USWNT, 2012 | Photo credit: Nicole Miller
Last month, five players from the US women’s soccer team filed an equal employment opportunity complaint against the US Soccer Federation. The case, which is ongoing, is primarily about compensation—in essence, the women want to be paid the same as the men—but it’s also about something much bigger than that. For more than two decades, the federation has prioritized the male players, often blatantly so. No matter how well the female players performed, the federation seemed reluctant to reward them and in some cases actively hindered their progress.
Part of the problem is FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, which is notoriously sexist. But it seems unjust to let FIFA shoulder all the blame. Having a sexist boss doesn’t mean you have to to be sexist, too. Plus, soccer came of age in the US in the 1990s, a time when the idea of female athletes sharing the spotlight with men was often encouraged. The US women’s soccer team has been stellar from the outset. It won the first-ever Women’s World Cup in 1991 and came in third in 1995. Then in 1996, it won the first Olympic gold medal in women’s soccer.
Conversely, the US men’s team’s best World Cup result during the ’90s was making it past the group stage in 1994, and it hasn’t made the Olympic podium since 1904, when soccer was a demonstration sport and only three teams, two of which were American, competed. Yet it was the male players who got the most money, the best playing venues, and, perhaps most importantly, a professional league that allowed the players to develop their skills year-round while also earning a living. The US Soccer Federation played an integral role in starting Major League Soccer, the main professional men’s league in the US, which played its first season in 1996. Alan Rothenberg, the federation president at the time, personally recruited business owners to invest in MLS teams. But when players from the US women’s team wanted to start a professional league after the 1996 Olympics, as players from the gold medal-winning women’s basketball and softball teams were, Rothenberg shut them down with a letter that began, “While I take my hat off to you for your pluck…”
The proposed women’s league, called the National Soccer Alliance, had commitments from Nike and other major sponsors. A September 1997 Los Angeles Times article proclaimed that the league was “set to spring into action,” with a ten-week season that was supposed to start the following April. Those sponsorship deals were contingent on approval by the federation, however, and when it became clear that approval wouldn’t be forthcoming, Nike and the other would-be sponsors backed out. By December 1997, the National Soccer Alliance had folded. What would have been the first pro women’s soccer league in the US had come and gone without playing a single game.
The federation cited various reasons for not sanctioning the women’s league. Shortly after it folded, Rothenberg told the Washington Post that he had worried it wasn’t financially viable. “The main thing we were concerned about was that it wouldn’t make it,” he said. “If it would have fallen on its face, it would have hurt progress tremendously.” But the league had outlined a detailed financial plan in its nearly 300-page application for federation approval. To Jen Rottenberg, a lead administrator with the league, the months of meetings and paperwork that the federation put her and the players through seemed like deliberate stalling tactics. “They didn’t want the league to happen, and the general attitude was dismissive,” she said, when I spoke to her recently.
The federation wanted the women to wait until after the 1999 World Cup to start a pro league, according to Rottenberg and newspaper reports. By then, Major League Soccer would be going into its fifth season and, ostensibly, more stable. In 1997, the men’s league was struggling: game attendance was down, and by the end of the year, the league had lost an estimated $11 million, after losing $19 million its first season. Some federation officials reportedly expressed concerns that a pro women’s league might detract from MLS games.
In 1999, the US women’s team won its second World Cup. The tournament was held in the US that year, and the final came down to a dramatic penalty shootout. After scoring the winning goal, US player Brandi Chastain ripped off her jersey, exposing her sports bra, and fell to her knees. Chastain became an instant women’s sports icon, and already-famous players from the 1996 Olympic team, such as Julie Foudy and Mia Hamm, became superstars. Sports Illustrated put the team on its cover and named the players its “Sportswomen of the Year.” The US men’s team, meanwhile, was coming off an abysmal last-place finish at the 1998 World Cup.
