The Daily - The End of An Era for U.S. Women’s Soccer

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

A few days ago, when the U.S. team was eliminated from the FIFA Women’s World Cup, it marked the end of a history-making run.Rory Smith, chief soccer correspondent for The Times, argues that it also marked the end of something even bigger: an entire era that redefined women’s sports.Guest: Rory Smith, the chief soccer correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: After 48 games in the Women’s World Cup, half the teams had been sent home. And yet the field of potential winners feels bigger than it did at the start.Expanding the tournament was a good idea. Just not for the reasons FIFA thinks.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. A few days ago, when the U.S. women's team was eliminated from the World Cup, it marked the end of a history-making run of victory. But according to my colleague, Rory Smith, it also marked the end of something even bigger. An entire era that redefined women's sports. It's Friday, August 11th. is still Friday in the UK, but might be Thursday in the US.

Yeah. And I can't do the three. I can't do the three jumps. Yeah. Two global time jumps is kind of all the brain can sustain. Well, as we're hinting at, you are in Australia covering the waning days of the Women's World Cup, and you are graciously tolerating this ungodly time difference of 14 hours from all of us here in New York, I want to ask you to go back a little bit in the tournament, hit rewind, and reconstruct the final moments of this game that has already become sports legend. The United States versus Sweden.

Countdown is underway. Yes, it was a game in the round of 16, so the first knockout round of the World Cup. Three Sweden, number one USA. And to be honest, it kind of played out as we thought. It was very tight. There wasn't a huge amount of action, which maybe, you know, fits certain stereotypes that certain people still have about soccer. It was tense.

Turns it back upfield. It's pushed. And you could feel the nervousness of the players and, to be honest, of the crowd, building as the clock ticked. Free kick, US. It's getting chippy. And then, as these things tend to do when nobody scores,

it goes to penalties. That's it. Penalty kicks are going to determine who will go on and who will go home in this incredible battle. Right. And that's what I want to talk about. in this incredible battle. Right. And that's what I want to talk about.

So you start off with five kicks each. And the first two kicks for both teams are scored. And the U.S. scores its third. And Sweden misses. Which means that the U.S. have to score, kick the ball in the goal twice, you are through to the quarterfinals of the World Cup. You know, you get to stay in the competition, you're still in the tournament, you're still favourites. And up steps Megan Rapinoe. Sire will leave on the US bench as Rapinoe steps up to take the next kick. Now, Megan Rapinoe famously doesn't miss penalties. You know, she's one of the most experienced players on this U.S. team.

She's arguably still the brightest star in women's soccer. Megan Rapinoe knows about pressure. And one of her specialties is taking penalties. She's a sure thing. And she steps up and she looks, as she always does, incredibly cool and collected. Rapinoe right-footed over the bar! as she always does, incredibly cool and collected. And she misses. And she turns and walks back to her teammates who are all kind of gathered on the halfway line

with this rueful smile on her face as though she can't believe the absurdity of the situation right but it looks fortunately for rapinoe like she might kind of get away with it because the swedish player who follows her also misses which means sophia smith can win it for the states but she misses this one doesn't even come close and you get to the situation where no one can really believe what's happening because you never see that many penalties missed in a row in a penalty shootout. But even that was kind of normal compared to what followed. If she scores, Sweden wins, the USes need to score one to go through. Harting!

Off near! And Alyssa Naya, the American goalkeeper, saves the shot. But instead of the ball spinning away from the goal as it normally would, it spins quite slowly back towards the line. And Naya, because of her incredible reflexes,

manages to save it again. I thought it was going in, but it happened so quickly. Naya walks out of the goal, shaking her head, pointing to the referee, saying, I've saved it, I've saved it. Hurtig, the Swedish player, is pleading with the referee that it crossed the line. Unfortunately, no one has to make that case

because the referees wear a special watch which is connected to goal line technology which tells them if the ball has crossed the line. And the whole world is kind of standing still here, waiting for the call. Waiting for a watch to buzz. And eventually it does. Wow.

Sweden wins. And a second later, Hurtig is celebrating, the Swedish player, and Alyssa Nair has got kind of an 1,000-yard stare. And Sweden are through in this impossible fashion. And the United States are out. Right. And at this point, viewers at home are absorbing the idea that the U.S. has lost, and they have lost by literally a millimeter.

