For so long, soccer was the butt of jokes in the United States. Our country has been, and will probably always be, run by baseball, football, and basketball. Although they are beloved in the 50 states, something special happened this past weekend and month. We as a country fell in love with soccer. Twenty-three fantastic and different women captured our hearts. They took a sport we have always made fun and got us to watch it—25.4 million on Fox and 1.4 million people on Telemundo tuned in to watch the World Cup championship. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the NBA and Stanley Cup finals. It also broke the record for number of viewers for a soccer game watched in the U.S. This wasn’t by coincidence either. This team had the background and stories to help us fall in love, and a few stick out.
Although we hate to admit it, everyone likes a sob story and this team provided that for us. The fans who watched the World Cup run in 2011 will remember that heartbreaking loss to Japan in the finals. We heard all week that Japan had no shot at the cup and the USWNT was going to bring home the trophy, but Japan had other ideas and would win the game via penalty kicks. It was heartbreaking, but it made the run this year just that much better. We as fans still had the images of the players we knew and loved crying on the field. All we wanted to do was see them come out on top. The icing on top of the cake was getting to see the women get their revenge against Japan and utterly embarrass them in the final. The heartbreaking loss from 2011 made each goal much more meaningful.
Revenge was a nice aspect to the story, but for this team there was also some hatred toward a man by the name of Sepp Blatter. Blatter was the president of FIFA and has been caught in cases involving fraud and money-laundering that took place during his reign at FIFA. Blatter has been labeled now as "the man who caused a dark age of soccer," but our beloved team hated him for an entirely different reason: sexism. Our country and its people have always been outspoken. If we don’t like something, we have no problem opening our mouths and doing something about it. That is exactly what Alex Morgan did in an interview with equalizesoccer.com. In the article, Morgan talks about how she was in the running for the best women’s soccer player in the world, and Blatter didn’t even know who she was at the event.
In the interview, Morgan said, “I have experienced sexism multiple times, and I’m sure I will a lot more. I feel like I’m fighting for female athletes. At the FIFA World Player of the Year event [in 2012], FIFA executives and FIFA President Sepp Blatter didn’t know who I was. And I was being honored as top three in the world. That was pretty shocking.”
This comment from Blatter in 2004 really shows how sexist and ignorant he was when talking about the women’s side of the game: “Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball.” He went on to say, “They could, for example, have tighter shorts. Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they already have some different rules to men—such as playing with a lighter ball. That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in fashion?" (via The Guardian.) This just added to the fuel for the USWNT and seeing our girls stick it to him made the victory that much sweeter.
The final reason is simple but, in my mind, will always be the most important—they did it for us the citizens. Obviously if you just take a quick glance, the win was for the 23 women on the team, and that’s it. You could say that they only cared about themselves, but really, you'd be lying if you said they did. The United States Women's National Team wanted nothing more than to do it for their country. Nothing brought them more joy than knowing they made all of us fans proud.
We as fans crowded together in bars, restaurants, backyards, and living rooms for two hours at a time to sit in harmony and cheer for the team. For that short time, that’s all we cared about. For some people who would normally hate each other, these women brought them together to find they had something in common. It wasn’t about a trophy, but something bigger than that. It was about bringing everyone together and us believing in One Nation, One Team.
I believe that we have won.
