The Norwegian women's national football team represents the Kingdom of Norway in international women's football. It is a selection of the Norwegian Football Association.
The Norwegian women's national football team is one of the most successful women's national football teams in the world. It is the first team to become European and World Champions, as well as Olympic champions. It has reached at least the quarter-finals of six out of eight World Cups and became World Champions in 1995. In Europe, it has been able to reach at least the semi-finals in every European Football Championship from 1987 onwards except 1997 and 2017, European champions in 1987 and 1993, and runners-up four times.
After the Olympic gold medal in 2000, however, the team could not win any more titles. They missed out on the 2004 Athens Games, and at the 2008 Beijing Olympics they were eliminated in the quarter-finals. They lost all their group matches at the 2009 Algarve Cup, slipping to ninth in the FIFA World Ranking at the end of March 2009. In June, Norway even dropped to 10th place. This was their worst ranking to date. At the European Championship in Finland, the team only finished 3rd in the group stage behind Germany and France, so they went into the quarter-final match against Sweden as underdogs. Here, however, the team was able to improve and surprisingly won 3:1. The semi-final against Germany was then lost 1:3 despite a good performance, especially in the 1st half. Norway then climbed back up to 7th in the FIFA world rankings.
Norway also failed to impress at the 2011 World Cup. Although they beat world number one USA 3-1 in an unofficial test match before the World Cup, they only managed a 1-0 victory over World Cup newcomers Equatorial Guinea at the World Cup. Their elimination in the preliminary round also meant that they missed out on participation in the 2012 Olympic Games.
The poor performance at the World Cup and the defeat in the first European Championship qualifying match against Iceland, led to Norway's worst ever position in the FIFA World Ranking, 12th on 23 September 2011. In March 2012, the team fell another place in the rankings after no improvement in performance at the 2012 Algarve Cup either, finishing only 7th. For the 2013 European Championship, Norway only managed to qualify directly on the last matchday of the qualifiers. Despite ultimately successful qualification, coach Eli Landsem was dismissed and Even Pellerud, the coach under whom Norway became world champions in 1995, was hired again. Under Pellerud, however, the team was initially unable to show any improvement in performance. Four preparation games for the European Championship were lost, among other things for the first time against Switzerland. In the preliminary round of the European Championship, however, the defending champions Germany were defeated in a European Championship match for the first time in 20 years and the team reached the final against Germany. There the Norwegians lost 0:1, whereby they could not convert two penalty kicks. However, reaching the European Championship final allowed the team to rise to 10th in the FIFA world rankings in August and to 8th in December thanks to victories in subsequent World Cup qualifiers, but they subsequently fell back to 12th in December 2014.
At the 2017 European Championship finals, the Norwegians were eliminated in the preliminary round, failing to score or win a point for the first time. They then dropped to 14th in the FIFA World Ranking, their lowest ranking to date.
