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Women’s World Cup 2019/New Zealand

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This article is about the New Zealand Women’s National Football Team at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France. New Zealand took part in the final for the fifth time, as before as acting Oceania champion. New Zealand retired after three defeats as four times before after the group stage.

Qualification
Shortly before the Oceania Championship 2018, which served as qualification for the World Cup finals as before, Scottish Tom Sermanni became the new national coach of the New Zealand women’s national team.

For the championship, for which all eleven oceanic associations had reported a team for the first time, New Zealand was automatically qualified as well as six other teams. The later final opponent Fiji, however, only had to qualify at a tournament in August against American Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. For the tournament, Sermanni nominated 23 players, including with Grace Jale and Nadia Olla (goal) two players without an A-country match and eight players who had played a maximum of five A-country matches. Four players, on the other hand, already had more than 100 international games. Due to injury, Hannah Wilkinson and record scorer Amber Hearn could not be considered. In addition, record national player Abby Erceg ended her national team career in May 2018.

The New Zealand team met in the first game on Tonga and won with 11:0 – for Tonga the highest international defeat. The halftime debutress Grace Jale scored in the 88. Minute with their first international goal the last goal of the game. In the second game against the Cook Islands, it was Sarah Morton, Emma Rolston (2) and Katie Rood, who contributed with their first international goals to the 6-0 victory. In the last group match against Fiji, a 10-0 victory followed. Thus, the New Zealanders reached the semi-finals as group winners, where they met tournament hosts New Caledonia. With 8-0 in front of 1,200 spectators – the highest number of spectators in this tournament – they reached the final. With Paige Satchell once again a player could score her first international goal. In the final, the New Zealanders again met group opponents Fiji, who had for the first time ever among the best two teams and had defeated in the semi-finals Papua New Guinea, the finalist of the last championship, with 5:1. Although the New Zealanders scored two goals less than in the group game, with 8:0 this game was also a one-sided thing. Rosie White scored first in the second minute and in the 90th. Minute the last goal of the game.

With the final win, New Zealand qualified not only as the last team for the World Cup finals, but also as the third team for the women’s football tournament at the 2020 Olympic Games.

In the tournament, all 23 nominated players were also used, but only Ria Percival all for