Never before has a female team sport received so much attention and interest as the third Women’s World Cup. The way the world looks at women’s sports will never be same after this summer’s tournament.
It will be the Americans, Norwegians and Chinese, one might expect, battling for supremacy this summer in what organizers promise will be the biggest, greatest celebration of women and sport this world has seen. But to get to the core of what the third world women’s soccer championships are really about, one must travel thousands of miles and a decade or two from America’s fields on the eve of the new millennium. It is here, in the real world many years hence, that the promise of what occurs June 19-July 10 in seven U.S. venues will be realized. Credit the organizers, who ù when confronted by a crowd of 76,489 for the Olympic women’s final at the 1996 Atlanta Games ù decided bigger was better, ditching plans for a small, East Coast tournament and putting games into the country’s biggest stadiums from coast to coast. It was a risk, to be sure, but it has paid off handsomely in ticket sales, marketing opportunities, media attention and ù perhaps most important ù curiosity elsewhere, where soccer reigns but the idea of women playing still sounds odd. “We’re fighting a battle on a grander scale,” says Lauren Gregg, one of U.S. coach Tony DiCicco’s assistants. “There’s a perception that women are an inferior gender, that they’re certainly not soccer players, and that comes from the culture. It’s definitely an area [in which] we would like to find new avenues … try to bring women’s soccer to these countries. They need to see it’s OK. That’s our bigger battle; that’s the ambassadorship we can take on.” It’s a responsibility the American women take seriously. They consider themselves missionaries for their sport and understand the repercussions are felt far beyond the playing field. Brazil goalkeeper Maravilha can testify. She, like most Brazilian girls of her generation, was discouraged from playing soccer. “It wasn’t accepted,” she says. “Nobody saw how women could play soccer and still be considered feminine. But now it’s changing. The American team was an example of femininity and strength in sport. They saw beautiful women play soccer and win championships and said, ‘Hey, our girls can do this, too.’ [The Americans] were a catalyst.” It should come as no surprise that the rise of women’s soccer ù on these shores, in Europe, increasingly elsewhere ù has coincided with advances in the status of women. Why, then, shouldn’t the most glorious expression of women’s sport serve to further the cause of women? That, in essence, is what the Women’s World Cup is all about.
A stepping stone
“This is a small stepping stone in the world of soccer,” U.S. midfielder-defender Brandi Chastain says, “but a large stone for women in the world.” “Sports is certainly a leading factor,” says Marla Messing, WWC president and CEO, “in the cultural evolution of women all around the world. We seem to accept women as athletes before we accept them, perhaps, in a business environment or a political environment. “As there are increased opportunities for women in athletics, particularly in soccer ù and they are given recognition as soccer players ù we can slowly bring them into other parts of our society.” “It all has to do with how each country envisions women,” says U.S. midfielder Kristine Lilly, who has played in more international matches ù 180 ù than anyone else, male or female. “It’s a struggle to be accepted outside the kitchen, in the business office, on the sports field. “We’re making strides ù you see it more, in other countries, it was, ‘Women play soccer?’ Now they see the U.S. team and it’s, ‘You guys are pretty good.’ They know women play, and that’s a big difference.” Michelle Akers was putting on a clinic in Egypt, where her audience was entirely male. At the end, they wanted her to play with them, then they got rough. “I got into a shoving match with one guy,” she says. “I thought I was going to get booted out of the country.” By the end, she says, she had won them over with her play: “They were very excited; they appreciated and respected my abilities. It took getting past that social and cultural block.” She heard from a girl in the Middle East who had visited Akers’ website and found a passage about how “God values each of us, whether we’re a guy or girl,” she said. “The girl was in tears, she said in her e-mail, over the thought that God would have feelings for and value a woman. It really hit home, that there’s this significant opportunity we have to change people’s lives, not what they do but who they are and who they become. “It’s more than just showing [people] women can do stuff. It’s about who we are as people.” It isn’t just the U.S. women that will sell the sport, and the idea that women can perform, to the world. There are 74 nations planning to broadcast WWC matches ù all 32 will be shown on U.S. television, on ABC, ESPN and espn2 ù and one gander at Brazil’s Pretinha, or Norway’s Linda Medalen, or China’s Wen Sun, will send the message organizers want to present.
Filling the canvas
“What we’re really celebrating is how far we’ve come in women’s sports,” says WWC chair Donna De Verona, who won two gold medals in swimming at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. After the Olympics, unable to get a scholarship for her swimming, De Verona says she considered quitting. “There was no vision, no future [in women’s sports],” she says. “Women weren’t coaches, they weren’t administrators, they weren’t television commentators. It was just a clean canvas, a blank canvas. “Things have changed [in the United States], and what I love most is young girls and young boys just accept that this is the way it should be.” De Verona is worried about recent attacks on Title IX, the 1972 Federal statute that outlawed discrimination against women in athletics. It’s the starting point on the road that has led here, and elsewhere: to the gold medals the United States picked up in women’s soccer, softball and women’s hockey; to the formation of two professional women’s basketball leagues, one of which survives; to the promise of the pro women’s soccer league targeted for 2001. It promises, at the least, to be a great party. More than 400,000 tickets had been sold nearly a month before the opener, and organizers were expecting about a half million seats to be filled by the July 10 final at the Rose Bowl. A sellout crowd of 93,000, which would certainly capture attention everywhere, is considered possible; a television audience in the tens of millions likely. “The cultural perspective is huge,” De Verona says. “I’m thinking we’re in the middle of a cultural shift we haven’t yet recognized. Around the world, we’re going to blow everybody’s mind. “This is the end of a long road and the beginning of a new one and the millennium, and it will be a global example of what’s possible if people support young girls and women.”
by Soccer America
Senior Editor Scott French
