Women Are Putting Best Foot Forward

You spend 17 days on the road with the Women’s World Cup, you begin to hear things.

You are sitting in an airport terminal and you hear two American men, probably in their early 40s, talking soccer. They are knowledgeable fans, flying up to catch the next U.S. women’s match.

“I’d rather watch the U.S. women play than the men,” one says to the other.

You are walking outside Foxboro Stadium and you hear two teenage boys riffing on the same topic.

“I’d like to see the U.S. women play the U.S. men,” one says to the other. “I think the women would beat them.”

You return home after the United States’ semifinal victory over Brazil and you are on the phone with an editor who had been indifferent about soccer, and he is talking enthusiastically about the Women’s World Cup.

He has been watching the U.S. on television and says that, unlike the men’s, the women’s games hold his interest from start to finish. He says the women play most of the game near the goal posts, where the action is, whereas the men are mostly bogged down in the middle of the field. He says the women play a more entertaining brand of soccer than the men.

I was about to stop him right there and suggest he borrow my videotape of the Manchester United-Bayern Munich Champions League final, but then I remembered the scene from the previous day in Palo Alto. There, more than 73,000 fans turned up at Stanford Stadium for the first half of the Sunday soccer doubleheader--U.S. women against Brazil--and barely 10,000 of them stayed for the second half--D.C. United against the San Jose Clash--prompting Times colleague Grahame Jones to quip, “What if they held an MLS game and 60,000 people left the stadium?”

Is this to become America’s new global reputation?

First in war, first in peace, first to prefer women’s soccer to men’s?

Myself, I can’t go there. For my money, men’s soccer played at its highest level is the best sports ticket to be had. Give me Arsenal, give me FC Barcelona, give me Inter Milan. Better yet, give me a television V-chip that blocks out all major league baseball telecasts and replaces them with action from the English Premier League and the German Bundesliga. I’d be signing up and shelling out yesterday.

But I do see why the women’s game has been easier to access for many fans, especially the casual observer and those new to the sport. It’s a user-friendly brand of soccer--played at a slower pace than the men’s, which allows attacking players more time and space for creativity; and without the defend-or-die dogma of so many men’s teams, and so there are more goals.

Also, the home team has been kicking some serious tail. You can never underestimate the entertainment value of that, not in America, not after the American men trudged off to France last summer and returned 32nd out of the 32 teams entered in the World Cup.

Hard to warm up to that.

But, as U.S. women’s Coach Tony DiCicco graciously acknowledges, it is unfair to compare the U.S. men’s and women’s soccer teams, noting that the U.S. men “entered the world game generations behind” the top European and South American powers.

So let us compare World Cups.

The Women’s World Cup made its debut in 1991, the men’s in 1930. The women began playing the world game generations behind the men, but stylistically, that has been an asset for the women. The Women’s World Cup, at this early stage of its history, lacks the cynicism, the pragmatism and the Machiavellian defensive tactics of the men’s World Cup, because its coaches don’t arrive at the tournament with bull’s-eyes on their backs and entire nations already taking aim.

Look at the purge of coaches during France ’98. Not after the tournament, but during and usually within minutes of a national team’s ouster. Saudi Arabia dispatched its coach, Carlos Parreira, before the end of the first round, and all Parreira had done was win the 1994 World Cup with Brazil. Coaches in the men’s World Cup are just trying to keep their jobs, so by and large they pack it in defensively, play for 0-0 and hope to squeeze through to the next round on penalties.

It is known as “negative soccer” and the Women’s World Cup has been happily free of it, save for Italy, which clogged up the first-round proceedings with the same strangling catenaccio defensive philosophy as its men’s team. (Catenaccio is Italian for “bore them to death.”) Without an ax hovering over their heads, coaches in the Women’s World Cup are free to play with three forwards, as the United States does, and emphasize attacking soccer, as every team in the final four has.

Second, the women’s game is not as defensively sophisticated as the men’s. This is no knock on the women; look what happened to the NBA once teams became more “defensively sophisticated.”

Simply put, women’s soccer at the world level is still at a stage at which its best talent is positioned up front, at forward and in the midfield. There is no equivalent of Paolo Maldini, Marcel Desailly or Matthias Sammer in the Women’s World Cup, no dominant defender capable of winning a game by sheer influence alone.

Of course, there have been many defenders here capable of losing matches on their own--which, admittedly, has been part of the fun. Lots of crazy, unpredictable stuff has happened in the back, which is a sure way to keep 70,000 fans in the stadium and millions more in front of the tube on the edges of their seats.

So what you have had in this Women’s World Cup are teams with highly skilled offensive players, encouraged by their coaches to push forward, against defenses not polished or cynical enough to swamp the attacks in a quicksand of whacked shins, cleats to the backside and elbows to the cheekbone.

In short: An ideal recipe for high-scoring, entertaining, easy-to-consume soccer--a sort of no-hands version of arena football. At this point, there is no need to over-analyze it or over-diagram it or organize symposiums to study methods by which the women can play more like the men.

At this point, it is best to just sit back and enjoy it.