Today I was talking to a friend of mine about Olympic women’s soccer and I asked if she remembered the 1999 Women’s World Cup
When she told me she didn’t, I actually didn’t believe her. I kept asking was she sure? Was she completely sure? Was she really truly 100% positive? She really didn’t remember at all? Not even the part where one player ripped her shirt off in an impromptu victory celebration? Really?
I finally gave up and shot her this look as if to say, 'how dare you not recall the pivotal moment of my childhood.' Because MAN, that was totally the pivotal moment of my childhood, and she totally doesn't remember it.
I suppose this is true for a lot of people. It just means that women's soccer was not at the epicenter of your universe in 1999. Which is cool, I guess. It just means that 10-year-old me and 10-year-old you are not and never will be friends...because folks, let me tell you, back in the day I loved soccer.
I loved scoring goals, orange wedges at halftime, and the way being on a team gave me an automatic set of close friends. I liked traveling to tournaments and our team cheers, the feeling of making a good pass and the way my teammates congratulated me when I played well. I even (sometimes) enjoyed the drills our coaches put us through in practice--the sprints, the lunges, the endurance tests.
I also liked the way soccer made me feel powerful. Around this age I was in the process of reclaiming the idea that female was code for weak with a whole lot of GIRL POWER stickers and bedroom covered in posters that said things like 'you wish you could kick like a girl.' I was taking down the system one glittery wall hanging at a time. And soccer was at the center of my new feminist consciousness.
So cue the summer of 1999. My soccer coach had told me there was this big tournament on TV called the World Cup. I thought that sounded pretty cool and I looked up the schedule.
And then I just started watching. All the time. There were games on every day, games full of professional women's players doing awesome tricks and scoring awesome goals. I had never seen anything like it. And the USA had this bad ass squad of probably the greatest players ever to play women's soccer (though of course I didn’t know that at the time). They pretty much mowed down every team they played. I liked that.
I had watched a little men's soccer before this. Colorado, where I live, has this professional team called the Rapids (like most of our other pro sports teams, they're named after a natural phenomenon-- we also have the rockies, the nuggets (OF GOLD THAT IS), the avalanche, etc), but I found (and find) them kind of boring. Women's soccer was something different. There was more finesse, less violence--it was a cleaner game and I liked that right away.
PLUS, there was this one player. Mia Hamm. She joined the national team at 15 and went on to score more goals than any other player, male or female, in US history. The '99 world cup was the first time I watched her, and she totally blew me away. She'd kick these crazy kamikaze balls from weird angles, and they'd just hurtle towards the goal like they were drawn there magnetically. I loved her. I wore my replica Mia Hamm jersey all the time and flipped a shit when I realized WE BOTH WORE THE #9 JERSEY FOR OUR TEAMS HOLY CRAP IT WAS FATE I WAS GOING TO BE HER.
The thing is, this obsession sounds pretty typical for a ten year old. Getting neurotically interested in random shit is what kids do best, after all. But it wasn't just me. For some reason, maybe it was the fact that the tournament was in the United States, maybe it was that the US women were so good, maybe there just weren't any other big sporting events on TV around that time, but A LOT of people watched this women's world cup, way, way more than ever before. 90,000 people went to the final. It was the most well attended event in women’s sports history.
Anyway, that final game, the previously defined PIVOTAL MOMENT OF MY CHILDHOOD, was between the United States and China. My dad says Americans can't stand soccer because there isn't enough scoring, and that game was the picture-perfect example of that. The two teams played to a 0-0 tie. Then came overtime. Then more overtime.
This is where soccer gets weird. Instead of just playing until someone scores a goal, after two rounds of overtime they switch to these things called penalty kicks. Basically, five players from each team get a shot on goal (with only the goalkeeper defending) from what amounts to point-blank range. Whichever team makes more wins.
So...long story short, China missed a kick and the US didn’t. And the last American player to shoot, this defender named Brandi Chastain, when she made her shot, ripped off her jersey and started screaming. She knew she’d won the game. Then the whole team descended on her and it was just an epic free-for-all victory pileup.
Back at my house in Denver, I started freaking out, running around my living room shouting. This was the first and really only time I've felt like a sports team represented me, like they were playing for me and I could actually share in their victory. And I kept feeling like that for a long time. Female US soccer players were much more famous than the men. The team was much more celebrated. For once I felt like the women's sport was the standard and it was the men who people had only a reluctant interest in. And fuck, that was cool.