The US Soccer Federation continued to favor the men, however. In 1998, male players got $20,000 each just for making the US team, nearly twice what the women’s team members received for winning the 1999 World Cup. Worse yet, the federation tried to use the women’s lack of a pro soccer league against them when they asked for a slight pay increase before the 2000 Olympics. “In the absence of a weekly league, they look to us for a weekly paycheck,” said Hank Steinbrecher, the federation’s secretary general. (This wasn’t Steinbrecher’s first snide remark about the women’s team. In 1995, when the women’s players requested bonuses for winning silver or bronze medals at the ’96 Olympics, not just gold, he said, “It seems some players are more concerned about how green their shoes are instead of bringing home the gold.”)
The federation eventually agreed to increase the women’s stipends before the 2000 Olympics—from a modest $3,150 per month to a still-modest $5,000 per month—and the women’s team went on to win the silver medal that summer.* A year later, the US women finally had a professional soccer league to play in, but it didn’t last long. The league, called the Women’s United Soccer Association, folded in 2003, having lost nearly $90 million in three seasons. That’s a lot of money, but it was still less than what Major League Soccer was losing, which by 2004 was said to be more than $350 million, averaging out to about $40 million per year.
The men’s league wasn’t in danger of folding, though. In fact, it was expanding, adding new teams and building new stadiums. It had also secured coverage on ABC and ESPN thanks in large part to the fact that MLS, through its “commercial arm,” Soccer United Marketing, owned the US broadcast rights to the 2002 and 2006 World Cups and was able to use them as leverage (for more details on the arrangement, see this recent New York Daily News report). The best TV deal the women’s league was able to get was with the PAX network, a channel that, as The New York Times and other media outlets noted, didn’t typically feature sports.
Today, the US Soccer Federation does support a professional women’s soccer league. In 2012, after yet another women’s league folded (see these articles for more on that saga), the federation stepped in, helped set up a new league, and agreed to subsidize the salaries of players from the national team. The latest league is still a far cry from Major League Soccer in terms of pay—the highest salaries in the women’s league are less than MLS’s minimum salary, which rose to $60,000 last season.
MLS teams also receive more promotion than the women’s do. A prime example of this occurred last summer, when New York celebrated the US women’s players’ 2015 World Cup victory with a ticker-tape parade. It would have been an ideal opportunity to promote the fledgling pro women’s league, but, while the head of the women’s league was there, it was MLS commissioner Don Garber who addressed the crowd. The Red Bulls, New York’s MLS team, also had a float in the parade, and although it featured female staffers and girls from local soccer teams, it still seemed like an MLS marketing ploy. As an article in the soccer magazine Howler pointed out, it’s unlikely that the women’s league would have been represented in a parade honoring the US men’s team.
Members of the USWNT in NYC, July 2015 | Photo credit: Anthony Quintano
The professional leagues may seem tangential to the female players’ current pay dispute with the federation, but they’re actually quite central. Without a strong pro league to play in, the women have had no choice but to be dependent on the national soccer program for their livelihood, and the federation uses that against them just as it did in 2000. In its responses to the players’ equal employment opportunity complaint, the federation has taken pains to highlight the severance pay and health benefits that it gives the women but not the men—who get those things from their pro teams. “When someone negotiates for guarantees of downside protection, almost necessarily, the opportunity for upside gets squeezed down a little bit,” a federation representative said in a recent press conference.
The US women’s players have said they might boycott the upcoming Summer Olympics if their demands for equal pay aren’t met. If they did, no Americans would be featured in this year’s Olympic soccer tournament; the US men’s team didn’t qualify, just as it didn’t in 2012. Of course, the women will almost certainly reach an agreement with the federation and go to the Rio Olympics, where they’ll be the favorites to win gold like they did last time. The bigger question going forward is whether the women’s pro league can become stable.
This year marks the first time a professional women’s soccer league has made it to a fourth season. The league has also expanded, from an eight teams to ten. If it can keep growing, American women may finally be able to have the kind of robust, sustainable soccer careers, with lengthy stints on both pro and national teams, that their male contemporaries have had access to for years. Sunil Gulati, the current soccer federation president, recently said he doesn’t like to use the word “deserve” in regards to the US women’s team. But, considering what US women soccer players have achieved and have put up with in the past 25 years, it’s easy to see how that word would come to mind. By all rights, they are the real stars of American soccer, and it’s time they were treated as such.
* Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that the USWNT won the gold medal at the 2000 Olympic Games. They won the silver medal.
This is a fantastic article. I grew up in the heyday of MLS and WUSA soccer, and I have beloved memories of seeing both DC United and the Washington Freedom play at RFK. I never knew about all the shit being thrown behind the scenes, but I’m not even a little bit surprised. Even when the women are doing an infinitely better job than the men, they’re expected to be grateful for making barely a living wage for their talents.
So, not only are the Spirit currently playing far from RFK, but my understanding is that they won’t be invited into the new stadium(?!) Because as a car-free millennial who really loves the footie, let me tell you about my attendance rates should my city’s team play, idunno, in my city…
Here’s the site for the current league: http://www.nwslsoccer.com/standings-1 I cannot believe I haven’t heard a word about this. Pick teams, everyone! I am going to rabidly support…the Flash?
The Seattle Reign for me, I think. They’re closest to Canada and they have a delightfully punny name.
Now I guess I have to figure out how to watch their games.
All the games are streamed for free on the NWSL Youtube channel! I believe it’s a league requirement to provide a live stream, but there don’t appear to be rules about the quality of the stream, so it can be hit or miss (I watched a Spirit game the other day where it took them about 15 minutes to get the announcing audio up and running). But it’s still great that you can watch any game you want! They also leave them up so you can watch later.
Excellent. The next two games are now in my phone calendar, so I think I am ready to attempt sports fanning.
Update: After further research, have corrected assumption about what time zone the listed times were in, may actually catch games now.
It is weird that they managed to specify the time zone on the whole league schedule, but not on the team page schedule. And the team page schedule doesn’t list the times in the team’s home city’s time zone, which is what I had guessed.
Holy shit, Carli Lloyd plays for Houston!
WHOA, did not know that!!! Houston should have her face emblazoned everywhere!
I’m partial to the Portland Thorns, based solely on the name.
The Washington Spirit play just up the road, so I know I SHOULD support them, but PNW roots mean I’m keen on the Portland Thorns and Seattle Reign.
Nikki, I haven’t lived in Seattle since I was 18, but I’ve never in my life been able to support any sports team that isn’t from the PNW.
For the past couple seasons, I’ve been attempting to split my fandom as DC United/Portland Thorns. (Helpful that they share a color scheme with the Blazers and the Nats.)
But what I’ve really realized is that I adore the in-person fan experience for the Thorns far more than watching them from afar, so the moral of this post is I’d totally carpool to a Spirit match just to see if that can begin to help my soul a little.
I’d meet up at a Spirit game! We had tickets to their charity match against Duke a few weeks ago, but it was rained out. 🙁
After reading this piece yesterday, I’m making plans with Mr Wench (my driver) and hopefully a couple other friends to take in the game on May 14. I’m sad that the one local Thorns match (on the 7th) conflicts with my only unmovable object in all of May, because some of my friends are organizing an Away cheering section.
But I don’t know anyone at all who cares about Houston, so there shall be much supportive screaming about penalty kicks!
Oh shit, there’s a Seattle team and Hope Solo and Megan Rapinoe both play for it! Any Seattle toasties want to go to a game?
Proud supporter and fourth-year season ticket holder for the Portland Thorns here! Can’t express how much I <3 seeing little kids — boys as well as girls — wearing the names of female athletes on their backs!!!
I pick the Chicago Red Stars! We beat your team last weekend, we are the best!
(Am I doing this right?)
I live outside Boston so the Boston Breakers are my team (you see them there, they’re at the bottom of the league rn) but they’re still great GO BREAKERS
Sky Blue FC is my local and that’s good enough for me. 🙂
Rampone will go on forever 🙂
Come to a game! It’s so fun to watch in person and tickets are not expensive. I have season tickets and always look forward to home games.
Ah, I’ve used local a little too loosely. I grew up in that area, but I don’t live in the US anymore. My family still lives there and I’m still loyal to the area and the teams there though. When I visit, I should go to a game, bring my kids. 🙂
My money is on Seattle Reign, even though I live on the east coast and probably will never see a game.
