Final Rankings

FIFA has finally published their quarterly rankings (7/12) for the women (the men's are done bi-monthly) and no surprise, the USA built on their lead to the largest margin between 1st and 2nd.  The Netherlands, which had not even qualified for a WWC before 2015, are now #3, moving up 5 spots while Germany held to #2 (fellow WWC participant Cameroon also jumped 5 spots (to #41)).  The best team to not make the WWC, North Korea (Korea DPR) actually moved up two spots to #9.  Their southern neighbor South Korea (Korea Rep) had the biggest fall of the WWC teams, dropping 6 spots to #20. 

The USA team was honored in the first NYC ticker-tape parade since... they last were honored for winning the 2015 WWC.  I guess NY sports teams have been that bad.  It'll be interesting how to keep this momentum, especially heading towards the 2022 Olympics which will see a lot of these same players (no restriction on U-23 players like the men's).  There is the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) in which ESPN's first match was a 4-3 thriller in front of 18,809 fans in Portland which featured goals by superstars Marta (BRA) and Christine Sinclair (CAN) and the Victory Tour where the first stop will be where most fell in love with the team in '99, the Rose Bowl August 3rd vs the Republic of Ireland.  There will four additional matches in this Victory Tour.  Of course, playing in the Victory Tour means most of the NWSL teams will be without their USWNT players.  Sigh.  And there is no NWSL team within 650 miles of Los Angeles, though co-owner Mia Hamm wants one sponsored by LAFC.  We'll see.  I did stats for the LA Sol in 2009 and that was fun with Marta and Shannon Boxx, but it still irks me that the Women's Profession Soccer (WPS) was still a second-class citizen as French star Camille Abily, one of my favs, decided to play in the UEFA Women's EURO instead of the WPS Championship, which LA lost 1-0 to Sky FC.  Ugh.