Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a historian and writer who lives in Middlesex.
[I] admit I was a bit worried when we reached Ottawa’s Lansdowne Stadium to watch the United States take on China in the quarterfinals of the Women’s World Cup. I wasn’t anxious about the result – the U.S. team was the clear favorite. And it wasn’t really the money, since the tickets were cheap by professional sports standards. What worried me was whether the quality of play would justify the trip. Would the level of play clear the high bar I had set?
You see, in recent years, I’ve rediscovered my love of soccer. The sport has stolen my formerly baseball-loving heart. I couldn’t even tell you where the Red Sox are in the standings. OK, they are in last place! But that’s not why I’ve turned my attentions to soccer.
English might be the world’s lingua franca, but soccer is its, what would you call it? Its sporta franca? You can go virtually anywhere, outside the United States, and find a pickup game or a match on TV.
What’s not to love about the sport Pele called “the Beautiful Game?” Soccer requires incredible physical endurance and coordination, a sense of teamwork and quick thinking. Also, since no timeouts are allowed, the clock keeps running so fans know how long the game will last. As much as we hate to admit it, we have lives outside of the sport too.
For me, most Saturday mornings have become synonymous with watching English Premier League games. In New York I once wandered into a bar that is home to local Liverpool soccer fanatics, and found myself watching a game with fellow Liverpool fan Mike Myers, of Austin Powers fame. Yeah, baby! And last summer, I watched every men’s World Cup match I could.
Surely the men’s World Cup was the pinnacle of soccer. How could women possibly put on a competition to match the men’s?
Some people will argue that men are better soccer players than women. I don’t buy it. The women I saw playing have skills, athleticism, poise and tactical understanding of the game that is comparable to male players.
The truth is they didn’t. They put on something better. I felt that way by halftime in Ottawa. And I thanked my lucky stars I had scored tickets for my son and me for the semifinals between the U.S. and Germany in Montreal, before anyone knew the U.S. would make it that far and tickets got pricey.
After that game, and then the United States’ crushing defeat of Japan days later in the final, I am a complete convert to the women’s game. They play the purest version of soccer I can remember. The Women’s World Cup had all the world-class athleticism and fierce competition of the men’s tournament, but managed to couple that with the sense of fair play you might expect in a pickup game.
It is a case of addition by subtraction: The women’s game lacks the things that make me cringe when watching men play. Men’s games sometimes come off like bad opera. The game is plagued with “diving,” when a player will fall dramatically and writhe on the ground in mock agony if a defender dares steal the ball from him. It is all in an effort to trick the referee into giving them an undeserved free kick and perhaps a warning for their opponents. If the referee doesn’t fall for it, members of the aggrieved team will surround the ref and try to intimidate him.
There is almost none of this in the women’s game. In fact, the only time I saw a player argue forcefully with a ref was when she had been forced to leave the field for medical treatment. With a trainer mopping blood from her face, the player was arguing that she was fine and should be allowed back on the field.
I suspect that women suffer injuries so stoically because they don’t really have a choice. If they were half as theatrical as the men, it would feed into a stereotype that women are weak and emotional. So they have to act twice as strong and stoic as their male counterparts.
Female players are stuck in what FIFA, the sport’s international governing body, treats as a man’s world. Unlike at any men’s World Cup ever, all of the women’s cup matches were played on artificial turf, which was scorching hot even on relatively mild days and which left rashes on players brave enough to attempt a slide tackle. Yet I didn’t notice any players holding back.
Female soccer players also suffer a vast inequity in pay. Whereas top male players earn in salaries in the low eight figures, the top-paid woman, Marta of Brazil, earns $500,000. And the pay level declines quickly from there. The 10th highest-paid woman earns $60,000. In a sane world, women’s salaries would rise, and men’s would fall drastically.
Members of the U.S. team will soon return to their National Women’s Soccer League squads. Did you know there was such a league? I didn’t. Next time you’re in Boston, consider taking in a Breakers game. You might get to see a member of the U.S. national team or some of the world’s other great players.
Some people will argue that men are better soccer players than women. I don’t buy it. The women I saw playing have skills, athleticism, poise and tactical understanding of the game that is comparable to male players. What women lack, comparatively, is physical strength. However, I wouldn’t say that men having some biological advantages because of their hormones makes them better at soccer than women, any more than I would say that athletes on steroids are better than athletes who aren’t. It is silly to compare them. They simply belong in different categories.
And anyone who doubts the mastery a woman can display on a soccer pitch should watch what United States’ Carli Lloyd did in the first 15 minutes of the final against Japan, when she scored three goals, including a thunderstrike from midfield, to help secure the cup for the United States.
This week my son was an assistant counselor at a soccer camp. He asked his eight- and nine-year-old campers how many had been watching the Women’s World Cup. Many, both boys and girls, gave an enthusiastic ‘yes!’ Let’s hope they were paying attention to what Lloyd and her teammates did, and learned something about what it means to play like a girl.