As a person who went to the very first game of the NWSL and also the first championship (and maybe 20 games since then), this thread of people not knowing about it is HURTING MY SOUL. That this community, full of women, feminists, and smart/awesome individuals, doesn’t know about one of the pro women’s sports leagues in the US is just the perfect example of what is wrong with the marketing, promotion, and top-level support for the league. GAAAAHHHH.
I still remember showing up to that Sky Blue game, not even a year after the 2012 Olympics, paying $14 for my third-row ticket in stands full of about 2000 people, and being mere yards away from Abby Wambach. It’s not much different now – I just went to a game over the weekend and stood field level maybe 10 yards from Ali Krieger and Kelley O’Hara.
The NWSL is THE BEST, even though I am a Seattle Reign fan continually frustrated by living on the east coast.
Are there online groups, or anything for people who would like to be fans but don’t live in a city with a team? I have a hard time keeping up if I can’t go to a game, or if I don’t have anyone to talk to about it!
Similarly, I wanted to start watching the WNBA a few years ago – bought the season pass, and actually really enjoyed it! – but without a local team or local fans it was hard for me to maintain enthusiasm.
There’s a facebook group called “National Women’s Soccer League Supporters” that is pretty good (largely because it’s well moderated). There’s also the Equalizer (http://equalizersoccer.com/), which covers women’s soccer in general but tends to focus mostly on the NWSL and the national team. It does some good reporting but (surprising no one, I’m sure) the comments can be kinda gross.
Some federation officials reportedly expressed concerns that a pro women’s league might detract from MLS games.
Yes, they likely would, because the women players are better.
That made me see red. They knew the women had a real chance to establish themselves and all they could worry about was how it could effect the men.
The massive disparity between the treatment of male and female athletes who are playing the same damn game is unbelievable. These women deserve so much better than what they’re getting.
This is a great article, and I really hope they get what they (really do) deserve.
Even here in the UK, where football is obvs a lot bigger and revered to a ridiculous extent, people are starting to pay more attention to the women’s game for the same reason: the women’s national team is far, far better than the men’s. Considering the exorbitant amount male football players get paid compared to the pittance that the women get, fans are starting to come round to the idea that this isn’t entirely fair. The UK women’s team are also put into similar Catch-22 situations regarding promotion etc. as you’ve outlined above – none of the major sports channels will pick up women’s football because they say that no one watches it, but no one watches it because it’s not shown on any major sports channel. Things are changing, but very, very slowly.
I couldn’t believe it when I learned over the summer that women’s soccer was BANNED in England from like the 20’s to the late 60’s. Because it was damaging to women’s bodies but also because the games drew huge crowds. UGH THE PATRIARCHY.
I haven’t heard as much about the UK women’s team relative to the men’s though and that is super interesting!!!
Soccer/football is *such* a men’s sport in England, and so macho and it cracks me up because I grew up in the USA in the 90s when everyone knew that soccer was a girl’s sport. You barely breathe the idea that a girl would maybe want to play football to some people here and they *freak out*.
YES I also learned this recently and it made me so angry. The FA literally banned women’s soccer because too many people were watching it and it hurt their delicate man feelings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick,_Kerr%27s_Ladi….
Thank you for this article. It has been so frustrating seeing people kick around vague and misleading headlines about this issue and dismiss it based on their lack of understanding of the whole situation. It is really helpful to have the background about the lack of support for a pro league, as well as a clearer picture of just how much more successful the women’s teams have been on the global stage and for how long.
This article is fantastic!
There is so much potential for this all to be huge, and if it were a bunch of dudes playing, the same people holding it back and fretting about profitability would be falling all over themselves to make it work. I refuse to believe there is just no way to monetize the fact that the USWNT is idolized by millions of young girls and women (and boys and men!) across the country. Entire multi-million dollar lines of clothing and toys are based upon shakier foundations.
I hope these courageous women win their suit.
They also really need to work on their merch. Geez.
