'AN UNFORGETTABLE portrait of determination and grace,' the NewYork Times called it. But then, of course, they won. And, as isalways said, America worships a winner. She certainly loved herwinners on 11 July, when their football team won the third Women'sWorld Cup final in front of 90,185 people in the sunlit Pasadena RoseBowl. Brandi, Mia, Brianna, Shannon, Kristine, Michelle, Julie andtheir team-mates became national heroes.
The match had been prefaced by the ritual that opens all majoropen-air American sporting events, from the Ryder Cup to theIndianapolis 500. 'The Star-Spangled Banner' is sung by some pop actor other (in this case, showing a surprising lack of genderdiscrimination, the all-boy trio Hanson), whose voices strain to hangon to the high notes that carry the lines about the rockets' redglare and bombs bursting in air. The President himself stands toattention, hand on his heart. As the last notes die away, a quartetof F14 fighter planes makes a pass over the field, flying in a tightdiamond formation at 500ft. Flags flutter, shoulders straighten,breasts swell, eyes prickle. It's supposed to make you want to gostraight out and invade a small foreign country.
In this case, the opposition came from a large foreign country.The China team represented a population of more than a billion - or51 per cent of it, at least. And, of course, an alien creed,although not much was made of that. This was not America versus theSoviet Union, in the style of that famous ice-hockey match at theheight of the Cold War, or America versus Cuba in the baseballtournament at the Barcelona Olympics, or America versus Iran in lastsummer's World Cup for men.
In every other respect, the match bore an astonishing resemblanceto the last big soccer match held at the Rose Bowl, the 1994 WorldCup final between the men of Brazil and Italy. On that occasion,Roberto Baggio hoofed a penalty over the bar during the shoot-outthat followed a goalless 120 minutes, giving the championship to theSouth Americans. This time, Brianna Scurry's save from Liu Ying'skick during the shoot-out gave the home country the title afteranother two hours without a goal.
But none of the Brazilian men behaved as Brandi Chastain did whenher left-foot penalty kick hit the net to seal victory for America.The tall blonde defender fell to her knees and whipped off her whiteshirt, revealing a black sports bra. A spontaneous gesture ofcelebration? Possibly. But it later transpired that not only didChastain have an endorsement deal with Nike, makers of the bra, butshe had helped design the article herself. Thus, in the era of sportas showbusiness, is a great event put in the service of nakedcommerce.
But it certainly was a great event, no question. The averageattendance at the matches topped 35,000. Across the States, therewere 40 million people watching the final on television, a largernumber than had tuned in to the men's final in 1994 - or, moreastonishingly, to the recent National Basketball Association playoffsbetween the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs. If theAmerican women's team became, in Sports Illustrated's words, anational talking-point, then Americans were also talking about theprowess of the players of other nations, such as the joint top-scorers, Sissi of Brazil and Sun Wen of China, who notched sevengoals apiece. In other parts of the world, where football is a moreorganic part of the culture, channel-surfers found themselves pausingto admire a piece of televised ball-skill, only to realise momentslater that it had been performed not by a ponytailed male player butby a woman. And they probably stayed to watch on.
There are 7.5 million women and girls playing football in theStates, so it probably wasn't too hard to find a couple of dozen whocould do it well. The game's growth among women has been fertilisedby the legally- enforced equality of investment in men's and women'ssport in schools and colleges, while soccer's lack of history inAmerica means that it is unaffected by the traditional attitudes thatapply in Britain. Here the women's game has a mere 34,000 registeredparticipants, despite a four-fold increase over the past 10 years;and England's failure to qualify for the World Cup finals reflectsthe domestic game's limited means and expectations.
In America, the victory has been hailed as the dawn of a new era.Just as the gold-medal triumph of the US women's basketball squad atthe Atlanta Olympic Games, which made stars of Dawn Staley and SherylSwoopes and Lisa Leslie, provided the springboard for the launch of awomen's pro- basketball league, so it is being said that the soccerteam's success can lay the foundations of a permanent competitivestructure - and one which could prove more successful than MajorLeague Soccer, the organisation which sprang up after USA '94. It isnot impossible to imagine that, in the United States, soccer willbecome primarily a women's game.
But it would be hard to imagine anything further from the pomp andpageantry of the Women's World Cup final than the informal studies ofwomen footballers that appear on these pages, which were commissionedby the Contact Press photographic agency. Even more than the sightof Brandi Chastain removing her shirt, they present an unanswerablecase for the existence of women's football.
Tomas Muscionico, a 31-year-old Swiss, took many of the picturesshown here. 'In all these places,' he said, 'I wanted to show howsoccer related to the women's lives in a wider sense, and to do thatI spent three or four weeks in each place, getting to know not justthe players but their coaches and sometimes their parents. In SouthAfrica, for instance, where I had worked before, I wanted to show howthese young women used soccer as a vehicle of emancipation. Butsometimes, of course, they told me about their problems. In SouthAfrica some of the girls would tell me, 'If I hadn't slept with thecoach, I wouldn't have been picked for the team.' In Nigeria onefamily had to leave home because their Islamic neighbours didn'tapprove of their daughter playing football.'
He started to notice all sorts of things. 'Among male soccerplayers, there are established codes of behaviour. It's OK for maleplayers to hug and kiss each other after one of them has scored agoal, for instance. Society understands that. But for women, itmight be different. They have to deal with much more. I found thatit'sworst for them in countries like England and Italy, where men playthe game and go to watch other men playing. In countries such as theUS and Norway, where they're not so accustomed to the game beingdefined by the success of male players, it's easier for them to beaccepted. But in Brazil, as you might expect, the women have aparticularly hard time persuading the media to take them seriously.'
And yet Brazil's extra-time victory over Nigeria in the World Cupquarter- final last month provided one of the most exciting footballmatches of recent times, regardless of gender. After Brazil hadtaken a three-goal lead in the first half, Nigeria produced an epicfight- back which took them to 3-3 before one of their defenders wassent off. Their 10 women held out until the 104th minute, when Sissicurled a 25-yard free kick past the African team's goalkeeper, JudithChime. It would be easy to draw a comparison between this match andanother famous occasion in the men's World Cup, Italy's tumultuous 4-3 defeat of West Germany in 1970. But if one thing has become clearthis summer, it is that the women's game has no need of suchpresumptuous flattery. It is what it is. And if we are lucky, therewill be a lot more of it for us to enjoy.
Yes, football is the sport of Stanley Matthews and Pele andZinedine Zidane. Nothing will change that. But look at thesepictures. These, too, are 'unforgettable portraits of determinationand grace', in very different circumstances. And if you didn't knowabout Matthews and Pele and Zidane, they might make you imagine thathere is a game invented to be played by women. So now there is moreto football than raised studs and groin strains and the half-time cupof Bovril. The world's biggest game has discovered within itselfanother dimension, that's all.
Richard Williams is the chief sports writer of The Independent
Captions: Right: Julie Foudy, co-captain of the USA team, whichwon the World Cup this month.
Above: Daniela Alves Lima,17, of the Brazilian team, practisingnear her 'favela' on the outskirts of Sao Paulo
Anticlockwise from right: the Nigerian goalkeeper, Anna Chiejine,with boys in her neighbourhood in Lagos; Norway's goalkeeper during afriendly in China; Ghana's reserve goalkeeper; the Brazilian teamwarming up; three Russian players in their military uniform; China'sreserve goalkeeper; Linda Medalen of the Norwegian team during a gameagainst Italy
Above: Veronica Phewe, 18, with her mother in Natal province,South Africa. Right: Anna Chiejine, the Nigerian goalkeeper, on herway home
