2023 FIFA Women's World Cup qualification (UEFA)
The European qualifying competition for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup is a women's football competition that determines the eleven UEFA teams which directly qualify for the final tournament in Australia and New Zealand, and the one team which advance to the inter-confederation play-offs. Fifty-one of the 55 UEFA member national teams entered the qualifying competition, with Cyprus making their World Cup qualifying debut and Luxembourg appearing in a group stage for the first time ever. Format. The qualifying competition consists of two rounds: Tiebreakers. In the  group stage, teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 13.01): To determine the best three runners-up, the group standings are used, not taking into account any matches against sixth-placed teams. If teams are tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied (Regulations Article 14.04): In the play-offs, the team that scores more goals in the second round match qualifies for the  final tournament. If the score is level, extra time is played. If the score is remains level after extra time, the tie is decided by penalty shoot-out (Regulations Article 15.01). To determine the two best play-off winners, the results of the group stage as used for runner-up determination above (eight matches), and the second round of the play-offs (one match) are added. The following criteria are applied (Regulations Article 14.05): Schedule. The qualifying matches are played on dates that fall within the FIFA Women's International Match Calendar. Since the UEFA Women's Euro 2022 tournament  has been moved from summer 2021 to summer 2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, for the first time the series of matches for UEFA's World Cup qualification will be interrupted by a continental championship. In July 2022 sixteen UEFA national teams will participate in the Women's Euro tournament in England. Entrants. The teams were ranked according to their coefficient ranking, calculated based on the following (Regulations Annex B.1.2.a): One entrant, Russia, was initially given a four-year ban from all major sporting events by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on 9 December 2019 after Russian  Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) was found non-compliant for handing over manipulated laboratory data to investigators. However, the Russian women's team could still enter qualification. The decision was appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which ruled in WADA's favour but reduced the ban to two years. The CAS ruling also allowed the name "Russia" to be displayed on uniforms if the words "Neutral Athlete" or "Neutral Team" have equal prominence. If Russia qualifies for the tournament, its female players will be able to use their country's name, flag or anthem at the Women's  World Cup, unlike their male counterparts, as the ban on 16 December 2022. On 20 April 2021, it was announced 51 teams from the 55 eligible would enter the qualifying round. Group stage. Draw. The draw for the group stage was held on 30 April 2021 at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland. The 51 teams were drawn into 9 groups: Based on the UEFA Executive Committee decisions due to political conflicts, there were several combinations of teams that could not be drawn into the same group. One of these was Armenia, who were initially drawn into group E together  with Azerbaijan. Armenia was moved into group F and Montenegro was then drawn into group E. Groups. Group E. On 28 February, FIFA and UEFA announced that Russia was suspended from all competitions. No decision on how this will affect the qualification process has yet been taken. Ranking of second-placed teams. To determine the three best second-placed teams from the qualifying group stage which advance to the play-offs second round, only the results of the second-placed teams against the first, third, fourth and fifth-placed teams in their group are taken into account, while results against  the sixth-placed team (for those groups with six teams) are discarded. As a result, eight matches played by each second-placed team are counted for the purposes of determining the ranking. Qualified teams. The following eleven teams from UEFA will qualify for the final tournament, while one team will advance to the inter-confederation play-offs. Top goalscorers. "For full lists of goalscorers, see sections in each group:"