I love this piece. The 1999 World Cup was a BFD in my young life, and back then it took exactly half a day for some male I knew to crap on my excitement (“it doesn’t mean anyone is going to start caring about women’s sports”), so I have NEVER given af about men’s soccer. Give the women absolutely everything they demand; they deserve it.
SAAAAAAME, Brandi Chastain was my HERO
YEP. Want to hear something ridiculous? Earlier this year, the full national team called up their first ever player who was BORN in 1999.
The kids these days, they’ve gotten so good!
I can’t accept that kids born the year I graduated high school are now professional anything except gummy-smiling babies.
The youngest player on my women’s soccer team was born in 1999. The oldest was born in 1966 and is about to turn 50. The rest of us are fairly evenly scattered along the spectrum.
I love my soccer team. It’s a mix of super skilled young things that came up playing all their lives but didn’t want the pressure of continuing in the elite levels, generically sporty women who gave it a go for the social aspect in their 20s, and older women who picked the game up when their teenage kids started playing. We’ve had multiple mother/daughter pairings in the one team, which is just adorable.
I can’t lie though, when I realised that one of our best players – who scored the winning goal in our grand final last season – just turned 18, there was a slight (massive) feeling of OLD.
There was an administrator where I went to college who had a framed photo in her office of Brandi in that iconic scored-the-goal, whipped-the-jersey-off pose. I always admired her for that.
Michelle Akers was mine. At the time I had just been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, and seeing that she had it and was able to go out there and kill it every single time (and then she was pretty much flat on her back in bed with IV drips between every game and practice) was both inspiring and mindboggling.
Everyone can watch livestream NWSL games on their youtube page ! The quality of the video footage and color commentary vary greatly by team, but it’s free and hopefully will lead to a better tv deal/ money/ salaries for players.
Two other thoughts: It’s laughable that the women’s league doesn’t have a full tv deal yet (the WWC numbers from this summer beat out the men’s from the previous one), and that the NWSL’s marketing seems determined to infantilize the athletes by promoting a very 90s girl power vibe through targeting a youth audience instead of/ or in combination with an adult audience (the aforementioned/linked youtube page has some cringy design). Basically, I think the men in charge of the league and marketing should step down and let some women take over.
Also, I really loved this article and the great links that you provided, and I know this is totally not the point of the article and I’m not trying to be pedantic, but the men’s team placed 3rd in the inaugural world cup in 1930 and their best modern result was a quarterfinal in 2002. The women still outperform them by wide margins, especially considering the unequal funding and support provided. Again, really enjoyed the article!
Yes, all of this. I hosted a team party at the end of my indoor season a few weeks ago and almost tried to fight one of my teammates who got all offended because I offhandedly said something about the men’s national team being bad. SORRY BRO THE MEN SUCK.
Also, I tore my ACL playing in a tournament over the weekend (yes, you should feel sorry for me), so I will have my face glued to every single NWSL game even more than I was already planning.
Good luck with your knee recovery (internet hugs)
Thank you!! I’m still mostly in the wallowing stage (I cried at work today, uhh… every single time someone asked me how I was doing?), but honestly, I have so many friends who have done this and it’s really not a big deal in the long run. I’m also a stubborn asshole and determined to be the best rehabber who’s ever rehabbed!
AUGH
Oh my god a big women’s soccer article on the Toast! And it’s really good! I’m so glad this is here.
And thank you for teaching me about the National Soccer Alliance. I had no idea there was a league idea before WUSA.
This is such a great article! Thank you so much for the education.
Okay Toast-ilk, help me fight the patriarchy and one of their gross lies they’ve planted in my head: “the reason the US women’s team wins more World Cups than the men’s team is because there are barely any women’s soccer teams in other countries, and those that do exist get even less support than ours, so our team just don’t get anywhere near the same level of competition as the US men’s team does, since soccer is revered in every other country and no one really cares about it here”
I KNOW THIS IS WRONG and the footage of Carli Lloyd’s hat trick is all the proof anyone ought to need, but can anyone offer info on whether there are moderately strong women’s teams in other nations? More specifically, does someone know if the women’s World Cup schedule is shorter than the men’s?
