Cyprus Women's Cup

The Cyprus Cup is a competition for women's national football teams that has been held in the Republic of Cyprus since 2008 and was organised by the national football associations of England (FA), Scotland (SFA) and the Netherlands (KNVB) until 2015. The leader for the 2016 competition was the Finnish FA (SPL), while since the tenth edition in 2017, the Czech FAČR has held this role. The invitational tournament is held in March alongside the Algarve Cup, which usually features stronger teams. Even though the tournament is held in the Republic of Cyprus, the Republic of Cyprus team has not participated so far. Record winners with three titles each are Canada and England, who did not take part for the first time in 2016. The top scorer is Christine Sinclair with 17, ahead of Manon Melis with 12 goals. Venues for the games so far have been Achna, Larnaca, Nicosia, Paralimni and Sotira. Record-breaking player Christine Sinclair has played in all of the Canadian team's Cyprus Cup matches to date, except for the March 6, 2013 match against Switzerland, for which she was suspended. No team has participated in all of the tournaments. Italy is the record participant with ten appearances, but has never won the tournament.

A tournament had already been held in the town of Agia Napa from 1990 to 1993 as an alternative to the Nordic Cup. In the statistics of the Danish association, this tournament - like the one held in Tróia, Portugal, in 1991 - is listed as the 'Open Nordic Cup', while the DFB, which took part in 1993, lists it as the 'Cyprus Cup'. In the statistics of the Norwegian and Swedish associations, on the other hand, these matches are not specially classified. In 1990 and 1991, the four Nordic associations took part, while Finland was absent in 1992 and 1993. In 1993 France and the USA took part besides Germany. Record winner of these three tournaments is Sweden with two victories.

Mode

Six teams, including the USA U-20 team, took part in the inaugural event in 2008, initially playing in two groups of three in an "each versus each" format. The top teams then played each other for the title, the runners-up for third place and the third-place team for fifth place. In addition, there were three matches in the first year in which each team played a team from the other group. However, these games did not count towards the tournament standings.

In 2009 the field of participants was increased to 8 and played in two groups of four. Here too, the teams with the same ranking then competed against each other in matches for the places.

In 2011 the field of participants was enlarged to 12 and three groups of four were played. The winner of the 3rd group played against the third of the 1st group for 5th place and the second of the 3rd group against the third of the 2nd group for 7th place.

In 2014, instead of the tied teams from Groups A and B playing each other in the third- to sixth-place matches, the better team in second place in either Group A or B played the first-place team, and the worse second-place team in either Group A or B played the second-place team in Group C. This allowed the winners of South Korea to finish third in the tournament for the first time, a feat repeated by Mexico in 2015. This allowed the winner of Group C to finish third in the tournament for the first time, which the team from South Korea also managed to do and Mexico repeated in 2015. In the years before 2014, the Group C winner could finish seventh at best.

In 2016 the tournament - like the Algarve Cup, which was once again held in parallel - only featured eight teams, as the qualifying tournaments for the 2016 Olympic Games in Asia and to determine the last European starter were taking place at the same time. The eight teams initially played in two groups. The tied teams then played for places.

The tournaments at a glance

First-time participants

In the eleven tournaments held so far there have been a total of 27 participants. The following overview shows which country took part for the first time in which tournament (number of participations in brackets, as of 2019):

Winners and placings