The 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup kicks off on Thursday, July 20, and four players on Angel City's active roster—Jun Endo, Julie Ertz, Ali Riley, and Alyssa Thompson—will be representing their countries at the tournament. Also competing are Vanessa Gilles and Allyson Swaby, who are both on loan. Amandine Henry, who signed with Angel City in June but has not yet joined the club, announced after being named to the France roster that she would miss the tournament due to injury.

How to Watch

Because of the 15–19-hour time difference between LA and the host cities across Australia and New Zealand, many matches will be late at night or early in the morning, although the first two USA games both kick off at 6 p.m. Pacific time. All the games will be broadcast on Fox networks and on the Fox app; you can find a schedule with broadcast details here (times automatically convert to your time zone).

Additionally, all 64 matches will air live and exclusively in Spanish with 33 on Telemundo – the largest ever FIFA Women’s World Cup matches on a broadcast network in U.S. television history – 31 on Universo, and every match streaming live on Peacock starting July 20 through August 20.

The tournament kicks off at 12:00 a.m. on July 20* with host nation New Zealand taking on Norway. The US play their first game, against World Cup debutants Vietnam, on July 21 at 6:00 p.m. Both games will air on Fox.

*i.e., the night of July 19—all midnight games in this article are given in this format

Watch Parties

You can find information on Angel City watch parties here.

What to Know

The 2023 World Cup is the first women's edition of the tournament to be held in multiple host nations, and the first featuring 32 teams, expanded from the 24-team format used in 2019. Thanks to the expanded size, eight teams will be making their first-ever World Cup appearances: Haiti, Ireland, Morocco, Panama, the Philippines, Portugal, Vietnam, and Zambia.

The US are the reigning champions, having won in both 2015 and 2019.

Here's a quick introduction to the three teams with active Angel City players on their rosters.

Japan (Jun Endo)

Japan, nicknamed the Nadeshiko, are one of the longer-lived women's national teams, having qualified for all nine World Cups since the first FIFA-sanctioned tournament in 1991. They won the tournament in 2011, beating the US in the final and becoming the first Asian world champions.

Currently ranked 11th in the world, the Nadeshiko are a young team, with just one player, captain Saki Kumagai, over 30 years old, and two players—forward Maika Hamano and midfielder Aoba Fujino—under 20. Just over half the team play for Japanese clubs, with most of the remainder split between various European leagues. Two players, Endo and Portland Thorns midfielder Hina Sugita, play in the NWSL.

Japan will be competing in Group C against Spain, Costa Rica, and Zambia. Spain are the favorites, although an early exit from the 2022 European championship and subsequent player revolt against Head Coach Jorge Vilda may complicate that picture. Regardless, Japan stands a good chance of finishing in the top two in their group and punching a ticket to the knockout rounds.

Neither Costa Rica nor the debutants in the group, Zambia, should be overlooked, however. Costa Rica is captained by Portland Thorns standout Rocky Rodríguez, while Zambia's star striker, Barbra Banda, turned heads at the Tokyo Olympics and helped the team steal three points off Germany in a friendly last week.

This will be the 23-year-old Jun Endo's second World Cup. She played four games in the 2019 World Cup and was on the Japan team that won the 2018 U-20 World Cup, playing in all six matches and scoring two goals.

Group Stage Schedule:

• Saturday, July 22, 12:00 a.m. vs Zambia

• Wednesday, July 26, 10:00 p.m. vs Costa Rica

• Monday, July 31, 12:00 a.m. vs Spain

New Zealand (Ali Riley)

Host nation New Zealand also have a long World Cup history, albeit a less successful one. The team first qualified in 1991, but wouldn't make another appearance until 2007. They have competed at all four tournaments since then.

Most of the Football Ferns play in the Australian A-League, either for Australian clubs or for Wellington Phoenix, which joined the league as its sole New Zealand representative in 2021.

Ali Riley, who was born in California to an American mother and a Kiwi father, is the longtime team captain and one of its most decorated members. She has played for the senior team since 2007, when she was 19 years old and a student at Stanford. Since then, she has represented New Zealand at four World Cups and four Olympics.

Other than Riley, players to watch include defender Rebekah Stott, a former Seattle Reign player who battled Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2021 and has since returned to the pitch, as well as former North Carolina Tarheel Katie Bowen, who also played in the NWSL from 2016 to 2022.

New Zealand's group also includes the Norway, the Philippines, and Switzerland. Norway, a perennially strong team, will be the favorites in that group, with the Philippines making their World Cup debut and Switzerland in just their second appearance, having qualified in 2015 and missed out in 2019.

Group Stage Schedule:

• Thursday, July 20, 12:00 a.m. vs Norway

• Tuesday, July 25, 10:30 p.m. vs Philippines

• Sunday, July 30, 12:00 a.m. vs Switzerland

United States (Ertz, Thompson)

The United States are the reigning champions, with four total World Cup wins to their name, in 1991, 1999, 2015, and 2019. They are the strongest team in the history of women's soccer, having been the top-ranked team in the world for most years since FIFA began ranking women's sides in 2003, and never having dipped below No. 2.

Like Japan, they have competed at every World Cup, where they have never placed below third. Although the field is much more competitive than it was in the early years of the women's tournament, with no shortage of countries that can beat the US, if you had to make one guess about who's most likely to win the whole thing, the reigning champs are still the safest bet.

Julie Ertz is a veteran with the team who got her first senior cap in 2013, during her senior year at Santa Clara. A midfielder in college, after being drafted by the Chicago Red Stars in 2014, she was named to the roster for the 2015 World Cup in Canada, where she played every minute of the tournament as a center back alongside Becky Sauerbrunn. In the years to come, she moved into a defensive midfield role for both club and country. By the 2019 tournament in France, where the US repeated their victory, she had established herself as one of the few truly indispensable pieces of the USWNT.

In 2022, on the heels of an injury that had kept her sidelined for the 2021 season, Ertz and her husband announced they were expecting a child, who was born in August of that year. This spring, Ertz returned to the field for the US shortly before signing with Angel City.

The 18-year-old Alyssa Thompson has had a whirlwind start to her professional career, earning her first senior cap in September, 2022, when she was 17. Originally a Stanford commit, Thompson opted to forgo her college eligibility and signed with ACFC in January, while still a student at Harvard-Westlake. She scored her first professional goal five minutes into her club debut in a friendly against Club América in March.

Thompson, the youngest player on the roster and the second-youngest in USWNT World Cup history, joins a group of forwards that features a mix of youth and experience. Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe, ages 34 and 38, have each played in three previous World Cups, while for the rest of the group—Trinity Rodman, Sophia Smith, and Lynn Williams—2023 will be their first.

The US are in Group E with Vietnam, the Netherlands, and Portugal. Although this group is the only one with two first-time competitors—Vietnam and Portugal—it shouldn't be underestimated. The Dutch were the runners-up in 2019, although their star striker, Vivianne Miedema, will miss the tournament due to injury. Portugal, meanwhile, have recent results against New Zealand (a 5–0 win) and England (a 0–0 draw), while Vietnam had a very respectable loss against second-ranked Germany in June, holding them to two goals.

Group Stage Schedule:

• Friday, July 21, 6:00 p.m. vs Vietnam

• Wednesday, July 26, 6:00 p.m. vs Netherlands

• Tuesday, August 1, 12:00 a.m. vs Portugal