Congratulations to Spain on winning the women’s World Cup. They now join Germany as the only countries to win both World Cups. Meanwhile everyone’s world has been turned upside-down by the jump in parity in women’s soccer, leading to plenty of upsets and Cinderella teams.
Here in Canada, we’re in mourning; we won gold at the Olympics - in our greatest soccer achievement ever - but followed that up with not getting out of the opening round here. If you’re not familiar with it, in men’s soccer, the Olympics are limited to under 23, but for women, there’s no limit, so it’s like smaller a World Cup. So you’d think it would be harder to advance in the Olympics, where you’re playing higher quality teams sooner. And yet, Canada has gone to the Olympic semi-finals three times in a row, but only made the World Cup semis once, back in 2003.
But for much of the world, the big news is the early exit for the two-time defending champion Americans. If you watch the men’s World Cup, you know that favoured teams having an embarrassing run and going home early is a regular occurrence. But now supporters of the U.S. Women are in existential panic.
Years ago, I noted that it was weird but refreshing to watch the fans of American men’s soccer, because it was one of the few places where the United States was regarded as just another country. What was especially weird was that American fans seemed to be okay with that. To be fair, we’re only talking about a subset of Americans, since the majority don’t really follow soccer even when the U.S. is involved, but there is a subculture within the U.S. that cares about its team, even on the men’s side, and it’s remarkable what an internationally-reasonable attitude they have.
All that’s happening right now is that the U.S. Women’s team is going to have to take on that same attitude. While watching the hype surrounding the Americans going for a Women’s World Cup three-peat, I realized that the truly unusual thing about the Men’s team fandom is that it’s one of the only places where you’ll see Americans being patriotic, but not buying into American Exceptionalism. They’re proud of their country, they support their team, but they don’t think their country is inherently better or apart from the others. The women’s team will have to adopt that attitude. In their case, they’re a great team, but just a team. So it’s a subtle change, but they’ll have to go from thinking of themselves as the Harlem Globetrotters to merely the New York Yankees.
Watching Americans watch their Women’s team, it’s been more like business as usual for Americans in international sports, with even well-meaning Americans seeing their team as above everything else. Take advertising, for instance. Even here in Canada, we’re subjected to ads for American brands that glorify the American women, oblivious to the fact that they’re our chief rivals, and thus, not really who we want to see celebrated in every commercial break. It’s reminiscent of that one American you see on lists of the dumbest things said on the internet, asking a British person if they celebrate the Fourth of July.
Partly, this is because their Women’s team has been a boon for those looking for female role models. And finding role models for our kids is a universal thing, so they’re just assuming the whole world will join in on glorifying the stars of their team. It hasn’t occurred to them that if my daughter’s role model was just knocked out of the tournament by your daughter’s role model, then I won’t want to join in on the adulation.
And that brings us to the goodish news: you can look at this as another example of women’s soccer hitting the mainstream. When a sport starts out and creeps along in the margins of the sports world, there tends to be a communal feeling, like it’s all of us against the world, looking for acceptance of our sport. But once you’re in the mainstream, we can all think of it in competitive terms. This sport has finally made the big time, now that I hate your daughter’s role model.
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