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…
No comments:
Post a Comment