The 2003 AFC Women's Championship was a women's football tournament held in

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

from 8 to 21 June 2003. It was the 14th holding of the

AFC Women's Championship The AFC Women's Asian Cup (formerly known as the AFC Women's Championship) is a quadrennial competition in women's football for national teams which belong to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). It is the oldest women's international football ...

, a tournament for women's national teams from countries affiliated to the

Asian Football Confederation The Asian Football Confederation is the governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal in some countries/territories in Asia and Oceania. It has 47 member countries most of which are located in Asia. Australia, formerly i ...

. The competition was held in

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated populati ...

in the

Rajamangala Stadium The Rajamangala National Stadium ( th, ราชมังคลากีฬาสถาน; , ) is the national stadium of Thailand. It is part of the Hua Mak Sports Complex, and is located in Hua Mak Subdistrict, Bang Kapi, Bangkok. It officia ...

and in Nakhon Sawan in the Nakhon Sawan Stadium. The tournament was won by the defending champions

North Korea women's national football team The Democratic People's Republic of Korea women's national football team ( Munhwaŏ Korean: 조선민주주의인민공화국 녀자 국가종합팀, recognized as Korea DPR by FIFA) represents North Korea in international women's football. Nor ...

(Korea DPR). As the championship was also used for qualifying for the FIFA Women's World Cup, North Korea qualified as champions, China qualifying as runners-up, and South Korea qualifying as the third-placed team. Japan as the fourth-placed team faced another match for qualification.

Participating teams and structure

Fourteen teams took part in the competition. This included the hosts

and the defending champions

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

. The teams were split into 3 groups, with the each team playing all the others in the group in a

round robin Round-robin may refer to: Computing * Round-robin DNS, a technique for dealing with redundant Internet Protocol service hosts * Round-robin networks, communications networks made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology * Round-robin schedu ...

format. At the end of the group stage the four teams with the best results from all the groups who qualified in the 1st 2 spaces in each group qualify to the knockout stage. This is played in the format of a semi-final, a 3rd/4th place match, as well as a final. The winners and runners-up of the competition automatically qualify for the

FIFA Women's World Cup 2003 The 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup was the fourth edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the quadrennial championship of women's national soccer teams organized by FIFA. It was held in the United States from September 20 to October 12, 2003, at s ...

. The 3rd place team has to compete against a

CONCACAF The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football,, ; french: Confédération de football d'Amérique du Nord, d'Amérique centrale et des Caraïbes, . Dutch language, Dutch uses the English name. abbreviated as CON ...

team over home and away matches for a final place in the FIFA Women's World Cup. The runners-up and the 3rd place team were re-berthed to 3rd and 4th place respectively as China, as original host of the World Cup and would automatically qualified to final rounds, got 2nd place. This was the last tournament to still issue invitation. From 2006, a separate qualification round was introduced to find out teams to qualify for the Women's Asian Cup. * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Stadium

* Nakhon Sawan Stadium

Group stage

Group A

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Group B

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Group C

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Knockout stage

Semi-finals

Winners qualified for 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup

Third place match

Winner qualified for 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup. Loser entered CONCACAF–AFC play-off.

Final

Awards

Goalscorers

External links

Match results at the official AFC web site

{{DEFAULTSORT:2003 Afc Women's Championship

Women's Championship The Women's Championship (formerly The FA Women's Championship) is the second-highest division of women's football in England. The division was established in 2014 as the FA Women's Super League 2 (WSL 2). WSL 2 replaced the previous level 2 d ...

AFC Women's Asian Cup tournaments 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup qualification International association football competitions hosted by Thailand Afc

AFC Championship The AFC Championship Game is the annual championship game of the American Football Conference (AFC) and one of the two semi-final playoff games of the National Football League (NFL), the largest professional American football league in the world. ...