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The US entered the 2023 Women’s World Cup as the highest-ranked team. Having won four of the last eight World Cups, the star-studded side’s early exit came as a shock. One explanation could be that while American women’s football is culturally strong, the European game is catching up financially.
In the US, football is often seen as a sport that women excel at. Nearly 375,000 high school girls played football in the 2021/2022 school year, according to figures from the National Federation of State High School Associations. That is an almost 40 per cent increase from 22 years ago. There were just 700 female participants in 1971. The sport has overtaken basketball and sof
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