The women’s WC schedule is shorter, yes. There were 24 teams in the 2015 WWC, compared to 32 in the men’s in 2014.
You’re also not wrong that women’s teams around the world are less supported than the men’s. They do exist, though, and some are on the level of the US (Canada, Sweden, England, France, Germany – notice a pattern?). It becomes a problem when the USWNT is trying to play friendly matches, because the closer national teams are on a much lower level overall, because they are not as funded or supported. US Soccer ran a tournament this past March just to get teams like England and Germany over here so everyone got better practice.
It might be worth comparing, also, the funding given to men’s teams in other countries with the funding for the USWNT. I’m not sure how to find that info, but I would postulate that men’s teams in, say, Uruguay or Ghana may receive lower pay than the US men while performing relatively well on the global stage. Totally hypothesizing, so I could be wrong.
Here’s a fun fact: arguably the best female player in the world will probably never play in a World Cup. Her name is Kim Little and she plays for the Scottish national team, which is unlikely to ever qualify. She also plays for the Seattle Reign and has won multiple MVP awards in the NWSL.
Thank you so much for the info! It’s all so fascinating, and I’m not even remotely a sports person. I would love to see the breakdown of how the US men’s team plays in proportion to their funding compared to many other countries.
And yes, as infuriating as the treatment of the USWNT is here in our own country, there’s so much to rage over with the sexism in other countries holding their teams back.
Yeah. I was lucky enough to see two games in Montreal during the World Cup last year, including France vs. Germany. There are absolutely other teams playing at or near the USWNT’s level, and I’m hopeful that we’ll only see more of them as time goes on (there are some up and coming teams like Costa Rica and Colombia that have been performing waaaay above expectations lately — I might actually put England in that category too, even).
Also — KIM LITTLE THO. Can you even imagine what she could do on a better national team? Honestly, watching her play reminds me exactly why I love soccer so much. She’s a goddamn magician.
(Oops I got this comment notification last night and forgot to come back.)
Also an up-and-coming team: Australia! And I think China and Korea have been getting better. I’d love for teams like Costa Rica and Colombia (both of whom I saw play in Montreal!) to improve even more, since soccer is such an important part of their national cultures and it’s a shame that the women’s game is so undervalued there. I don’t remember the details, but I heard things during the world cup about how all of Costa Rica’s players have to, like, pay for their own training? have multiple jobs? something that just goes to show how lopsided the support is there. And do Argentina and Uruguay even HAVE women’s teams?? Come on.
KIM LITTLE. I have dreams that one day the UK will get its shit together and assemble an Olympic team for Great Britain and then Kim and Jess Fishlock will get gold medals (or maybe silver because let’s be real I’m a USWNT fan).
There are Non European/Western countries that are contenders as well! Don’t forget 2011 WC champions Japan, Brazil (Marta!!!!) and back in the 90s China was also a contender!
To add to the lovely list of competitive teams coloredlights gave, Brazil is usually fun to watch (they have Marta- if you watched Christine Sinclair drag a mediocre Canada to bronze in 2012, Marta was doing that with Brazil for about five years) and Australia and maybe China are on the rise.
There are also club teams! Many European countries have domestic leagues whose top teams compete in the Women’s Champions League. The domestic leagues are unfortunately shallow (Lyon beats the crap out of the rest of France, 2-4 German teams beat up everybody else, Sweden has 2-4 teams that compete until the one with Marta wins) although England might have some parity. Plus the Women’s Champions League final is coming up and it’ll probably be Lyon-Wolfsburg.
I would agree that there is something to the argument that women’s world football doesn’t have the depth of men’s. There aren’t the number of leagues available to attract and sustain professional careers for players from around the world – so richer countries or countries with stronger Olympic set-ups tend to be the ones in the mix.
