Nations League
Austria’s national football team will meet France, Norway and Portugal in League A in the premiere of the UEFA Women’s Nations League from September. That was the result of the draw on Tuesday in Nyon. The draw is also explosive in that Irene Fuhrmann’s team has to compete against three world championship participants.
France, number four in the world rankings and a semi-finalist at the European Championships, is the favorite in group A2. The Austrians (world rankings 18th) recently dueled in the European Championship qualifier (0:0, 0:3) with the team of the new team boss Herve Renard , which will be part of the 2024 Olympics.
The duel with Norway (12th), which was surprisingly defeated 1-0 and eliminated at the European Championship finals in England 2022, is even shorter. Austria last played against Portugal (21st) in 2014, the southern Europeans qualified for the World Cup via the play-off. In this Fuhrmann’s team failed in 2022 to Scotland.
The first two group places mean relegation, the table third have in two relegation games against a league B-2. line up Those at the bottom of the table are permanently relegated to the second highest performance level. The A-League group winners fight for the title in semi-finals and finals (one game each). In addition to France, the two finalists also have an Olympic ticket for the 2024 games.
Kick-off in September
The group stage starts in September (20th-26th), and will also be played between 25th and 31st October and 29th November and 5th December. Two games are played each time. The final and relegation games will follow between February 21 and 28, 2024. A total of 51 nations in three different leagues will tackle the Nations League premiere.