Womens World Cup

[joseph parikian]

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/fifa/gen/ap/20031006/i/3751848059.jpg

 

 

The queens are dead, long live the queens

6 October 2003

by FIFAworldcup.com

 

 

 

Enlarge Photo

Photo Gallery

 

 

THE DAY REPLAYED - Tears of joy and tears of pain streamed down many a cheek on a dramatic semi-final night at PGE Park in Portland, Oregon. The hosts and favourites, America’s Sweethearts, crashed out emphatically to a dogged Germany 0-3, and one could almost hear young hearts breaking around the country. Almost as audible was the sound of Canada’s unlikely dreams cracking under the weight of skilful Sweden’s remarkable 2-1 comeback victory.

The reigning queen of women’s football, legendary icon Mia Hamm, was left on the pitch at the end of the hard-fought first semi-final, tearfully embracing her coach, no doubt aware that her goodbye to the world’s greatest stage would forever be tainted by this defeat. For her and her veteran midfield partners, Kristine Lilly and Julie Foudy, this is the end of an era and a rather depressing exclamation point to one of America’s greatest sports stories. After years of toiling and winning in relative obscurity, they brought the United States to its feet four years ago as they beat China on penalty kicks to lift their second FIFA Women’s World Cup.

 

The U.S. came into the last four having won 11 consecutive matches in the finals and only having lost once in 22 all-time FIFA Women’s World Cup contests. The only other defeat also came at the semi-final stage in Sweden 1995 where they crashed out to eventual champions Norway.

 

Perhaps one step too far in a new century, the hosts for the first time ran into a team that they could not boss as they had so many opponents at USA 2003, and they were left ruing a host of missed opportunities and a lack of creativity from midfield. The opening goal, in the 15th minute from Kerstin Garefrekes’ head, left Germany the luxury of sitting back and hitting on the counter, a strategy that the hosts, despite valiant amounts of effort, could never overcome. The German defence, inspired by Kerstin Stegemann and marshalled without flaw by dominating goalkeeper Silke Rottenberg, held down the previously dominant Abby Wambach and the rest of the vaunted American attack.

 

 

Enlarge Photo

Photo Gallery

 

 

Talented heroes Maren Meinert and the new royalty of women’s football, Birgit Prinz, who now leads the tournament with an unassailable seven goals, scored late breakaway strikes to add insult to the holders’ injury.

 

After the dramatic 90 minutes, American coach April Heinrichs claimed the contest was “the greatest game in the history of women’s football,” and FIFA technical Study Group member Vera Pauw concurred, saying, “It was the most exciting women’s game I have ever seen in my life.” High praise indeed, but understandable given the match’s electric atmosphere, end-to-end action and unpredictable outcome.

 

Five-time European Champions, the Germans have long been a global almost-team, but with a performance of remarkable confidence, skill and determination, they have leaped a high hurdle and now must be wary of underestimating an on-form Sweden in an all-European final, a re-match of the European Women’s Champions from two years ago.

 

In that match, Claudia Müller scored a golden goal, the only tally of the match, to give the hosts victory, but Sweden are playing perhaps better than they ever have. Hanna Ljungberg, Victoria Svensson and Malin Moström form an irresistible attacking force that overran Canada for large swathes of their semi-final.

 

 

Enlarge Photo

Photo Gallery

 

 

The underdog Canadians took the lead in the 65th minute when teenage sensation Kara Lang launched a 25-yard free kick past a despairing Swedish wall and through the hands of stunned Swedish goalkeeper Caroline Jönsson. But, when they looked like folding the most, a quick free-kick by Svensson set Moström free in the box, and her right-footed shot flew in at the near post to save Swedish blushes.

 

But, not happy with extra-time, Sweden continued to pour forward. Their final advantage of 17 shots to six exemplifies their dominance in opportunities, and second-half substitute Josefine Öqvist sent her team into ecstasy with a right-footed shot with eyes that caromed off the inside of the left post and into the back of the net. It was also the 100th goal of the tournament.

 

It was a deserved victory, and one that puts Sweden into their first-ever FIFA Women’s World Cup final, but spare a thought for Even Pellerud and his brave Canadian side, who came deeper into the tournament than anyone expected, and got within 11 minutes of going farther than their illustrious neighbours to the south.

[Harut]

didn't they also close down the US Women's Soccer Association?

