The Shift in the Women’s Football Balance of Power

August 22, 2023

I have been a staunch observer of women’s collegiate soccer in the United States for more than a decade now. Within the municipal triangle of Houston/Austin/San Antonio, Texas where I have coached middle school ball for almost 25 years is home to at least 30 universities with competitive women’s soccer programs representing four college divisions. For years, my weekly routine in the fall has been to attend as many college women’s soccer matches as I could, driving from one city to another, often times watching multiple matches a day, especially during post-season tournaments.

All this is in addition to men’s and women’s internationals I attend, as well as men’s collegiate soccer, and full professional league matches in both genders. From March to December every year in the United States, I literally breathe, eat, dream football, and continue when I am home in the Philippines. Over the years, I have seen some of the world’s best players, such as Christen Press, Rachel Daly, Abby Wombach, Nichelle Prince, Carli Lloyd, a host of other professionals in the National Women’s Soccer League, most of whom played college ball in the United States, and Cam Rodriguez on this side of the Pacific.

Since the early 1980’s when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) officially established a women’s soccer competition, the sport has been growing in the United States by leaps and bounds. By the 1990’s, the United States was poised to dominate the women’s soccer world with rosters entirely comprised of players who graduated from American collegiate programs. The Women’s United Soccer Association, the world’s first full professional women’s league was founded in the US in 2001, and was succeeded by Women’s Professional Soccer in 2009. Since 2013, the American college system has been churning out players for the National Women’s Soccer League.

Garnering lessons from the previous two leagues’ experiences, the NWSL quickly established itself as the top women’s professional league in the world, where the best players flocked and thrived. As the league matured, the US Women’s National Team asserted its global dominance even more, winning back-to-back World Cup championships. The United States is the only country to have played in all eight World Cup semi-finals previous to 2023, and six out of seven Olympic semi-finals. With four World Cup championships, one runners-up and three third-place finishes, four Olympic golds, a silver and a bronze, the USA is the winningest national soccer team in history; no other country even comes close.

Before August 6, 2023 when Sweden eliminated USA in the round of 16, the Yanks had not lost a World Cup match since Japan prevailed in penalties in the final on July 11, 2011. Between those two World Cup defeats, the USA posted a record of 14 wins, three draws and no losses, outscoring opponents 44-7 and raising the trophy twice. They accomplished this fielding rosters overwhelmingly comprised of NWSL players; the sole exception is Lindsey Horan with French powerhouse Lyon. With very few exceptions such as Horan and Alyssa Thompson who both turned pro straight from high school, every single player to have donned the US national team kit to date excelled in an American university. The U.S. intercollegiate athletic system, the same system 16 of the 23 Filipinas on our World Cup roster have gone through, has been the main production line of players for the world’s most dominant women’s national team.

But in 2023, it has become evident that a shift is taking place in the women’s football power structure, perhaps manifested in the all-Europe final. In the annals of football history, the 2020-2021 seasons will forever be chronicled as chaotic due to a global pandemic. There were league suspensions all over the globe, tournament cancellations, postponements even of qualifiers for the World Cup, football’s holiest grail. In the United States, the biggest sports market of all, pro leagues – not just soccer – struggled to figure out how to proceed with games, implementing every precautionary tactic in the book, from playing in empty arenas to creating safety bubbles. I can’t tell you how traumatic it was for me, a self-diagnosed football addict, to go for months without my therapy sessions at the local stadia or on TV. I had to resort to watching past World Cup match broadcasts I had archived on VHS and DVD to get me through my withdrawal pangs.

During this period, as the United States struggled to get a handle on the pandemic, NWSL players were forced to find a way to keep playing, to stay in form, to maintain their competitive edge. The result was a mass exodus of top players across the pond where European countries were managing the pandemic more effectively. Numerous US Women’s National Team stars left North America, most famously Samantha Mewis and Rose Lavelle, who both transferred to Manchester City in the English Women’s Super League. They opened the floodgates. The aforementioned Houston Dash superstar Rachel Daly returned to her native England and signed a deal with Aston Villa. Players moved or returned to Europe, many choosing to take pay cuts just so they could keep playing.