FYI, the Australian team the Matildas went on strike last year as part of collective bargaining to get a better deal for national team players (which pales in comparison to the US team). They are also pushing for better conditions in our local W-League. Baby steps, but moving in the right direction. The Women’s Game website gives a bunch of info on the Matildas’ strike http://thewomensgame.com/2015/09/qa-matildas-cba/
Unfortunately, it’s mostly true that women’s sports in general get much less support in other countries than in the US. There are exceptions, several of them. But Title 9 in the US has led to entire generations of women going to college on volleyball, soccer, basketball, etc scholarships. Thousands and thousands of them, and getting fairly high quality training and serious competition at a young age. And that trickles down into high school and grade school – teenage girls know that athletics are a viable way to pay for their education so there’s a very high rate of younger girls participating in sports (especially compared to many other countries).
Compared to many other places, the infrastructure for training and developing female athletic talent is MUCH better in the USA.
I think women’s football is much more interesting these days than the men’s, mainly because there’s much less diving and unprofessional conduct in the women’s sport. It’s such a pity that the womens’ game gets so much less attention than the men’s, but on the other hand that also keeps the game more “pure”, since the big money interest won’t be drawn to them. It’s a bit of a dilemma for sure. In any case I hope that the good fortunes of the USWNT keep on keeping on. Oh, and go Houston Dash! ^_^
This has come up in discussions I’ve had about the English women’s team – contrary to the ridiculous assertion that women’s sports aren’t as exciting as their male equivalents, anyone can see that women’s football is definitely more exciting, because the players aren’t coddled babies and they really fucking go for it.
UK people, question from a non-sports-watching-but-angry-about-women’s-soccer USAsian expat living in London: what are the options for girls’ sport, especially outside of posh schools? football/soccer is huuuuge for American girls, and Title IX programs mean that schools have to offer intermural teams for girls. I once asked my cricket-mad sister in law whether she’d played for her school or town as a kid (her brother did) and was met with blank stares.
Field hockey is big in parts of Europe! And in Ireland there’s a huge network of (non professional) local teams for Gaelic sports for women (Camogie, Gaelic footbal) as well as Rugby and to a lesser extent soccer. Unfortunately, the women’s games get less attention and prestige.
The first title bonus the German national women’s team ever got was a tea set. It’s a fact that gets brought up a lot, mostly to ridicule old-timey attitudes towards women’s football, and the situation is much better now (though the compensation is nowhere near what the men’s team gets, of course). But I always thought the tea set thing happened way earlier than it actually did – when I just looked it up to confirm I realized it was in 1989. 19-fucking-89. What the hell.
(It wasn’t even first choice quality. Silvia Neid’s parents still have her set, apparently.)
I tore my ACL last month playing soccer. Wallow for the next few days, you deserve it.
Then DO ALL OF YOUR HOME PHYSICAL THERAPY EXERCISES, EVEN THOUGH THEY HURT. It'll be worth it, I promise. (and see if your insurance will rent you out a CPM machine.)
Speedy recovery, fellow weak-kneed Toastie!
Another factor is how societies look at female athletes in other countries. I was an Au Pair in Spain last year, and in my experience, girls over the age of 12 do not play sports.
I would try to play soccer with local teenage boys (we're talking my friends that I would hang out with to watch movies, grab beers with, etc.), and they would all get extremely uncomfortable and wouldn't play with me. THAT was my biggest culture shock, coming from the USA where I had always been captain of co-ed teams.
You might need to find other expats, that's what I had to do in Madrid.
Thank you soo much for this article. As a huge soccer fan I’ve been going nuts reading all these headlines that just get the entire deal wrong. Also with people who all of a sudden have option on the level of play between the men and women when they never seen a game or touched a ball.
Also for funz there is a site doing a fantasy league of the NWSL for free. http://nwslfl.com/
Crossing all the fingers and toes for a NWSL team to be started in Californa.
Unfortunately, it's mostly true that women's sports in general get much less support in other countries than in the US. There are exceptions, several of them. But Title 9 in the US has led to entire generations of women going to college on volleyball, soccer, basketball, etc scholarships. Thousands and thousands of them, and getting fairly high quality training and serious competition at a young age. And that trickles down into high school and grade school – teenage girls know that athletics are a viable way to pay for their education so there's a very high rate of younger girls participating in sports (especially compared to many other countries).
Compared to many other places, the infrastructure for training and developing female athletic talent is MUCH better in the USA.