Biggest wins in Women’s World Cup history

There had been 14 men’s World Cups before FIFA gave in to the growing demands and cobbled together a women’s counterpart.

Yet, for fear of tarnishing the tournament’s prestige, football’s backwards governing body called the inaugural edition in 1991 the ‘FIFA World Championship for Women’s Football for the M&Ms Cup’.

The competition soon dropped the confectionary sponsorship and has ballooned in size and influence across the subsequent decades. Here are the biggest winning margins the global jamboree has seen over the years.

USA’s transformative manager Anson Dorrance cherished the relentless edge of his world champions. “We don’t draw back and visit the bunker and twiddle our thumbs,” he would screech. “We go out and reach out and try to grab you by the throat and squeeze the frigging air out of you.”

With this unwavering approach, the US racked up seven answered goals in the quarter-finals of the inaugural tournament against Chinese Taipei. It remains the largest winning margin of any knockout match in the competition.

Canada had been afforded two months to train together as a team ahead of the 1995 World Cup. Yet, no amount of synergy could compete with the unrelenting might of eventual champions Norway.

Ann Kristin Aarones would finish as the competition’s top scorer with half of her six goals coming in the rout of the Canadians.

For the legendary Chinese star Sun Wen, trophies were not the priority in her playing career. “To me,” she has said, “the valuable memories are the fantastic teamwork, the atmosphere in the stadium and the interactions with fans.”

By that logic, there will be few days as sweet as 23 June 1999. Sun opened the scoring against Ghana inside ten minutes and completed her hat-trick shortly after the interval. A late flurry of goals from Zhang Ouying and Zhao Lihong condemned Ghana’s defeat to the history books but Sun, as the joint-winner of FIFA’s Female Player of the 21st Century, will forever be a part of the game’s rich tapestry.

Sweden made a strong start to the inaugural Women’s World Cup, unleashing a torrent of goals against Japan with the tournament just three days old, but they struggled with the Chinese cuisine on offer.

Fortunately, the American camp was willing to share their rations with Sweden, helping the Scandinavians power through to a third-place finish. After the US won the competition, the two teams celebrated with a song made up on the spot by Swedish captain Pia Sundhage.

After losing to the US in the 1991 final, Norway responded by piling up 17 group-stage goals in the next tournament – Hege Riise’s side opened the campaign with an 8-0 gubbing of African ever-presents Nigeria.

Norway would lift the trophy two weeks later but it went missing in 1997 during renovations at the Norwegian Football Association.

In the era of modern professionalism, Fabienne Humm remains a proud amateur. The Swiss forward and part-time employee at a tech company saved up enough days off to travel to the 2015 World Cup.

Humm was hardly slacking off out of the office, rattling in a five-minute hat-trick against Ecuador which remains the quickest in World Cup history – men’s or women’s.

The German forwards were merciless on the pitch in a 10-0 thumping of the Ivory Coast and their coach Silvia Neid didn’t pull any punches after the match either.

“We had judged them to be better than they were today,” Neid coldly analysed. As the lowest-ranked team in the competition, 66 places below world leaders Germany at the time, Neid can’t have had high expectations for Ivory Coast to begin with.

Jose Carlos Borrello would not have slept well after the opening game of the 2007 World Cup.

Argentina’s coach lamented: “It was a nightmare start for our team,” as the reigning and eventual champions Germany raced into a 4-0 lead inside half an hour. However, it got far worse as a Birgit Prinz-inspired outfit ruthlessly exploited “a lot of open space” according to the legendary forward.

Vanina Correa didn’t have a great time between the posts for Argentina, as her manager uncharitably reflected: “She made two mistakes and it cost us two goals. Today was a nightmare for her.”

The immediate reaction of far too many to the USA’s historic 13-0 trouncing of Thailand in 2019 was not to admire the skill on display from the victors, or even question the resolve of the defeated party, but criticise the manner of the triumph.

From the bedrooms of their parents’ basement, many onlookers lambasted the US team for celebrating the 11th, 12th and 13th goals with as much enthusiasm as their first three. Did they really need to rack up a baker’s dozen?

But this was not a question of disrespect, as manager Jill Ellis explained: “To be respectful to opponents is to play hard against opponents.”

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