Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
`This is my game, this is my future, watch me play” has been the marketing slogan for the women’s football World Cup in the United States. As the US and China prepare for the final at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Saturday, it is clear the instruction has been followed.
The tournament is the biggest women’s sporting event ever. Nearly 79 000 came to see the opening game at the Giants Stadium in New Jersey – more than watched the 1998 World Cup final at the Stade de France.
Record crowds have flocked to the games across the country, and countless girls, from Palo Alto in California to Foxboro in Massa-chusetts where the two semis were played on Sunday, must be thinking that, yes, football may well be their game and their future.
The tournament has captured the public imagination in the US to such an extent that photos of post-goal celebrations feature regularly on the front pages of the daily papers, spectacular goals from the competition edge the baseball and basketball highlights out of the play-of- the-day television features and the smiling faces of US stars such as Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly and Julie Foudy seem to gaze off every billboard.
The great lift that US soccer hoped for after hosting the 1994 men’s World Cup never quite materialised, and when the national team lost humiliatingly to Iran in France last year there was a recognition that the US was still far from the world’s first division. This time it is different.
The US women started as favourites here and the crowds have been spectacular. Nearly 80 000 saw the opening game against Denmark on June 19, 65 000 saw Nigeria beaten 7-1 in Chicago, and a further 50 000 saw the US dispatch North Korea. After their 2-0 victory over Brazil and China’s 5-0 demolition of Norway, the stage is set for a thrilling showdown on Saturday.
The standard of the games has been high, although there is still too great a disparity between the more accomplished sides – the US, Norway, China, Russia, Brazil and Germany – and some of the less experienced teams: Ghana, Canada and Mexico all conceded seven goals in first-round games.
The games have also been considerably cleaner than the men’s World Cup, although Nigeria and Ghana have been criticised for their physical football, but in general the spirit has been good with many of the visiting teams clearly awed by the massive partisan attendances at the games.
The attendances are a tribute to the way the women’s game has been nurtured in the US, where female players make up 41% of the total, compared with 2% in Britain. More significantly, 7,9-million girls aged six to 11 play soccer in the US, second only to basketball (9,7-million) in that age group.
There are fears that once the World Cup is over, the game may not quite have the impetus to reach the full professional potential of basketball or tennis, but for now the doubts are obscured by the pleasures of the moment: the beautiful goal scored by Shannon MacMillan against North Korea; China’s delicate quick-passing destruction of Australia; the glorious goals scored by Brazil’s Sissi to beat Italy in Chicago; or the dominance of Norway’s Ann Kristin Aarones in the 7-1 defeat of Canada.
Although neither of the semis was a real thriller, the last two quarter-finals, in which the US came from behind to beat Germany 3-2 and Brazil needed a scorching Sissi free-kick to beat Nigeria 4-3, decidedly were.
Marla Messing, president of the organising committee, said: “We have always believed in the potential of this tournament to be very successful, but we are frankly in awe of what has happened.” Yes, America is watching them play.