Now, U.S. Women Try to Kick Sport Forward

Today the world championship, tomorrow the Pyramids?

If the victorious U.S. players thought they were going to be taking it easy in the wake of winning the Women’s World Cup, they might want to revise their plans.

Between now and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, the world champions will be busier than ever. A victory tour of the U.S. is being finalized for next month and so are not one, but two world tours designed to spread the gospel of women’s soccer.

On Sunday, the day after defeating China at the Rose Bowl to win the world championship, the U.S. team was treated to a victory parade at Disneyland and a victory rally at the L.A. Convention Center.

From there, the players headed to the airport for a flight to New York and a round of television talk-show appearances over the next few days.

After that, they will get some vacation time, but not much.

“Everybody is a little sad right now because we’re not going to be together every day any more,” said forward Danielle Fotopoulos.

Wrong.

The team will be back together in six weeks, when it will set out on its yearlong quest to add a second Olympic gold medal to the one it won at the Atlanta ’96 Games. And then there are those foreign tours.

Among the likely stops on Julie Foudy and company’s itinerary in the next year are Egypt, South Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, Portugal, Germany and Australia again.

If China thought it had earned more than enough frequent-flyer miles crisscrossing the U.S. during the World Cup, it ought to check the Americans’ schedule for 1999-2000.

Carla Overbeck, whose flawless defensive performance against the Chinese was largely responsible for Saturday’s U.S. victory, said the players can use a rest.

“I think we definitely need to have some down time and just relax, and just be with our families,” she said. “But at the same time we can’t let what we have accomplished start to dwindle. We have to just get a little bit of vacation and then regroup and figure out the future.”

That future involves bringing new players into the team, youngsters such as Susan Bush, Aly Wagner, Siri Mullinix and Michelle French, who have been knocking at the door for a year or two but have been unable to displace the veterans.

Not that any of the world champions of 1991 show any signs of retiring soon. All seven say they fully intend to be in Sydney next September.

“We like the game,” said defender Joy Fawcett of Rancho Margarita. “We love to play soccer. We’re very competitive. The Olympics is fun. We all enjoy playing in the Olympics. The time off is so short . . . you don’t even think about not playing. You just stay in that routine.” Tony DiCicco, the U.S. coach, has talked about the Americans wanting to achieve what the Brazilians have done in men’s soccer. That is, establish such a dominance they always are regarded as the team to beat.

The latest world championship helps in that regard, giving the U.S. three of the four world and Olympic titles since 1991, but the trick now will be the successful transition from this team to the one that will be playing in the 2003 World Cup, which probably will be held in Australia.

“This next group of players is critical,” said Lauren Gregg, the U.S. assistant coach. Gregg went directly from Sunday’s rally in Los Angeles to the Olympic training center in Chula Vista, where the U.S. under-21 women’s national team is preparing for next month’s Nordic Cup in Iceland.

Gregg said the under-21 players know they are on-deck.

“I spoke to them last night and told them that some of the players in the room are part of our next World Cup and some are going to be part of our residency program for the Olympics,” she said.

“They need to know that we’re not waiting until these [veteran] players retire. They’ve got to be developing today to have a chance for us to continue staying on top of the world.”

Meanwhile, Jay Hoffman, also a U.S. assistant coach, will be taking the U.S. under-20 women’s national team to the Pan American Games in Winnipeg, Canada, later this month.

“I like the talent level coming up,” he said. “I like the fact that the [U.S. Soccer] federation has stepped up and that we now have a U-16 team and a U-18 team, and that the federation is now giving us the resources and the funds to get these girls international competition.

“They need to see how the rest of the world plays, they need to be tested.”

Already, the foundations are being laid for future World Cup victories.

“This is exactly where we want to be,” Gregg said. “We never want to stay still.”