Women Have Always Dominated U.S. Soccer. Why Is No One Talking About It?
Women's soccer has never been an alternative version of the sport. It has always been the sport.
On Thursday, the 23rd FIFA World Cup — the men’s soccer World Cup, that is — kicks off across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. In case you’ve missed the hullabaloo, the message is clear: America is finally a soccer country.
You can see it in the billion-dollar valuations of U.S. Major League Soccer clubs, in the arrival of Lionel Messi — the Argentine superstar athlete who now plays for Miami — and in the many shiny ad campaigns capitalizing on the hype surrounding the tournament.
What some might be forgetting, however, is that while the men's game has for decades struggled to assert its relevance in a crowded market of basketball, baseball, and American football, the U.S. women’s soccer has enjoyed a long and thriving history.
The U.S. women's national team won the inaugural FIFA Women's World Cup more than 30 years ago, in 1991. After that it won Olympic gold in 1996. The team has always drawn fans who have filled stadiums, attracting sponsors, and creating household names. In fact, by the late 1990s, Mia Hamm was one of the most recognizable athletes in America.
Then there was the Brandi Chastain Moment, when she ripped off her shirt and fell to her knees in her sports bra after scoring the winning penalty kick in the 1999 Women's World Cup. It became an era-defining image. (And it’s a statue! Who knew?) “I'd argue that men's American soccer still hasn’t had a galvanizing moment to match that,” says Jane McManus, a veteran sports broadcaster and author of “The Fast Track: Inside the Surging Business of Women’s Sports.”
In addition to 1991 and 1999, the team also won the World Cup in 2015 and 2019, — making it the most successful team in tournament history. In other words, women's soccer has never been an alternative version of the sport. It has always been the sport. (Apropos, here’s a brilliant piece by The Persistent’s Emma Haslett on the under-appreciated history of women’s soccer in the U.K.)
Emma Haslett
The Title IX effect
The reasons for this dominance are at least partly structural.
In 1972, Congress passed Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that prohibited sex-based discrimination in sports in schools, universities and other education programs that received federal funding. The legislation dramatically expanded opportunities for girls and women in organized sports.
Because soccer, specifically, required little in the way of equipment, and most colleges already had field space for their men's teams, soccer was also a relatively cheap way to show compliance with Title IX. As a result, the U.S. developed a talent pipeline that much of the rest of the world lacked.
At the same time, many traditional soccer powers around the world were devoting more attention and funding to men’s soccer, resulting in an unusual sports asymmetry: in terms of women’s soccer, the U.S. became the world's dominant force in a game that many countries barely took seriously.
That dominance still exists today, and it matters beyond trophies. The brilliant women's national teams have given Americans a reason to care about soccer, introducing millions of girls to the sport and creating generations of lifelong audiences. Long before soccer became fashionable among investors, broadcasters, and celebrities, women players — professionals, amateurs and those who just enjoyed a kick-around in the yard — were doing the difficult work of building a fan base where it arguably matters most: in small towns and communities, in neighborhoods, in schools.
In the lead up to this year’s FIFA tournament, where tickets are going for a cool $5000–plus, investors are suddenly competing to buy into clubs and leagues.
None of this is a problem, of course. In fact, in many ways, it simply reflects the fulfillment of a dream that soccer advocates have been pursuing for decades. But it also risks obscuring an important historical fact: That the foundation for all of this was laid by women.
As McManus points out, the American men's soccer team has still never won a World Cup.
“The best the U.S. men’s ever finished was third place. That was in Uruguay in 1930. No other result has ever approached that since,” she says. “So you can call what is happening in North America this summer the World Cup,” she adds, “but you might also frame it as the run-up to the real tournament next year in Brazil: The Women's World Cup.”
Josie Cox
