Home Sports Soccer Women’s Soccer’s Big Moment, Big-Footed by Indifference and a ‘Clerical Error’

Women’s Soccer’s Big Moment, Big-Footed by Indifference and a ‘Clerical Error’

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A lot of thought went into deciding where, and when, the final of this summer’s Gold Cup would be held. It is, after all, a showpiece occasion for Concacaf, the body that governs soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean.

Discussions about logistics of it began more than a year ago, according to Victor Montagliani, Concacaf’s president. Montagliani and his staff consulted “all of their stakeholders,” he said: chief among them, Major League Soccer and Mexico’s Liga MX, to work out “when would be the best time for them.”

On Sept. 27, a decision was reached: The final would be played at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 7. Now, the rest of the competition could fall into place, and all the rest of the work — travel schedules, advertising, ticketing — could begin.

Those wheels were already in motion when — in Montagliani’s words — “somebody pointed out there was a conflict.” Concacaf had made what he described as a “clerical error.”

Belatedly, someone inside an organization that runs an entire sport across a continent had noticed that another event was scheduled for July 7, 2019, too. Lyon, France, would be hosting the final of the Women’s World Cup that day. Three Concacaf teams — the United States, Canada and Jamaica — would harbor hopes of playing in it. The clash was hardly ideal, Montagliani said, but there was nothing that could be done.

“By the time it was realized, we couldn’t move operationally,” he said. “I totally understand there is an issue, but we had sold tickets. We just can’t. It was too late.”

Concacaf, remarkably, was not alone. Conmebol — the organization that oversees South American soccer — had made the same mistake. The final of its continental championship, the Copa América, had been slated for the same day. Two major men’s competitions would end on the biggest day in the women’s soccer calendar in four years.

“It is a little ridiculous to have two other finals on the same day,” the United States forward Alex Morgan told Sports Illustrated last year. “We would never schedule anything that important on men’s World Cup final day. I would love to see us have one day to ourselves.”

It is hard to see quite what Concacaf and Conmebol could have done to avoid the clash. The French Football Federation and FIFA had only given them advance warning, after all, by a year: the date of the Women’s World Cup final had been set, and made public, on Sept. 28, 2017.

That nobody at either Concacaf or Conmebol seemed to be aware of that as they planned their own tournaments speaks volumes for the way women’s soccer is treated by the very bodies charged with the game’s protection and promotion: a form of “managed neglect,” as one longstanding women’s soccer advocate put it.

This summer’s World Cup — which opens Friday with France’s game against South Korea — will, by any measure, be the biggest in women’s soccer history. Some five million people tuned into the French television station TF1 last month to watch the French national team’s manager, Corinne Diacre, announce her squad. More than 750,000 tickets already have been sold across the nine stadiums scheduled to host games; total attendance is expected to exceed a million.

It would be outdated to describe it as a potential breakthrough moment for women’s soccer: the game’s growth, in the four years since the last World Cup, has been exponential. The barometers of that are everywhere: from the number of major European men’s clubs now investing in women’s teams to the occasional announcements from FIFA and UEFA about road maps to expand the sport even further.

More significant — more concrete — are the effects: in December, FIFA awarded a women’s Ballon D’Or for the first time to Ada Hegerberg, a Norwegian striker; in March, a record crowd in Italy watched Juventus play Fiorentina, and a record crowd in Spain watched a game between Barcelona and Atlético Madrid. Last month, soccer’s governing body in Argentina confirmed its women’s league would turn fully professional, a seismic shift given that organizational difficulties had left Argentina’s national team essentially on hiatus not so long ago.

This World Cup, then, should be seen as a celebration of all that has been achieved, a milestone on a steep, upward trajectory, and a chance for women’s soccer to accelerate still further.

“When we look at where the men’s game is in terms of commercialization, it is almost fully saturated,” FIFA’s chief women’s football officer, Sarai Bareman, has said. “Then you see how far the women’s game is away from getting there — it presents the opportunities that exist. And there is no better time to take advantage of those opportunities in the summer at the World Cup.”

And yet it is impossible to square that attitude with the one that allows both the Gold Cup and the Copa América — despite advance notice of an entire year — to hold their finals on the same day as the single most significant match in women’s soccer.

“It is very disappointing,” United States midfielder Megan Rapinoe said. “Ridiculous and disappointing.” Her coach, Jill Ellis, said that “playing three big matches in one day is not supporting the women’s game.”

The converse of that argument — as articulated by Montagliani — is that it provides “a total celebration” of soccer, 24 hours in which the sport might dominate not only television broadcasts but the news agenda, too, particularly in the United States (neither the Gold Cup nor even the Copa América attract large audiences away from their home continents).

That would be easier to believe if it had been a deliberate — if flawed — policy, rather than the consequence of a “clerical error.” Instead, it provides proof of how women’s soccer is still viewed among those who run the game, either at continental or international level; evidence of the institutional indifference it has had to overcome in order to grow as much as it has.

It is not, those who have been privy to these discussions say, any conscious attempt to stymie women’s soccer. It is more a chronic disinterest from those who are in power. The appetite for change is superficial: FIFA spent considerable sums last year, for example, on making sure the draw for the World Cup had just as much star power as the equivalent for the men’s competition. It has proved rather more elusive on concrete plans for a women’s equivalent of its Club World Cup. There is a sense that talk is easy, but action is more difficult.

“There have been strides that have been made,” Rapinoe said. “But in terms of their capacity for change, the ability for them to change, given that they have unlimited resources, there has not really been a huge change at all. The incremental change we have seen is not enough. There has been such a lack of care, attention and investment for all these years that doubling, tripling or quadrupling the care, attention and investment would be appropriate. To make incremental change leaves the game wanting more.”

What happens in France over the next month will showcase exactly how much has changed in women’s soccer, even in the face of the fecklessness and indifference of those bodies whose job it is to promote it. What happens on July 7 — as two men’s finals crowd its greatest occasion, greedily gulping all the oxygen they can — will show how far there still is to go.

Andrew Das contributed reporting.



Source : NYtimes

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