There are now only 10 days until the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup kicks off. In the build up to the tournament, Group D (consisting of US, Sweden, Australia and Nigeria) have been declared the “Group of Death”. The USA are the second highest ranked team, with the other three ranking highly amongst their fellow 2nd, 3rd and 4th "Best Teams".
Group D has the highest total combined FIFA points (7786), and three of the teams in this group are within the top 10 FIFA rankings.
The US team appear to be one of the favourites to win the 2015 Women's World Cup in Canada, but if they want their first win since 1999 they are going to have to do it through one of the toughest groups of the tournament. The team have been working really hard recently, so see which players to look out for in the US team.
Sweden are the highest ranked non-seeded team in the tournament – Brazil was seeded before them due to geographical reasons decided by FIFA themselves. The Swedish team defeated the Americans (2-1) in the 2011 World Cup and are now being led by former US coach Pia Sundhage.
Australia are the third best in the group, but would have been second ranked in any others except for one, where England have ranked 6 in 2nd best. Australia are an extremely athletic team, and very likely to be the promise of very tough matches for US and Sweden. Particularly so with the fiery forward Lisa De Vanna who will be leading the offense.
Nigeria, although very far behind the others from a ranking point of view, shouldn't be overlooked. They are a team of very young, budding talent and this includes player Asisat Oshoala, the winner of the 2014 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup Adidas Golden Ball.
Despite the US team being favourite to win, they only recently lost to Sweden in the Algarve Cup 2014. This is the same competition that they lost to Denmark (5-3) who are ranked lower than Australia. This doesn't mean to say that they can't bounce back up and beat the teams, but being a part of the deadliest group of the tournament, they are going to have to bring a fight.