Well, the thing that struck me the day after it is that the U.S. was knocked out by a unit of measurement the country does not recognize. They were knocked out by 0.04 inches. Thank you for the translation. So, Roy, once you pick your jaw up off the ground after these excruciating mistakes by the U.S. women's team and this loss, what are you thinking? I suppose the first thought that you have is that it felt like the end of an era. The US has been the defining force in women's soccer realistically for 30 years, but particularly over the last 10. They've won the World Cup twice. They have been home to the biggest stars the most famous players they have developed a profile that i think exceeds the bounds of athleticism and goes into advocacy and activism they have always given the impression that this is kind of their tournament but the idea that the U.S. are the default winners, the champions in weighting,

that is over not just for this tournament, but for maybe every tournament from now on. So what you're saying is that the era of inevitability is what's really over for women's soccer. This team is now fallible. They can now fail, and they have. And with that in mind, Roy, tell us the bigger story of how this women's team ever became so dominant, what the dominant era represented ultimately, and why it's now ending. That's a big question. So I think for a long time, the U. the US had a kind of systemic advantage in women's soccer.

You know, bear in mind, this is a sport that was outlawed, as crazy as that seems to say, that it was banned completely in Britain at a kind of professional level until the 1970s. It was banned for women. Women were not allowed to play professional organized soccer in Britain until the early 1970s. In the US, Title IX, which was passed in the 1970s and made provision for the equal treatment of men's and women's sports, certainly at the college level, meant that there was an organized form of women's soccer being played. They were at colleges that had coaching staffs and training programs and played competitive games in competitive leagues. And that means you get

a pipeline of talent. So when FIFA get round to organizingising a World Cup for women, the first official one is in 1991, the US are kind of unmatched. They are the standard bearers, the pioneers of women's soccer. But that's not the moment that makes this team, this programme, so significant. That comes in 1999, when you have this starburst that gives not just US soccer, but kind of the American sporting firmament. Players like Mia Hamm, who for a long time was regarded as the finest women's player in history, Brandi Chastain,

this team that become genuine stars. And they become genuine stars because in 1999, the two very best teams in this World Cup going at it. The World Cup is held in the United States. This is the biggest game in the lives of these USA players. And you could say that for China, too. The Americans make the final. Referee has just looked at the watch. That's it. The winner of the 1999 Women's World Cup will be decided on penalty kicks. And Brandi Chastain... Chastain will take it. ...hates the penalty kick that beats China. Brandi Chastain does it!

And the USA are world champions once again. And you get this iconic shot of Chastain in celebration, taking her jersey off to reveal her sports bra and kind of sinking onto the turf on her knees. And after a torrid two hours of football, the USA win, five forearm penalties. This look of complete and utter overwhelming delight on her face. Jubilation on and off the field.

That image goes across America, it goes around the world. Those sorts of iconic images have a power. They resonate with people. And suddenly it feels as though women's soccer has arrived, certainly in the US. And to an extent, I think you can make the case everywhere. And I think that victory not only determined that that generation of US women's players became certainly the first real superstars of women's soccer, but also it gave them a platform and a voice and a kind of broader significance that brought them into other areas that weren't necessarily just about what they did on the field.

Explain that. They start talking about better conditions, about better pay, more equitable treatment. And the US national team kind of develops this activist edge to the extent that it becomes almost inseparable, really, from the U S women's team. And the most obvious impact of that, I guess, is the establishment of the first professional women's soccer lead in the States than arguably kind of worldwide,

which means that the players can, can devote themselves to soccer in a way that isn't really available to a lot of people in Europe and South America. And that creates this impression really that, that the U S is this superpower that creates this impression, really, that the U.S. is this superpower that just can't be caught, that its dominance is going to be kind of almost eternal, or at least as close to eternal as sport can realistically manage. So what you're describing is a very virtuous cycle where the dominance of the U.S. women's

team and the activism leads to things like a professional league, which cements the dominance and it strengthens the pipeline and begets even more dominance. Yes. And all of that coalesces in the next truly great U.S. team. It starts to beget genuine household names, players who are famous in sports and the culture as a whole. And that is people like Alex Morgan, the striker. And most of all, I suspect, it's Megan Rapinoe, who comes to be seen almost as the avatar of that generation. And remind us what makes her such an avatar of the sport. Well, first and foremost, it's how she plays.

