79 years after the Vichy regime banned women from playing football, the Women's World Cup is being hosted in France. While there are still people with derogatory attitudes towards women's football in the country, French football has also been a stronghold of the women's game in Europe through Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, who have just won four Champions League titles in a row.

Their star striker, Ballon d'Or winner Ada Hegerberg, will not play for Norway as part of her ongoing protest against the NFF for their treatment of women and their attitude toward the women's game.

Current FIFA Rankings have the USA first, Germany 2nd, and England 3rd, with France in 4th. They are followed by Canada in 5th and Australia in 6th. Australia have one to watch in Sam Kerr, all-time top scorer is the NWSL and current Chicago player.

The Netherlands, ranked 8th, are the current holders of the European Cup and are expected to be a threat to the traditional superpowers.

The title-winning Arsenal Women are well represented, including Pauline Peyraud-Magnin called up for France, England players Leah Williamson and Beth Mead (Jordan Nobbs is heartbreakingly unavailable after doing her knee), Scottish players Lisa Evans, Kim Little, and Jennifer Beattie (who just returned to Arsenal from Manchester City), star striker Vivianne Miedema, Danielle van de Donk and Jill Roord for the Dutch, and our new German signing Leonie Maier.

France play the opening game against South Korea on June 7 at 20:00 BST.

Looking forward to catching some games and seeing the Aussies give it a crack.

Been looking forward to this at least as much as the Copa America. Great thread initiative.

I increasingly find myself enjoying women's football more than men's. Skill levels are great, players play with real passion and there is far less bullshit and corporatisation.

Agreed. The whole ethos around the women's game is much more in line with my own. Even though the Lionesses are managed by Phil Neville (:boris🙂 I'm excited to see what they can do.

Some proper drama in the Norwegian camp. Hegerberg gave an interview in February where she explained many of the reasons she's refusing to play for Norway, and the magazine of course chose to publish this now. So then we have Ødegaard going on Instagram to basically tell Hegerberg that the national team respects her choice, but it's time to shut up about it and not draw more attention to it right before the tournament. Obviously this Instagram post just added fuel to the fire, although I agree with what he said.

Anyway, it's too bad that we'll have to play the world cup without our, and the world's, best player, but it'll still be interesting to see how far we can get. I'm a big fan of Graham Hansen who recently signed for Barcelona, she's an artist.

i'm keen to watch this, but it's on at ungodly hours in AU. i struggled to follow the mens world cup because of that. i'm going to try and catch the 11pm kick-offs

france looked good. their CB was like a female van dijk. no wonder lyon wins everything, they have all the best french players and then supplement them with the best from abroad.

Germany wasn’t exciting against China, but they still managed to squeak a 1-0 win.

China had so many chances. Really poor in front of goal.

South Africa getting VARed all over town.

Oh dear me. Aussies had chance after chance and Italy ends up scoring with 20 seconds left to win the game. Touch loss for the Aussies.

I switched from the England-Switzerland Nations League to Brazil-Jamaica World Cup game. This is a much higher standard.

Okay now. Scotland gets one back. We might have a game on our hands here

Lucy Bronze is such a classy player. Parris mostly lived up to the hype, Kirby was a bit quiet, and hoped Mead would be a bit more influential.

Still like Karen Carney, great player with real personality on the pitch.

How long do you guys think it will take before we see a female footballer break into the men's game?

I know Perugia were close to signing Birgit Prinz back in the early noughties. Then again, it was Luciano Gaucci who was pursuing the idea and he was responsible for one of the most controversial signings of that time.

With the women's game increasing in popularity and funding, I can't imagine it will take long.

men and women are physically different and nothing is wrong with having separate games.

arsenal ... i mean netherlands won.

Thailand shouldn't be at this tournament. Does a disservice to them and the game. 12-nil? C'mon. Not even over yet. Not to mention how annoying Morgan is. The C. Ronaldo of the women's game.

Goodness. Switched over at 11 and switched out again. Should the Americans have stopped or should they just keep piling on the goals? What is right?