[joseph parikian]

SCOTT STOSSEL

Save the women's soccer association

By Scott Stossel, 10/4/2003

 

EVEN AS Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, Julie Foudy, and the rest of the US Women's National Soccer Team compete to defend their Woman's World Cup title tomorrow night in a semifinal match against Germany in Portland, Ore., there is a sense in which they have already lost. On Sept. 15, six days before the opening game of the 2003 World Cup, the Women's United Soccer Association announced that it was folding after three years of operation. The WUSA, conceived in the delirious aftermath of the 1999 World Cup's dramatic conclusion, when the United States defeated China on penalty kicks in front of 90,000 screaming fans in the Rose Bowl, was the first fully professional women's soccer league in this country. Because it included all of America's best players, plus many of the top international players, the WUSA instantly became the premier women's soccer league in the world.

 

ADVERTISEMENT

 

Yet after three years of declining ticket sales and television ratings, the league ownership determined that there was insufficient sponsorship interest to allow the league to become profitable in the foreseeable future, and so they scuttled operations. There simply was not enough revenue to justify sustaining the enterprise. The end of the WUSA is a tragedy.

 

Let's start with the WUSA players participating in the World Cup; there is a sense, as I say, in which they have already lost. But this is not a loss of their own making. The players in the WUSA did everything they could to build the fledgling league into a viable entity. Endless promotional and public relations work. Charity work in their communities. They worked hard to serve as role models for young girls and as ambassadors of the sport. They took pay cuts.

 

Consider that last act: They took pay cuts for the good of the league. In what other sport on the American landscape is it possible even to imagine star players taking pay cuts for the benefit of the larger good? This alone would have made preserving the WUSA a worthwhile endeavor, an antidote to the money-is-everything culture that has suffused American sports.

 

But there are more pressing reasons to save the WUSA. The fan experience it offered was superior to most professional sports. For three years, my wife and I attended nearly every home game. The tickets were reasonably priced. The size of the venue -- Boston University's Nickerson Field -- was relatively intimate, allowing for good views of the action. There were none of the bleacher brawls or drunken misbehaving that are an integral part of the football or baseball stadium experience.

 

The best part of the experience was the product on the field. The quality of play was excellent -- and visibly improving each year. In fact, the quality of the soccer in this year's World Cup is dramatically improved over four years ago -- and that is due largely to the experience the top players got playing in the WUSA.

 

Women, it is true, are generally slower and weaker than men; this makes women's competitions in any sport qualitatively different from men's. The worst team from the men's American soccer league would easily beat the best WUSA team. Yet the quality of the soccer, in some Platonic sense, is higher in the WUSA. Besides, the exquisite geometry of what the Brazilians call "the Beautiful Game" is the same no matter what the gender of the players. And in their competitiveness, fitness, and intensity, the WUSA players are the equal of their NBA or NFL or Major League Soccer counterparts any day.

 

But the greatest loss caused by the WUSA's demise is to the thousands of adolescent and pre-adolescent girls who are its primary fan base. The women of the WUSA are, as a rule, strong, aggressive, competitive, and skillful. They exemplify the ideals of hard-work, team play, and self-sacrifice. Many of them are also beautiful -- all the more so because of the effort and craft and joy they exhibit in playing the game.

 

For all of the 8- and 9-year-old soccer players (and nonsoccer players) -- of either gender -- across the country, I can imagine no better role models than the combination of intense competitiveness and soft-spoken humility that is Mia Hamm, the relentless effort and effortless grace that is Kristine Lilly, the outspoken political crusading (she is a champion of Title IX and other causes) and self-deprecating humor that is Julie Foudy.

 

I feel the loss of the WUSA acutely now. My daughter, Maren, was born a month ago, and I fear that without the league she will be denied a later generation of Hamms and Lillys and Foudys to look up to. Whether Maren grows up to be a soccer player doesn't much matter to me. But it matters a lot that she grow up to have self-confidence and inner strength, tempered by a sense of fairness and team-play. The league's dissolution is robbing millions of little girls (and boys) of heroes exemplifying these qualities.

 

There is talk that the WUSA may yet be saved by new sponsors or reconstituted in a more modest fashion. Nike alone could save the league by investing $20 million, far less than the $90 million it invested in teenage basketball star LeBron James. On behalf of the sport and of little girls (and of mothers and fathers of little girls) everywhere, I implore new sponsors and investors to step forward. With patience, you stand to profit; so does my daughter's generation.

 

Scott Stossel is a senior editor of The Atlantic Monthly.

 

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

 

=====================================================

 

 

Harut jan i hope this answer your question