Megan Rapinoe drives in. the sport well first and foremost it's how she plays she burst into kind of soccer's consciousness 2011 2012 absolutely wonderful for megan rapinoe Absolutely wonderful for Megan Rapinoe. Rapinoe, sir! Oh, what a goal! She's the sort of player that catches the eye. She's not necessarily the biggest or the quickest or the strongest, but she plays with a swagger, which I think a lot of people are drawn to. Rapinoe looking for the finish, and Rapinoe provides the finish!

She can do no wrong. I think there is an ineffable quality to stardom that you can't always really explain. Sometimes, you know, some people are LeBron or Michael Jordan. They're just like loads better at the sport than anybody else. And so they obviously become stars. But I think there are other players who tend to stand out because of something in their body language, something about the way they carry themselves. A sense that they might do And I think Rapinoe is in that category.

She is the sort of player who you kind of have to keep an eye on because you never quite know what she's going to do. That's Rapinoe on the field. But increasingly, as her profile grows she actually becomes as significant really for what she does off the field as what she does on it like what well particularly initially lgbt rights why would i ever not come out um why would i never not take this stand and say this is who I am? And I'm very proud of that. She came out in 2012. She's one of the first openly gay players, if not the first openly gay player on the U.S. women's national team. And then in 2016, several star soccer players on the U.S. women's national team have filed a lawsuit demanding

equal pay. Together with a few of her teammates, Rapinoe leads this legal battle against U.S. soccer, her employers effectively, to try and achieve pay equity with the men's team. And it takes a long time. The legal kind of procedure is very complicated. But they do eventually force U.S. soccer to change the way that players are compensated. Megan Rapinoe knelt during the national anthem before her game last night with the Seattle Reign. And then later in 2016, she becomes one of the first professional athletes outside of the NFL to kneel in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick's protest against racial inequality. She told reporters, being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the

flag and not have it protect all of your liberties? And, you know, that's a risk because if you look at what happened to Kaepernick, he was effectively forced to sacrifice his career to make his principles clear. And a lot of athletes have been told not to do it. Organizing bodies didn't want them to do it. And Rapinoe did it anyway. Well, two days before her women's national team takes on France in the quarterfinals of the Women's World Cup, co-captain Megan Rapinoe is in another match with President Trump. And then most notably in 2019, around the time of the World Cup in France, she doesn't have any problem at all with standing up to the president of the United States.

Traditionally, a winning team would be invited to the White House so that the president of the day can bask in their reflected glory. And Rapinoe says, she will not go. To which Trump responds, maybe Rapinoe should win first. You have to finish the job first. And that's what the Americans do. They get all the way to the final and against the Dutch in Lyon. Rapinoe scores the decisive goal that means the US have retained the World Cup. And when they get back to the States...

I stand by the comments that I made about not wanting to go to the White House, with the exception of the expletive. My mom will be very upset about that. Rapinoe and the entire team don't go to the White House. I would encourage my teammates to think hard about lending that platform or having that co-opted by an administration that doesn't feel the same way and doesn't fight for the same things that we fight for. She makes it very clear that she does not approve of anything that Trump is doing and that she will not allow him to use her stardom to make himself look better. And of course, there's real risk here for Rapinoe and for the entire team in taking on someone like Donald Trump. Yes. Rapinoe and the entire team, really, found themselves in a more central role

in a kind of ongoing, broiling culture war than I think they probably anticipate, or than many people would have said is ideal. That's never really been something that has concerned Megan Rapinoe. I think that she is absolutely willing to stand up for what she believes in, regardless of who that might antagonize or alienate or upset. If there's a cause that she believes is worth fighting for, or a cause that is close to her heart or something that she feels she should stand up for, she will stand up for and she will use the platform she's got. And Rapinoe was always very clear that all of that was contingent because while sport is a great way to distrust things that people might not want to

distrust, to distrust things that they might want to avoid, it all depends on how successful you are. If you are winning games, if you are winning trophies, if you are one of the best players in the world, if you are a world champion, then people kind of have to listen to you. They want to hear what you've got to say. Rapinoe has always said

that first and foremost, you have to win the stuff that people care about. And that is what gives you your platform. And now after all those years and years of winning, the U.S. women's soccer team has now lost. Yeah, for the first time in more than a decade, it has lost a World Cup game. It looks like the end of an era

and it looks also like the rest of the world has kind of caught up. We'll be right back. So, Roy, how does the rest of the world manage to catch up to U.S. women's soccer? I think the first step was unbanning the sport. That was quite helpful. And then what you really see probably starts 10 to 15 years ago, where the major club teams of Europe start to take an interest in women's soccer. And you see the major teams of the Premier League and of the top divisions in Italy and Spain and Germany belatedly. And it's really important we don't cast anyone here as the good guys because this was in the 21st century.

