A lesson from the Women's World Cup

Where do these women come from?

I watched seven of the Women's World Cup games and found myself pondering that question every time I turned on ESPN's coverage.

In men's soccer, the World Cup tournament rests on a pyramid. The national teams draw their players from a sprawling infrastructure. Every country in the world supports at least one professional league. The national teams draw their gladiators from a pool of players who develop their skills on professional teams located all over the world.

But where do the women come from?

The answer may seem obvious. Soccer is the national sport in every major country except the U.S. Most of the world's children grow up playing soccer the way Americans learn the rules of baseball while they're still laughing at Dr. Seuss.

But soccer is a man's sport in all the great soccer nations. Many soccer powers are countries with highly conservative attitudes toward women's roles.

Julie Foudy, who provided the off-screen commentary on ESPN, played for the U.S. team that won the World Cup in 1999. During this year's game between the U.S. and Colombia, Foudy noted that the Colombian players lacked the benefit of a professional league where they could acquire post-college experience. During the thriller against Brazil, Foudy claimed the Brazilian women didn't receive the same support as the Americans, and mentioned that they hadn't had as much time to practice together.

But the U.S. is a country in which soccer is still establishing itself as a spectator sport. Nevertheless, the U.S. team has been a major contender since the international soccer federation inaugurated the women's cup in 1991. The Americans entered this year's tournament ranked first in the world.

Three reasons

I see three reasons for this success. One is Americans' tendency to support any winning team that bears our flag. Americans may think soccer is about as exciting as horseshoe pitching, but the U.S. team leaped out of obscurity when our women came home with the trophy in 1999. American players go into action knowing they'll be national heroes if they bring home the cup.

For another thing, the last 30 years have seen a huge jump in the number of Americans, of both sexes, who've actually played soccer. American parents have discovered that soccer is a team sport that's cheaper and less dangerous than football. Critics sneer that it's a game for kids who aren't very athletic, but that's probably one of its attractions.

The clinching development in this saga was Title IX, the federal program that monitors discrimination in institutions that receive federal money. Under Title IX, colleges and universities had to offer women opportunities comparable to men, including sports programs that would meet women's needs and interests.

That means the daughters of soccer moms can keep playing when they reach college age. (According to Wikipedia, 96% of U.S. colleges deploy female soccer teams.) Those college players, in turn, provide the core of a professional league.

Our national women's league, Women's Professional Soccer, may be a second-tier league in a second-tier sport. But it does exist. So America's national team can draw on a pool of experienced players in their prime years.

Too many long passes

The Americans faced technically superior teams in every match they played in Germany. Women who grow up in soccer countries may not receive many opportunities to play, but they do understand the game.

For example, the Americans still put too much emphasis on the long pass downfield. That strategy works fine when somebody gets to the ball before the other team's defenders can reach it, but you're just surrendering possession when it doesn't. By contrast, the teams from the soccer nations use shorter passes maintain possession and work the ball into position.

In the semi-final game, the French dominated the contest but lost because the American defenders put up a wall of resistance and held the line until Abbey Wambach and Company could score the clinching goals.

The Americans' big advantage is their competitiveness. They're obviously committed pros. Their quarter-final clash with Brazil really was one of the most exciting soccer games ever played— a cliffhanger with a last-minute goal that was a stirring example of precision passing and never-say-die grit: The Americans played shorthanded, furthermore, for almost an hour. (When the ref ejects a player during a soccer match, the player is gone for good and you don't get to send in a substitute.)

Two teams with a mission

I watched the Japanese team play Mexico and England during the tournament's round-robin phase. They're a beautiful team to watch. Against Mexico, they scored two of the prettiest goals I've seen. They lost to England mostly because they were shorter.

The final (which I missed) seems to have been a mirror image of the Brazil game. This time, it was the Japanese who came from behind and scored the last minute goal that forced the game into a penalty kick tiebreaker. This time it was the Japanese who won the tiebreaker with a brilliant display by a goalie who is clearly the equal of America's star-level Hope Solo.

The championship game confronted the Americans with a team that was just as determined they were. The Japanese players said they believed they could lift the morale of a nation going through a dark time, and they played their games as if they meant it.

When I mentioned the Japanese attitude to a friend of mine, he said, "Then I'll cheer for both sides." That seemed like a reasonable response.

But the U.S. players had a mission, too— a message they communicate to the world whenever they beat a team from a country that dominates men's soccer: Any nation that cultivates the talents of its women enjoys a competitive advantage over less liberal cultures, even when it ventures into odd or unfamiliar domains. The more we heed that message, the better off we'll all be.♦


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