All the countries to win international football’s top prize

The FIFA Women’s World Cup is the pinnacle of the women’s game, played every four years and pitting the best international teams from around the globe against each other.

Unofficial world cup-style tournaments were taking place as early 1970, with around 40,000 people watching Denmark beat Italy in a final that year. In 1971, an estimated 110,000 watched a final between Mexico and Denmark, the latter again winning, at the Azteca Stadium.

Italy continued to host invitational tournaments in the 1980s, while AFC held a first official continental tournament in 1975, with UEFA following suit in 1984. FIFA eventually tested the waters for an official World Cup with a competition in 1988, paving the way for the first World Cup three years later.

However, it wasn’t even known as the Women’s World Cup at that time. Sponsored by M&M’s, to give it the full name, it was the ‘1st FIFA World Championship for Women’s Football for the M&M’s Cup’.

Only afterwards has that tournament become known as the first Women’s World Cup, with FIFA seemingly satisfied by the success and allowing future competition to use the ‘World Cup’ name.

To date, there have been eight Women’s World Cup tournaments, with the ninth taking place in Australia and New Zealand in the summer of 2023.

The United States were the inaugural Women’s World Cup champions in 1991, beating Norway in front of more than 60,000 people in the city of Guangzhou in China. Michelle Akers, who went on to be named joint FIFA Female Player of the Century in 2002, scored both goals in the final and eight others throughout the tournament to signal early and lasting American dominance at this level.

But the United States fell short in 1995, when the title went to Norway instead, with the tournament played just across the border in neighbouring Sweden. Hege Riise was the headline star two years after also helping Norway win Euro 1993, and five years before Olympic gold in 2000.

The World Cup headed to a third different continent in 1999, won for the second time by the United States and doing so on home soil. That famous generation, many of whom had already won in 1991 – including superstar forward Mia Hamm, were dubbed ’99ers and became the standard by all future American…