(ATR) FIFA says it's "the ideal dream" for the Women’s World Cup to one day reach the level of the men’s edition.
"It is our hope that it [Women’s World Cup] will reach the level of men’s football – that is the ideal dream," Maryilian Cruz Blanco, FIFA’s women’s football development manager, told reporters at the U-17 Women’s World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan on Sunday.
"It depends on where it is organized. Germany is a fantastic example because as soon as they got the World Cup, they started working."
She added: "It depends a lot on the organizing committee, on the culture, on the country.
"Now we go to Canada [2015 hosts] and football is not the first sport so it’s a different challenge.
The previous senior Women’s World Cup held in Germany in 2011 set records for attendances, TV viewing figures and revenues.
Blanco admitted the Women's World Cup still had some way to go to reach figures seen at the men’s edition.
The World Cup in 2015 will see the number of teams competing increase from 16 to 24.
But Blanco said the challenge will be to keep the "pace and standards" of the game.
"We will base them on the legacy of Germany because we had such a good tournament, such good coverage" she added.
Germany 2011 welcomed a record 800,000 spectators with an average of 26,000 per match. FIFA said the surplus for the tournament wasaround $70 million.
For more coverage from Baku, follow World Football INSIDER.
IAAF Exhibit Spans Millennia
A vase from the 5th century BC and a volunteer’s uniform from the 2012 Olympics are among the items included in the IAAF’s upcoming Centenary Historic Exhibition.
Billed as the greatest collection of athletics memorabilia ever assembled, it’s part of the federation’s year-long centenary celebrations.
The exhibit will be open to the public for six weeks from Oct. 13 to Nov. 25 at the Juan Antonio Samaranch Olympic and Sports Museum in Barcelona before closing on the weekend of the IAAF Centenary Gala.
Other artifacts include a coin from Olympia in 256 BC as well as and the bib numbers of Ethiopian gold medalists Meseret Defar and Tirunesh Dibaba from the Games in London.
Much of the core collection comes from the gallery of Roberto Gesta de Melo, an IAAF Council member from Brazil.
Reported in Baku by Christian Radnedge and in Atlanta by Matthew Grayson
20 Years at #1:
Recent Articles
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