That was a decade ago. I don't play soccer anymore (and I've lost every shred of athletic grace I ever possessed) and I don't follow the women's national team too closely these days. But every time there's a World Cup or an Olympics, I still watch, and I probably always will. It's strange this time around in Beijing, because I'm noticing that a lot of the girls who are playing for the US women are about my age. First off, all these goddamn olympic athletes who are MY AGE make me feel like a first class failure of a human being. But secondly, that means they all grew up on women's soccer like I did. I bet all of them remember watching that '99 final in their Mia Hamm jerseys. And I bet that's when they knew they could do it. They could be in the Olympics, do gatorade commercials with Michael Jordan, be really famous for being awesome at soccer. It was all in the realm of possibility for the first time.
That’s why I wish my friend remembered that World Cup. I just want her to share in the surge of power I felt at age 10 watching a group of women win over the world with their fierceness. And I knew I was close behind, ready to grow up and do amazing things.
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SING IT, GIRL!
Dude, I was all over World Cup '99. I was a bit older and playing soccer in college, but this team was just so inspirational.
For the last game, I was working in a hospital in the X-Ray department (as a clerk). We luckily had a TV in the waiting section of the department. When it came down to the overtime and the PK's, I didn't let anyone pass through. EVERYONE (no emergencies, or I'd have caved) had to stay and watch the final minutes of the game. The waiting room got stacked 5 deep because of me, but not a single one complained and everyone cheered for Brandi Chastain. It has been one of the lasting moments in my life.
I'm nearly 30 now and still play soccer when I can. Soccer has done so much for me in my life and I'm so grateful that I had parents and support enough to be able to play.
Soccer LOVE!
i was all over it, too. Who can forget the awesome shirt-off photo of Brandi?!?!
I wish I remembered that game, but I had just moved out on my own and didn't have a t.v. - and hadn't played soccer for about 10 years. (Unfortunately, it was only 2 years ago that I got back into soccer again.) But I do remember how Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain and all of those girls suddenly became household names because of that.
Can't wait for the gold medal match tomorrow!
Does anyone remember WUSA? The started the league in 2000 with a ton of the players from the World Cup team. I guess they've revamped and are relaunching in April '09 as WPS so get excited :)
Women's soccer was something different. There was more finesse, less violence--it was a cleaner game and I liked that right away.
I'm sorry, but you based the men's level of skill in football (as the rest of the world calls it) on a professonal men's football team from....Colorada?
That is really offensive and insulting to football fans around the world who tuned in to watch the World Cup every four years, with the last one being in 2006.
You say men's football lacks finesse? Hey....have you ever heard of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Read Madrid, AC Milan, or any other top world teams from the other leagues around the world? Or the footballers themselves: Didier Drogba, Samuel Eto'o, Kaka, Juninho, van Nistelrooy, Lionel Messi, Ronaldinho, Christiano Ronaldo, etc?????
Are you saying that such celebrated players lack finesse compared to Mia Hamm and Co. and only depend on violence??????? Because if you are, you haven't seen the best of the best in men's football, and the subtle technical skills that some of these players are famous for. Actually, if you do mean that, that's really blasphemy in what the rest of the world know as the Beautiful Game.
Though I am not American, I find it funny that people always say that the american women's football team is much better than men's football team (I know you did not say this, but others have). They play in totally different arenas. It would be comparing apples and oranges.
When it comes to the world stage, the USA's men's football team does not have the pedigree of Germany, Brazil, England, Argentina,etc...
Funding for women's football in the USA clearly outstrips that of other countries....and that is why, along with other positive benefits like your Title IX (?) that makes the USA very strong in women's football, which is good.
I am just a bit irritated that you based the men's football game on a professional USA men's team. If you want to do comparison, you should have at least picked the best of the best (just like you pick the USA for women's football), like a professional Brazilian, Italian, Argentinian, German, English team....countries in which football (or soccer for Americans) is a religion. If men's football were indeed less about finesse and more about violence, the World Cup (Men's World Cup) would never be THE No. 1 Sporting Event in the World as it is now.
Wow Timothy! That was really harsh. Her post was about how soccer impacted her life and how she felt about the US women's team and the 1999 world cup.
The comparison to men's soccer was about her feeling at the time, based on the experience she had with it. Also, I don't think anything she said implied that men footballers rely only on violence. She simply said that she found there to be more finesse and less violence from the women's teams.
Are you really so insulted about someone expressing the opinion they had when they were 10 years old?