The England women's national football team represents England in international women's association football. Since 1993 the team has been governed by the Football Association (FA), having been previously controlled by the Women's Football Association (WFA) from 1972 until 1993. England played its first international match in November 1972 against Scotland. Although most national football teams represent a sovereign state, England is one of the United Kingdom's Home Nations, meaning that it is permitted by FIFA statutes to maintain its own national side that competes in all major tournaments, with the exception of the Women's Olympic Football Tournament.
England has qualified for the FIFA Women's World Cup three times, reaching the quarter final stage on each occasion in 1995, 2007 and 2011. They reached the final of the UEFA Women's Championship in 1984 and 2009. In May 2009 central contracts were implemented, to help players focus on full-time training and playing, without having to fit it around full-time employment. Initially 17 players signed contracts.
Hope Powell became the team's first full-time head coach in July 1998, succeeding Ted Copeland. As of June 2012, England is ranked No. 9 in the FIFA Women's World Rankings.
Famous quotes containing the words england, women, national, football and/or team:
“The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.”
—Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970)
“... when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses were always hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievments must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person. If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“Idon’t enjoy getting knocked about on a football field for other people’s amusement. I enjoy it if I’m being paid a lot for it.”
—David Storey (b. 1933)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)