Data shows in the first post-pandemic Women’s World Cup that the European club system has gained significantly on the United States. In the 2015 round of 16, outside of team USA, there were 25 players based in the U.S., six of them still in college. Only Germany was anywhere near that figure with 18 in the Frauen-Bundesliga. In the same round in 2019, that number jumped to 37 foreign players playing in the US system. France came in second with 27 non-native players in the French Division 1 Féminine.

On the other hand – er – foot, in the 2023 round of 16, the number of non-US players based in the USA dropped back to 23 and was outnumbered by foreign players in England (55), Spain (29), and France (28). Of the eight sides in the quarter-final round, a total of only five US-based players remained, carried on the rosters of three countries – Japan (2), Australia (2), and Sweden (1). Of 83 players in the quarter-finals bracket competing in leagues outside their own country, 72 were based in Europe.

We cannot blame the shifting tide on the pandemic alone. Europe after all is the undisputed mecca of football (though Rio de Janeiro might dispute that claim), the most organized, the most competitive, with the most prolific youth development systems in the world, and the most successful both on the pitch and in the bank. Big-time glamor clubs like Man City and Bayern Munich have deep coffers to draw from in the development of their women’s sides. Whereas in the men’s game, Europe lead the way and northern North America caught on rather late, it’s been quite the opposite in the women’s game. The USA has been the leading force in women’s soccer development, and now Europe has seen the light and is finally coming around.

As if the pandemic weren’t crisis enough, the NWSL and the United States Soccer Federation have been reeling from the results of a year-long independent investigation into reports of sexual harassment and abuse committed by coaches against players in clubs across the league. Released in October of 2022, the report describes a culture of systemic misconduct by coaches and negligence by team management that had been going on for years. Lead by former Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates, the investigation implicated some of the most successful coaches in the league in the most heinous acts of sexual coercion and harassment of players under their charge. As the investigation was conducted, numerous clubs removed head coaches and the league commissioner resigned mid-season. It shouldn’t be a surprise then that the NWSL’s status as the best women’s professional soccer league has been tainted.

Significantly, perhaps foreshadowing times to come, the lone surviving representative in the quarter-finals from the Americas hemisphere, Colombia, fielded a World Cup lineup playing club ball almost entirely in Colombia, Brazil, or Spain, with the single exception of goalkeeper Catalina Perez, between the sticks at Werder Bremen. Only five Colombian National Team players went through the American collegiate system and just two had had any previous experience on US clubs. In contrast, among the Jamaican squad whom the Cafeteras eliminated, 17 had played or were currently playing for American universities, and eight had stints in the NWSL.

After extraordinary performances, including the 2-1 upset of second-seeded Germany launching Colombia into their first quarter-final ever, the Colombian national development system will only continue to evolve and improve, as it should. Likewise, I look forward to the Filipinas’ historic achievements also inspiring the Philippine Football Federation to build upon their success, to continue taking bold steps in improving our own youth development system and implement an inclusive national football curriculum, to use the beautiful game in addressing deep issues plaguing Philippine society around marginalization, exclusivity, disenfranchisement of the poor, glaring socio-economic and gender inequities, and a host of other injustices – all of which football has the power to help alleviate. I look forward to the development and expansion of the Philippine talent pool through an inclusive national system sustainable for generations to come, through which domestically produced players are good enough for clubs around the world to take notice, and can compete equally with their expatriate counterparts for national roster spots. That would signify a truly glorious era in Philippine football development.

Despite the crises the U.S. women have faced, the naturalized American side of me has faith that they will bounce back from the traumatic injustices they have had to fight. Indeed, rising global standards are good for the game, especially for us fans, and provide the challenge that the U.S. soccer establishment needs, an impetus for improvement, a catalyst for self-evaluation and recalibration, to ascend back onto the summit as a model football program they have been known to be. One thing that our Filipinas showed us is that in American collegiate athletics, players are trained never to give up despite the odds. I’ve witnessed this over and over and over on many a college pitch in the U.S. Adversity strengthens resolve, and the U.S. women collectively have had plenty of adversity lately – more than anyone should ever have to endure.

Kokoy Severino is a career educator, nationally certified youth soccer coach in the United States, and an executive officer of the Football for Peace Movement in the Philippines…