This is the sort of thing I should really be describing from the Victorian period, but it's not. This is the 21st century. But these clubs know exactly how to produce footballers. They are extremely good at it. They're also extremely good at finding footballers.

And they have the brilliant light bulb moment of, if we can do this for men, it'll probably work for women too. What you see is within the clubs themselves, you see all of these facilities suddenly populated, not just by boys, but by girls that you get players who are recruited to youth academies at the age of 10, 11, sometimes earlier.

This seems slightly uneasy saying it, but if there's a talented kid playing soccer somewhere in an organized setting in Europe, the local professional team will know by the time they're six. We're all finished after six. If you've not been spotted by the time you're six, you are done. But it is a machine. It is a talent spotting and a talent creation machine. And you see this rapid growth in women's soccer that the European teams get better, and they get better really fast. Right. And the US, of course, does not have a comparable system. No, the US is a complete outlier in global soccer. And in women's soccer, there is a real issue with pay-to-play that women's soccer in the US has always been kind of a middle-class pursuit. And because of that, it's obviously a little bit exclusive. And that has this effect of limiting the number of players who can have access to it.

And at the same time, the place that leads isn't to professional teams, it leads to colleges. And the colleges provide good quality coaching. It's a professionalized environment, even if it's not fully professional. that's at what 18 19 you're competing with european and south american and to an extent even african kids now who have been trained professionally at professional elite teams since they were 10 or 11 that's an awful lot of catching up to do for you know someone who's 18 or 19 and going into college that there is a natural disadvantage to that US system when it's exposed to global competition.

So once Europe decides to really invest in this pipeline for women's soccer, whatever advantages the US had with systems like Title IX, they basically evaporate. Yeah, and it evaporates really fast because the European clubs can move so quickly and with so much money. So you start to see really since the 2019 world cup in France, which is obviously one that the Americans won, it starts to feel even there, like the gap is closing the aura that they had, the sense of fear that they inspired in European teams.

The idea that that was the final boss in a video game that you had to beat the American national team that starts to dissipate. And I think coming into this World Cup, there was a real sense among the European teams and the safety of being able to walk around safely, I should say Australia, that the US team was kind of there to be taken down, that they weren't what they used to be, and that there was nothing to be afraid of anymore. And so what does this year's World Cup look like when that US aura begins to dissipate? Well, they kind of arrived here

knowing that for quite a few of the players, this would be their last hurrah, or what they hoped would be their last hurrah. You know, Megan Rapinoe is retiring. She has already announced that. Several of the members of the team are in their mid to late 30sies and without wanting to be ageist, that tends to mean that you are in the autumn of your professional athletic career. They probably

won't come back either. And to be honest, they've kind of looked like a team that's at the end of a road. You know, they played four games, they beat Vietnam. They drew with the Dutch and with Portugal. And P.S., when you say drew, two stupid Americans tie. Yeah, they tied, sorry. But they never really looked particularly exciting or imaginative or inventive. They didn't feel like they were the defining story, the must-watch draw of this tournament. They felt like a faded force. They looked a shadow of what the world expects from the United States women's team and what the U.S. women's team

expects from itself. Right. And that extends quite clearly to the final game that you described at the beginning of our conversation against Sweden when Rapinoe misses her penalty kick and Sweden's last penalty shot goes in by that painful millimeter. Yeah, and there was a temptation in the immediate aftermath to see it as being a really close run thing, that the World Cup had been ended by a millimeter. But that's not really true, because that millimeter was just a culmination of all of the rest of the tournament, which in turn was the culmination of all of the last four years. And that in turn probably would link to the growth of women's soccer around the world, to the inevitable march of time for some of the most important players on the US team.

