Pauw fears for financial help

Netherlands coach Vera Pauw has voiced concerns that women's football might lose funding from the Dutch Olympic Committee because the sides her team have been playing are too good.

Powerful opponents
In the last year Pauw has arranged friendly matches against leading nations such as Finland, Sweden, Italy and China as she tries to get her players accustomed to facing high-class opposition. They play host to Iceland in another friendly on Wednesday. However, their relative lack of world-ranking points means that football may lose its 'B status' with the Olympic Committee, thereby missing out on vital funding.

Dutch progress
The Netherlands have made great strides in the present FIFA Women's World Cup qualifying campaign, defeating France away and giving England a run for their money. However, Pauw has warned that this success might be overlooked if the Olympic Committee focuses only on the country's ranking. "Our competitors' budgets are between five and eight times higher than ours. We have tried to compensate by playing friendlies against the international superpowers of women's football. Playing at this level is helping to close the gap between us and the leading nations," said Pauw.

'We might be punished'
"The friendly campaign did not earn us many points towards the world rankings, but our sights were set beyond that, towards the qualifying campaign, which has started fantastically, above all our expectations. But instead of being rewarded we might be punished for not getting enough world-ranking points. We could have got the points by playing against lower-ranked nations, but then we wouldn't have been able to compete with France or England."