Although there have been women’s football teams in Europe for many, many years, it wasn’t until the 1990’s that an official World Championship competition was conceived. Prior to that, there were two unofficial tournaments in 1969 and 1979 won by Italy and Denmark respectively. The 1980’s gave way to a push for an official tournament which saw the first official World Championship in 1991. From there, the World Cup championships have been held every four years in a series of qualifying rounds.

Throughout the years, Germany has literally dominated the game with 7 out of 8 championships, only losing to Norway once in 1993 when knocked out of the finals and since then winning five times consecutively. However, since the first two unofficial championships, women’s football in Europe has continued to explode in popularity.

The most recent Women’s Championship finals were held in Finland from August 23, 2009 to September 10, 2009 and as stated, Germany walked away with the Cup. Since the tournament is only held once every four years, the next championship finals will be held in 2013 in Sweden between July 10 and 28.

Actually, the tournament only took its current form in 1999 when the qualifying rounds took the official form of the men’s championships. At that point, the UEFA European Championship was born and given official recognition. Although there were world championships prior to this official status, the amount of prestige involved was nowhere near as significant.

The 2013 games in host country Sweden will a preliminary round followed by a qualifying group stage and the playoffs. After that, the top 12 finalists will compete for the World Cup and a place in the relatively new history of the official Women’s European Football World Championship.