Making sense of global qualifying for the 2027 Women’s World Cup
Full Time: A show about women's soccer
The Athletic
4.8 • 807 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While the U.S. women’s national team has been playing friendly after friendly, plenty of the rest of the world has already started their qualification paths to the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil.
So, what is the state of World Cup qualifying around the world in women’s soccer? What do people need to know about the differences in how the six FIFA confederations handle their qualifiers? How can FIFA change the women’s game and increase investment? Who are the nations to watch that could be on the rise over the next year?
On this episode of Full Time, as the first FIFA window of 2026 arrives, host Jillian Sakovits is joined by The Athletic’s Tamerra Griffin and Producer Theo to get into World Cup qualifying around the globe. What does it all mean? When is it happening? And, why should we care?
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HOSTS: Jillian Sakovits, Tamerra Griffin
PRODUCER: Theo Lloyd-Hughes
VIDEO PRODUCER: Lia Griffin
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Emily Olsen
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Referenced on the show:
How Jamaica eliminated Brazil from the 2023 Women’s World Cup
FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s call for more women in power is ironic and disappointing
Brazil wins 2027 Women’s World Cup hosting duties: What we know about the successful bid
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's crazy. This is crazy. |
| 0:06.4 | There's this number of spots of Asia, Africa, and Oceania, and that equals one continent, three continents on one side and one on the other side. |
| 0:14.9 | Like, literally if you were to field players, that's what it would look like. |
| 0:18.2 | And that is so tilted. These kinds of disproportionate |
| 0:24.0 | and unequal looking opportunities end up stalling the growth in a lot of these continents |
| 0:30.0 | and the countries within them. |
| 0:43.9 | Hello, everybody. A very warm welcome to full time. I'm your host today, Jillian Sackavits. |
| 0:52.1 | On this show, we are going to be setting the table. So get your forks, your knives, your napkins, your placemats, your plates, all of it. |
| 0:54.5 | Because we are setting the table for Brazil, 20 27. The World Cup for the women may seem far away, but the journey has already begun. |
| 1:01.5 | So today we discuss what you should know, what you should care about in the weeks and months |
| 1:06.6 | ahead. A lot to get you excited about coming up in March alone. A year from now, we will know the 32 |
| 1:13.3 | teams of the 179 nations available to compete in the World Cup. For now, we know just one, |
| 1:21.1 | and that is the host nation, Brazil. But before we get to the rest of today's show to celebrate |
| 1:26.3 | Black History Month, like we've been doing on every episode of full time during the month of February, we've had a trivia question for you. |
| 1:33.9 | Here is Today's. Who was the player that in 2013 scored an iconic goal for the U.S. Women's National Team in a friendly against Canada and then celebrated by placing one finger |
| 1:45.9 | over her mouth and shushing the home crowd at Bimo Field in Toronto. We will, as always, be revealing |
| 1:51.9 | the answer at the end of the show. If you want to submit your own Black History trivia question |
| 1:56.8 | or let us know some fun facts that you've come across, hit us up in the DMs at TA full-time or shoot |
| 2:02.5 | us an email at full-time at theathletic.com. |
| 2:07.3 | All right, to get into all things, world soccer and the beginning of our journey to the |
| 2:13.8 | 27 Women's World Cup, I now bring in my podcast people. First, we start with |
| 2:19.8 | The Athletics, Tamara Griffin, who Tamara, I don't know outside of the one time without |
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