CYMRU FEATURE
Cymru will face France, Slovenia, Greece, Kazakhstan and Estonia on the road to reach the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand following the draw that placed Gemma Grainger's side in Group I.
Cymru will begin the campaign at home against Kazakhstan on Friday 17 September. Kazakhstan will be familiar opponents after facing them in the 2019 FIFA World Cup and 2017 EURO qualifying campaigns. The side will also have two Friday night home matches when they face Estonia on 26 October and Greece on 26 November.
Group favourties and top seeds France, ranked fourth in the world, will be challenging opponents away on Tuesday 30 November and at home on Friday 8 April. The campaign will come to a close iwith fixtures away to Greece on the 2nd September 2022 and at home to Slovenia four days later.
The nine group winners will qualify for the finals while the nine runners-up will compete in the play-offs that will take place in October 2022 with a further two teams directly progressing to the finals via that route. A third team from the UEFA play-offs will then compete in the inter-confederation play-offs, which will be a tournament of ten teams from the six FIFA confederations to decide the remaining three places.
“They're all different and all of the games will be challenging in different ways,” said Grainger following the draw. “For me, there's never any easy games in international football. Every team has their own strengths and their own weaknesses, but the focus for us is on ourselves. That was our mentality in the last camp and that's going to be our mentality for this qualification campaign.
“We're hoping the fans can get behind us and give us that competitive advantage. The support that we have from the country as a whole makes us want to be the best that we can be. I hope there are fans in the stadium for that first game in September. It's crucial that we have fans back as we want to inspire people, so it's very important. They're crucial to what we do.”
