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This article is about the Dutch national women’s football team at the Women’s World Cup 2015 in Canada. The Netherlands took part in the World Cup final for the first time and benefited from the increase in the field of participants to 24 teams. The Dutch needed the most games from all qualified teams to qualify: 10 group games and four play-off games. The Dutch won their first World Cup match and reached the knockout round as a group third, but lost there against defending champions Japan. The World Cup also serves the European teams as a qualification for the football tournament at the Olympic Games 2016. Since only the three best European teams qualify at the World Cup, the direct qualification was missed with the eight-final.

Qualification

The Netherlands met Albania, which took part in the European Qualification Group 5 for the first time, Belgium, Greece, Norway and Portugal. The Netherlands took second place behind the Norwegians. Although the direct comparison was better, but due to a draw against the neighbor Belgium two points for the direct qualification were missing in the end.

The best scorer was only 18-year-old Vivianne Miedema with 16 goals. Together with Jamaican Shakira Duncan, she scored the most goals of all teams. Duncan had scored 14 of the 16 goals in the prequalification and could not qualify with her team for the finals. Miedema had her first appearance in the A-national team in the first qualifying match and already in the second game she succeeded in a hat-trick. In two other games you also get three goals. In the meantime, Miedema led the Dutch U-19 team with six goals to the first European Championship title and became the queen scorer there. Nine goals were scored by Renée Slegers, five of them in 10-1 against Albania, seven goals each by Lieke Martens and Manon Melis. Coach Roger Reijners used a total of 26 players in qualifying. Of these, Lieke Martens, Sherida Spitse and Mandy van den Berg were used in all 14 games. Vivianne Miedema and Manon Melis were used thirteen times. Daphne Koster, still captain in the first four games, was no longer used from the fifth game. Her position and back number took over Stefanie van der Gragt, captain became Mandy van den Berg. In the game against Greece on April 5, 2014, Eshly Bakker also came to her first international match and scored in the last minute of the game the last goal of the game.

Due to the successful World Cup qualification, the Dutch were able to improve in the FIFA World Ranking in December 2014 to their best ranking so far, rank 11.

After the group games, the Dutch were the best group second for the playoff games of the four be