The FIFA Women's World Rankings for football were introduced in 2003, with the first rankings published on 16 July of that year, as a follow-on to the existing Men's FIFA World Rankings. They attempt to compare the strength of internationally active women's national teams at any given time. As of the start of 2023, the ranking has 185 national teams. Specifics of the ranking system FIFA Women's World Rankings are based on every international match a team ever played, dating back to 1971, the first FIFA-recognized women's international between France and the Netherlands. FIFA Women's World Rankings are implicitly weighted to emphasize recent results. FIFA Women's World Rankings are only published four times a year. Normally, rankings are released in March, June, September and December. (In World Cup years, dates may be adjusted to reflect the World Cup results.) The first two points result from the FIFA Women's World Rankings system being based on the Elo rating system adjusted for football; in 2018, FIFA modified the men's ranking system to similarly be based on Elo systems after continued criticism. FIFA considers the ratings for teams with fewer than 5 matches provisional and at the end of the list. In addition, any team that plays no matches for 4 years becomes unranked; this inactivity limit was previously 18 months, but was extended in early 2021 (after the COVID-19 pandemic stifled a significant amount of international play). Leaders To date the United States and Germany have been the only two teams to lead the women's rankings. They have also held the top two spots in all but six releases, when Germany was ranked third (only Norway, Brazil, England and Sweden have been ranked second during this time). The United States holds the record for the longest consecutive period leading the rankings of nearly 7 years, from March 2008 to December 2014. As of January 2022, the United States has led for a total of 14 years, Germany for 4.5 years, and the two jointly led for 3 months. Ranking procedure The rankings are based on the following formulae: Where The average points of all teams are about 1300 points. The top nations usually exceed 2000 points. In order to be ranked, a team must have played at least 5 matches against officially ranked teams, and have not been inactive for more than 18 months. Even if teams are not officially ranked, their