able to put together 21 teams. These comprise the following nations:
- Europe: Denmark, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Wales
- North America: USA
- Oceania: Australia
- South America: Brazil
There are also several other nations with players in the database, just not enough to make up a full squad. So these have been grouped into the following 4 composite teams:
- Americas (Argentina, Chile, Canada, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru)
- North Europe (Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Ukraine)
- South Europe (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Greece, Malta, Portugal)
- Rest of World (Cameroon, China, Equatorial Guinea, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, Syria)
The criteria for representing a team is the same as the 2020 men's DWC. A player represents the country of their club. Players who are out of contract can represent any country they have nationality of. The four composite teams and Australia had slightly too few players to make up a squad, so they have been given low-rated out-of-contract players from the database.
Unfortunately, 21 teams is an awkward number for a tournament, so we are going to have a first in women's DWC football - qualifying! This is what we'll cover next time, so stay tuned!