History of Women's Soccer in the Olympics

A Brief History

The First time Women's Soccer was featured in the Olympic games was in 1996, with the United States taking home the gold after defeating Norway 2-1 in the final. In the first Women's tournament, only eight teams competed. In 2004, two more teams were added to the tournament, and in 2008, twelve teams competed. Today, the women's tournament is still comprised of 12 teams representing the best of the best; the teams are all senior national teams, while the men's tournament includes 16, consisting of players under the age of 23, except three players per roster. This rule for the men's tournament was to ensure that the Olympics would stay within the FIFA World Cup. However, the level of competition for the women's tournament remains as high as possible. Today, women's soccer has become a source of worldwide entertainment, attracting audiences of all ages and genders for big international tournaments such as the Olympics and World Cup and more minor regional leagues such as the UEFA Women's Champions League and the NWSL. In 2023, Australia and New Zealand hosted the most recent Women's World Cup, where Spain took the championship in a 1-0 win against England. This year's Olympics will be held in France, and while we are excited to see who will take home the gold, we are eager to highlight the best of the best in this Olympic dream squad. 

Our Formation: 4-3-3

For this project, we discussed the different possible formations for our dream squad. While a 4-4-2 is tried and true, we felt that 4-4-3 would be better suited for this dream squad for a couple of reasons. The first thing we considered was the versatility that a 4-3-3 allows. We were always going to have a strong back four, so our discussion centered around what we needed from our midfield, and how we would give this team the best opportunity to score goals and win. A compact midfield allows a strong attack to originate from an even stronger defensive shape, winning balls in the midfield and controlling possession, therefore we decided we needed a compact midfield formation. When selecting our starting 11 and our alternate, we realized that many of the power players on each National team are often strikers or wingers, therefore we wanted to allow for as much space on the roster for the attacking minded, goal scoring players, and we felt that a 4-4-2 would limit the strengths of our dream roster.