So it wasn't unforeseeable that the US should not win the World Cup it wasn't really an injustice that they went out to Sweden the only thing that struck me as being particularly cruel was the fact that Rapinoe with her last ever kick at a World Cup should miss a penalty that felt like it wasn't really the coda that her World Cup career deserved given all that she's achieved for the sport as a whole and in terms of the causes that matter to her. And she expressed all that after the Games. I mean, this is like a sick joke. For me personally, I'm just like, this is dark comedy, I missed a penalty. She called it a sick joke, that that would be her final contribution to a World Cup.

I think this team has always fought for so much more and, you know, to know that we've used our really special talent to do something, you know, that's really, like, changed the world forever. I think that means the most to me and, you know, the players in this locker room here. And she talked about how she's tried to use the platform that the U.S. national team provides.

That's the best part. We're going to miss you. Thank you, Megan, for everything. Thank you. Thank you. And she has always said that without the winning, you don't get the microphones. You don't get to say whatever you want all of the time. Because people in Rapinoe's telling listen to winners.

They want to hear what winners have to say. And in her view, if you don't win, then that might go away. Right, she seemed to recognize that this platform is now in jeopardy. I wonder, Rory, to the degree that the era that we've been talking about truly is over, and based on the pipeline and Europe's success in building it that we've been talking about, it might be over for some time. The U.S. might not be able to catch up to Europe's catching

up to the U.S. for years. Maybe it will be impossible to catch up. We're not going to know that for a while. But I'm curious, what do you think that this era of extraordinary dominance and success and activism will have meant with U.S. women's soccer? Well, first of all, I think that maybe the U.S. will just have to get used to being one of several nations that can win major tournaments. And there's no great shame in that. I don't think the US is going to be bypassed as a soccer force. They will be back, they might win the next World Cup. But I think the era of them being default champions is probably over for good. There will always be other countries that can challenge them now and

challenge them in a convincing, consistent way. What I don't think will change is the kind of spiritual, philosophical legacy of this team, that women's soccer all over the world has an activist edge. And I think in no small part, that's because most of these women have had to fight for something, the right to play, the right to be paid as much as they deserve, the right to have access to the same facilities as the men, the right to have their sports projected in the way that it ought to be. So women's soccer is always accompanied by a degree of advocacy. But to me, Rapinoe and this generation of the US national team, I think they were the embodiment of that. And I suspect that they inspired quite a lot of people within women's soccer to stand up on the issues that they believed in.

I mean, it's been really interesting here in the last week or so to see how defensive, really, players from other countries have been about the US national team. I don't want to kind of cause any offense when I say that the rest of the world generally quite like seeing americans lose at things but that's not the case in women's soccer there is an abiding respect and admiration for this team they feel quite protective of the u.s i think in a in a way that's quite rare and that i think speaks to two things one is what this generation of the US national

team has meant in a sporting sense that you know athletes admire winners and this US team have been relentless winners but also I think there's an element in there of what they've represented as people the admiration for what they've achieved both on and off the field, will continue long after we've forgotten kind of how they got knocked out of this World Cup. Well, Rory, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Here's what else you need to know today.

In a major diplomatic breakthrough, the United States and Iran have reached a deal to win the freedom of five imprisoned Americans, most of whom have been charged by Iran without evidence of spying. In exchange for the Americans' release, the U.S. will release several jailed Iranians and unfreeze about $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue. The release of the Iranian money could prove controversial, given Iran's history of funding armed militants across the Middle East. But the U.S. says that Iran will have no direct access to the money, which will be held by a bank in Qatar. To access the money, Iran must submit orders to the bank for humanitarian products like food and medicine that have no military purpose.

And... Tragedy that hits one of us is felt by all of us. With lives lost and properties decimated, we are grieving with each other during this inconsolable time. Officials on the Hawaiian island of Maui say that the recovery from the wildfires that have killed dozens of people there will take years. The fires have burned hundreds of buildings, including homes, businesses, hotels, a school and a museum. including homes, businesses, hotels, a school, and a museum. In a video posted on Thursday, Maui's mayor, Richard Bisson, asked residents for their patience. In the days ahead, we will be stronger as a kaiāulu, or community,

as we rebuild with resilience and aloha. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennisgetter, Sydney Harper, and Olivia Nadd, with help from Carlos Prieto. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn, with help from Paige Cowan. Contains original music by Mary Lozano, Diane Wong, Alisha Ba'itub,

Ro Namisto, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landefork of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Babar. See you on Monday.