The 2015 Women’s World Cup

Under the rules of the international soccer federation, FIFA, women play the exact same game as the men and adhere to the same ceremonies. They run up and down the field for two grueling 45-minute periods, with one 15-minute break, three substitutions, and a half-hour overtime in games that require a tiebreaker. In the preliminaries, the two teams line up in the tunnel before they enter the arena, with each player holding the hand of a child soccer player (one of FIFA’s more charming touches). The gladiators march into the stadium to the sound of the FIFA anthem and sing their country’s national anthem in front of fans who see them as the representatives of their nation.

Until FIFA staged the first Women’s World Cup in1991, no woman had ever had that experience. The youngest player on the Canadian team is a 17-year-old forward who, she says, scored her first goal off a pass from a teammate, a legendary Canadian goal scorer. Twenty-five years ago, there were no legendary women soccer players and no girls who dreamed of emulating them.

Winning wins fans

When a men’s team wins a World Cup final, crowds pour into the streets in celebration. The women still don’t attract that kind of fervor, but the idea that their tournaments are a mere sideshow to the main event is starting to die out. Soccer received a big boost in the United States when the U.S. women’s team won the World Cup in that first FIFA competition in 1991. Women’s soccer in France received a similar boost when the team made the semi-final in 2011. The Japanese gathered around their barroom TVs when Japan won the 2011 final in a cliffhanging battle with the United States.

The Women’s World Cup is a social wedge. Americans tend to class soccer with basketball or volleyball and see no reason why women shouldn’t play it. In most countries, however, soccer is a man's sport, and women players challenge traditional ideas about gender roles. During one of the games in the current competition, a commentator mentioned that a player had been sent to a psychologist when she told her mother she wanted to be a soccer player.

Hooray for FIFA

FIFA has been getting well-deserved bad press lately, but the Woman’s World Cup wouldn’t exist without it. It’s a top-down initiative that has increased international support for women’s soccer.

The Men’s World Cup rests on a solid foundation. The national teams that play in the men’s tournament draw their players from a pool of players from teams all over the world.

The Women’s World Cup rests on a smaller, less secure base. In the United States, we have a small professional women’s league that is constantly threatened with collapse. The American league and a few European leagues provide women with opportunities much skimpier than those offered to men. The Women’s World Cup pressures national soccer federations into supporting women’s soccer, even if a particular country doesn’t support a commercially successful women’s league.

Who pays?

When the United States hosted the regional qualifications for the World Cup last October, the team from Trinidad and Tobago arrived in Dallas with $15 per player. Local soccer fans donated money and equipment, restaurants offered free meals, and their American coach organized an Internet appeal that brought in donations from Poland and Singapore. The outpouring of support shamed their national association into donating a few thousand dollars. The team responded, appropriately, by giving the United States the toughest game it played in the tournament.

Costa Rican women’s soccer dates back to the 1940s, but soccer historian Joshua Nadel reports that one player on the Costa Rican team finances her training by milking cows on her father’s farm. Another quit a job in a call center so she could train at 5 a.m. When the Costa Ricans lined up in the tunnel before their first World Cup appearance, their faces radiated their feelings. The mere fact that they were there meant something, whatever happened on the field.

Drama and excitement

The social implications of the World Cup create an interesting backdrop, but the success of women’s soccer depends, ultimately, on the drama and excitement of its games. When the current tournament opened, I was afraid the U.S. team was going to cruise through it — they had chalked up several lopsided victories in a preliminary schedule that included a major international tournament in Portugal.

That worry has been put to rest. Sweden held them to a scoreless tie in the first stage of the tournament, and Australia and Nigeria made them work for their wins. In their first elimination match, on Monday June 22, a young Columbian team stymied them with a tight short-passing game. They eked out a 2-0 victory, but they looked confused.

The United States achieved a top position in women’s soccer because federal laws, including Title IX, made our universities upgrade their women’s athletic programs. The weaker teams in this World Cup may be contending with traditional prejudices, but the strongest come from countries that seem to have risen to the challenge.

On Friday, June 26, the United States plays China in a quarter-final game. If they win that, they’ll face Germany or France in a semi-final on June 30. Any one of those teams could knock them out of the ring before the final on July 5.

If that happens, it will be a sad day for those us who cheer for Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, and their scrappy teammates. But it might not be bad news for the world.