The Impact of the FIFA Women’s World Cup

The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup is being held in Australia and New Zealand. We are all very excited for this event to be hosted in our country. 

This huge event will be the first-ever FIFA Women’s World Cup to be hosted by multiple confederations, as Australia is in the Asian Confederation, while New Zealand is in the Oceania Confederation.

The Women’s World Cup is starting on the 20th of July with the first game being held in Stadium Australia. Other venues include the Brisbane Stadium, Hindmarsh Adelaide, Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, Perth Rectangular Stadium, Sydney Football, Dunedin, Denpark, Waikato and WRS.

In total, there will be a whopping 64 games, with the final game being played at Stadium Australia, on the 20th of August.

20-year-old, Bryleeh Henry, an Australian soccer player in the Future Matildas program. She made her Matildas debut in October 2021 and was a part of the young Matildas squad for the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in 2022.

Bryleeh, who grew up in Werrington Downs, Western Sydney, is really looking forward to the Women’s World Cup coming to Australia. “It’s the biggest event in football so to have that happening here on home soil is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – it’ll be amazing,” she says. 

With such an important event happening in Australia, people are sure to be excited, especially Australian and  New Zealand girls who are interested in soccer.

We think it will have an amazing impact on girls’ confidence. It will be inspiring for them to see their favourite players in the world cup and could even give them the push they need to continue with their dream of becoming star soccer players. 

“I think it’ll impact Australian girls massively. It’s not many times in Australia that we have big, massive sporting soccer tournaments here. They normally all played overseas.

“I think it will inspire young girls, like a couple of you guys who are playing soccer now, to play more when you see how amazing soccer can be. I think it’ll just be a massive event and it’ll be amazing to have all these top-tier players come here,” says Bryleeh. 

Brylee started playing soccer when she was nine years old. “I think I was playing five sports at the time I started to get competitive in football and a couple of other sports and it started to get too much, so then I chose football as my main passion,” she tells us.

This is a massive inspiration to other little girls who play this immensely popular game. Bryleeh’s advice is to have fun. 

“Work hard, but if you’re having fun, then all the hard stuff, like the hard running and training sessions are so much easier,” she says. 

“Just to have fun and have confidence.”