“Our biggest strength is we have such fire and passion to play and kill everyone else.”
She did double-duty for her college team and the U.S. team in 1991; now midfielder Julie Foudy is one of the key veterans in the team’s quest to repeat as world champion.
SOCCER AMERICA: The U.S. women’s national team has a full-time training facility. How did you keep sharp the past few years when you weren’t with the national team?
JULIE FOUDY: When I was out at Stanford, I can’t train with the college team. The Storm [club] team I play with trains rarely. So you have to train a lot on your own. You get tired of it. It’s basically running and ball stuff, but not many games. When you’re finished with college, there’s nowhere to go.
It’s nice to have a full team, two full teams, to play with. I don’t have to call up 50 different people and try to get a game going.
How have the players adapted to living together and seeing each other every day?
It’s going so smoothly. I think people were real concerned, because it’s a new experience and being so far away from home. It’s been great.
Has it been a big change for Tony DiCicco to take over as head coach from Anson Dorrance?
Anson’s so offensive-minded, a lot of Anson’s tactics and training sessions and practices are geared around offense. With Tony being a keeper, you get a different perspective.
He uses the same philosophy, because he worked with Anson for four years. The basic system hasn’t changed, which is good; it would have so hard to come in and change our whole system around nine months before the World Cup.
Now, we’re getting a different perspective from the defense’s side, and it works offensively, too. He tells us when we’re shooting where the keeper’s going to be — this is the best angle, this is what the defense sees. We’re doing a lot of placement [shooting] instead of just whacking the crap out of the ball.
Sweeper Carla Overbeck nearly retired after the 1991 championship. Why did she change her mind?
Carla talked about retiring — I think Anson and a couple of other people talked to her. A lot of people were going to retire, Carin [Jennings] was talking about it.
But it was so different back then. Now, a lot of us have endorsements, the Federation has put us under contracts, and so it’s more affordable to do this. People were trying to waitress and teach, and getting fired from their jobs because they had to travel so much.
It was financially demanding. Now, it’s like you’re a true professional athlete —
you don’t have to work, just focus on soccer.
You played in the Swedish women’s league for several months. What was the biggest difference between playing in that league and playing college soccer?
The training and games were better than Division I. The caliber top to bottom is better, because the players are older and more experienced.
Overall, they have a bigger pool than us for national team players. There’s not this huge gap: If you’re not in the national team pool in the United States, once you stop playing soccer in college, you go on with your life. Over there, they get a job, but keep playing.
They’re so smart tactically, and it’s faster than college. After you play a game, you’re exhausted like you are internationally.
You’ve said when you were young, you knew nothing about the women’s national team. How has the image of the team changed since the 1991 world championship?
At the last World Cup, no one knew what our potential was. The U.S. hadn’t put itself on the map in terms of soccer. And there were only two of our players who had endorsements.
Now, three-fourths of the team have endorsement deals. That creates attention. Nike has made a TV ad for the team, and I just made a new ad for Reebok. That helps create awareness, and coverage of the Women’s World Cup will help, too.
I did this clinic for magazine editors at a high school, and the soccer team found out I was there, so they all brought out their Reebok cards with me on them for me to sign. That would have never happened when I was growing up.
In March, the team finished fourth at the Algarve Cup in Portugal. How well did the team play?
We just didn’t have the spark that we usually have. We’d been training for five weeks and we’d done World Cup rhythm basically, where we had six games in 13 days right before we came, which is tough. And we really weren’t taking off the days in between. People were tired, and we just couldn’t get a rhythm. Things weren’t clicking.
Fitness-wise, we definitely built a base. Our biggest strength is we have such fire and passion to play and kill everyone else. That’s what was lacking. A lot of people were sick.
Within several weeks, the team played Denmark — one of your first-round opponents at the world championships — three times with three different results: a 7-0 win, a 2-0 win, and a 2-0 loss. What happened?
First time, we played them they played a flat back four and offside trap. It took us about 15 or 20 minutes to solve it, after that it was ineffective, because we were so much faster than them with Mia and Carin. The second game, they switched to a sweeper, and did better, but they still didn’t seem that organized.
In Portugal, they had played two games and had done really well, and they came in with a lot of confidence. We were kind of flat.
On their first goal, it was a low shot, Briana [Scurry] dived for it, and it hit a bump and went over her. The second goal was a penalty, and let’s just say that during the tournament, the referees didn’t do us any favors. We gave away three PKs in the last two games, on against Denmark and two against Norway.
Since the 1991 world championship, Shannon Higgins has retired and Tisha Venturini has joined you in central midfield. What changes has this brought to the team?
With Shannon, I was more the attacking midfielder and she was the deeper, playmaking one. I’ve taken Shannon’s role as the playmaker and Tish is higher up. It’s worked great. The hardest part is playing together and not getting separated too far across the field, so we can support each other.
When we play high-pressure teams, when you only have one, two touches max, you need that short option from the other center half to get out of the pressure. Against Norway, you get the ball and you have three people on you, and you need someone short because there’s no way you can hit the long ball.
Have any of your teammates, either at Stanford or with the national team, had a great influence on you?
Michelle Akers. She’s had such great success, and you think it’s just natural, maybe it comes easy for her. But when I starting practicing and playing with her, I found out her shooting ability and her free-kick ability didn’t come naturally.
She’s out there every day after practice, doing free kicks or shooting, lots of repetition. She’s constantly out there trying to get better. That’s been imprinted on my brain. You can never reach your best, there’s always something else you can strive for.
My strength is I’m a hard worker. There’s such a fine line between great players and good players. The difference is consistency. You have to be good every game, instead of just great when the cameras are there or when there’s a big crowd.
by Soccer America Senior Editor Ridge Mahoney