This Sport to Soon Say, ‘We Got Next’
The logo for the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Championship was unveiled Tuesday at the Palace hotel and the organizers were hoping that a World Cup would work its magic again in this country.
The event kicked off a two-year campaign to make what is being referred to as the Women’s World Cup as successful as the 1994 World Cup, which attracted 3.5 million fans.
And if it is, a women’s professional league will follow, just as Major League Soccer did after World Cup ’94.
“I think the time’s right, the sport’s right and the country’s right [for a successful women’s championship],” U.S. Soccer President Alan Rothenberg replied when asked if he could achieve in 1999 what he achieved in 1994. “The country loves big, glamorous international events, and I think we’ll make sure they understand this is one of them.
“I think that there will be a lot of people who want to prove that a major women’s sports event like this can hold its own and, in fact, be very successful. So I think we’ll be able to do it.”
The 16-nation tournament, tentatively scheduled for June 20-July 9, 1999, will feature 32 games--12 first-round doubleheaders, four quarterfinals, two semifinals and a doubleheader featuring the third-place and championship games.
Twenty-two communities submitted bids to host matches and the number last week was reduced to 12 stadiums in nine communities:
The Coliseum in Los Angeles and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena; Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala.; Foxboro Stadium in Foxboro, Mass.; Ericsson Stadium in Charlotte, N.C.; Soldier Field in Chicago; Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.; Civic Stadium in Portland, Ore.; Spartan Stadium in San Jose; Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto; and RFK Stadium in Washington and Jack Kent Cooke Stadiums in Raljon, Md., outside Washington.
This fall, five to eight of the stadiums will be selected as venues.
The third Women’s World Championship is being viewed as a potential “breakthrough” event for women’s sports. The first, in China in 1991, was won by the United States but had little international impact. The second, in Sweden in 1995, caused a ripple of interest. But it was the huge crowds at the women’s soccer games at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics that broke the ice--and the fact that the U.S. team won the gold medal.
Two of the gold medalists were in New York on Tuesday, midfielder Mia Hamm and goalkeeper Briana Scurry.
Hamm said U.S. Soccer is intent on making the tournament a success.
“I think you’re going to see it [marketed] all over the place,” she said. “Prior to ‘94, the whole thing was trying to get across to the American public how big soccer is in the world. I think we did that. Now, we’re trying to bring that kind of fever and knowledge to the women’s side.
“They [organizers] want to make this a legitimate World Cup. They’re saying that whether it’s men playing or women playing, this is for real. And that’s exciting to see.”
Hamm, 27, is one of only a handful of players who won both the first women’s world championship and the first women’s Olympic gold medal. But if such U.S. successes are to be repeated, she said, a pro league is a necessity.
“I think the time is definitely, if not today, then in the very near future,” she said. “Because for us to continue to be successful internationally, we need some kind of league structure.”
Rothenberg would like to see that come about after the world championship, not before. He said he is not worried that the Women’s NBA in the meantime might corner the women’s sports market.
“To me, if they [the WNBA] can do it [succeed], then they will have paved the way, and it makes it a lot easier for women’s professional soccer,” he said. “You’ve got investors, sponsors and networks who might be very, very skeptical [of a women’s soccer league], but if in fact the WNBA holds on and is successful, which I hope they are, then you remove that skepticism.
“Clearly, we don’t have the resources that the NBA and NBC have, so if we were out there in front of them, we’d have to do it at a much slower pace and it would be much harder to accomplish.
“I pray they are successful. Put it another way, if they don’t succeed, I don’t know how we can. If the power and money of the NBA and NBC can’t make women’s basketball go, it’s going to be a long, hard pull for women’s professional soccer.”
Donna de Varona, the former Olympic gold-medal swimmer and founder and first president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, is chair of the 1999 world championship organizing committee.
“After 25 years in the trenches [fighting for equity for women’s sports], it’s just so exciting to be part of this team and to be still alive when the future looks so bright for women’s sports,” she said.
Seventy-five countries are expected to try to qualify for USA ‘99, but as in the past, it will be the five women’s soccer powers that dominate: world champion Norway, Sweden, Germany, China and the United States.
Major League Soccer Commissioner Doug Logan on Tuesday was appointed the first member of a newly formed advisory board for the women’s world championship and immediately pledged the league’s support.
“We are going to do our utmost to make sure that it is the singular best women’s sports event that ever takes place on the face of the earth,” he said, taking hyperbole to new heights.
All of which begs a question.
Can WMLS be far behind?
Soccer Notes
The Miami MLS expansion team, which will begin play in 1998, will be called the Miami Fusion F.C. . . . The New York/New Jersey Metrostars traded U.S. 1996 Olympic team forward A.J. Wood to the Columbus Crew for former U.S. national team defender Brian Bliss. . . . Dan Flynn, who headed the Chicago venue for World Cup ‘94, has been named head of the newly former U.S. Soccer Properties, which will manage marketing activities for the federation. . . . The 1998 MLS All-Star game will be played at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla. and be co-hosted by the city and the Disney corporation. The match will be played Aug. 2. . . . MLS donated $10,000 to the New York City Parks Department to help children’s soccer in the city.
