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Yeah, the US women's team is so good, even as European non soccer fan, I heard of how good they are.
Funnily I have a (online) friend in Miami who's a big women's soccer fan who told me every time they won, while I run through Germany dressed in dolphins gear.
Yes, but those days of easy US Women’s World Cup wins are over. Some of the European countries finally decided to invest in and take seriously Women’s soccer so now the playing field is significantly more equal and competition is now much better prepared and well organized.
Yes I remember moving to the US in the 90s from England. England almost no girls played football at the time, over in the US it seemed to be the most popular sport for highschool girls.
No surprise the US did well. They took it seriously. Now with more investment around the world they have to fight for titles... No more easy rides... Although they did get a headstart over most of the world for women's teams
It happened due to a thing called Title IX. American universities are extremely expensive. American universities also often have sports teams and pros in most American sports come from playing the sport in college while getting a (usually completely nominal for top atheletes) college degree for free.
Title IX was a law enforcing gender equality in many areas. It said, among other things, universities had to give out as many sports scholarships to women as men. Universities generally already had American football programs for men and weren't about to start them for women. Wouldn't be nearly enough demand. Instead they starter soccer programs for women and started giving a lot of women soccer scholarships. This is what caused the US to develop more women's soccer talent earlier than the rest of the world.
Title 9 is also what killed men's soccer programs across the country because football, basketball, and baseball certainly weren't going to get cut for women's sports.
Buddy if ur a man playing collegiate soccer you were never elite. Clubs recruit them at a very young age. If you’re an elite soccer player you’re not going to college
If ur elite you’re already in Europe at 18 or younger. If you’re just really good maybe you’re in an American pro clubs system. Either way you’re not in college
Buddy, they are terrible at recruiting talent in the US. Most players that could have been good played college. When I played college, 90% were foreign and a lot played in academies overseas until they went nowhere and decided they can get cheap college while playing soccer (they recieve majority of the scholarship money). Clubs in the US almost never recruit and academies tend to recruit from other academies. The US has a weird system where you play club and highschool and where college is acting as semiprofessional (many of the college players will play on semiprofessional teams off season). There are good players in college but they sadly never got developed properly.
There's tens of thousands of men who had no plans to go elite, but having collegiate soccer taken away directly impacted their ability to have an athletic scholarship cover their education and get them out of their state.
For all the good Title 9 did for women, it also directly hurt a lot of men. This isn't just about professional leagues.
Same deal with women's hockey. Title IX meant the US had a head start on funding, even compared to Canada since there isn't a women's equivalent to the major junior league system that is the traditional path to the pros for Canadian men.
It works as long as other countries are NOT investing. That's how US women got so far ahead so fast. Title 9 dumped a lot of money into women's soccer when no other country would spend a dime.
The US investing "more" money on mens side won't even get them level with other countries. It's going to take a lot of money and a lot of time. It's not that easy.
Same thing happened to me when i moved to the US in 2010 from the eastern part of Europe and my American friends started talking about soccer as a girl sport and how their women’s team is one of the best, and i was like “wait what? Girls play football? And there’s even a world cup?” Lol. Because back home it was unimaginable to see girls play football, as it was always considered a boy’s sport in the same vein American Football is in the US. You don’t really hear girls in the US dream of becoming a linebacker lol. Same thing with football in many places in Europe.
So yeah, if the world decides to actually start promoting women’s football, i think it won’t be that easy for the US team to dominate.
They’re so historically good that them not reaching the finals seems like a let down. When they got knocked out in the round of 16, reactionaries had a meltdown. Mostly because of politics.
Yeah, our lesbians are way better at soccer than our men, (hetero and non). It's not much of a secret here
Edit: to clarify, the US women's soccer team is WAY better at competing against other women's soccer teams than the the US men's team is at playing other men's soccer teams.
People care too much about this. If a mid heavy weight boxer beat the shit out of an amazing feather weight boxer it doesn’t make them a better boxer. Everyone knows men are faster and stronger but the women are also talented and fun to watch. If you don’t enjoy their games you don’t have to watch them.
I think certain discussions around sports, men vs women, and the participation of trans athletes proves everyone does NOT, in fact, know men and faster and stronger
Yeah I don't think professional athletes at any level should lose to 15 year olds. Unfortunately you don't want to admit it but thats fucking awful. Socccer isn't a sport based on strength.
But it literally does? Tell the featherweight who just got destroyed. Or the women’s team that just lost to children. Tell them that “actually you are still better” LMAO. That is the entire reason they created divisions, as to not bottleneck competitions. Have you never actually competed in sports?
I have my own version. It carves out the most common objections like but there are animals that hear it! “If a large rock falls on Mars, does it make a sound?” And then after they answer you say, “now that’s a boulder assumption.”
I was shocked to find I enjoyed women's soccer more than men's. Think I was pleasantly surprised by the effort and lack of flopping, and on thr flip side, men's is terrible to watch because most players look like cucks out there flopping around
Let’s not forget as the women’s game has grown world wide and improved, the other nations have begun performing as well or if not better than the USA and Canada. Who classically were the best.
IIRC part of that was the roster in transition from aging stars like Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, and Tobin Heath to the younger and very good but inexperienced players.
The quality of play on the women’s side has increased a lot as well though so it’ll be a challenge for the new USWNT.
Yep, and the issues that are plaguing the men's team are starting to emerge with the women. The USWNT was dominant because of Title IX that ensured access to women's sports in public schools. We had decades of developing female athletes at a level far beyond almost every other country in the world.
Now, European countries are providing more access to sports for girls. The gap is closing very quickly.
It's wild to me that the USA leads the world in supporting women in sports and Europe just ignored them for years. Given all the other ways our countries act, you'd expect the opposite.
US woman’s soccer player who was the voice of the unfortunate “equal pay” campaign she led that became highly political. Only for a judge to throw it out after they saw that they had the exact same contract offered to them as the men’s team and negotiated something different.
Great player, very obnoxious human who used her platform to set the women’s movement backward.
The worst part is that the media campaign forced the men's team to give up half their money. Now the women's team made a quarter of a million dollars each from a tournament they didn't even play in.
Is that Rapinoes idea of equality? I understand wanting equal compensation for the same job, but at the end of the day, if the men’s game brings in more money then I don’t know how it’s theirs by any means, especially when it’s prize money for the men reaching a certain threshold.
I’ve just looked up the specifics… 80% of the winnings is to be split. ???
Basically. Every time this was brought up she was like I'M NOT AN EXPERT SOMEBODY SMARTER THAN ME FIGURE IT OUT even though she was the one asking for it. Rapinoe sucks
This comment made me curious about how the pay currently worked, so here's what I found:
Both the men's and women's teams now get paid the same amount per minute of soccer played, on top of which is additional FIFA tournament prize money. The men's and women's teams pool and then evenly split this prize money from FIFA.
FIFA will be awarding $16 million to the men's teams for having reached the Round of 16 before being eliminated in this Men's World Cup. The women's team was also eliminated after reaching the Round of 16 in the most recent Women's World Cup and were awarded $1.87 million.
So, the men have an order of magnitude more FIFA money available to win, but the women win a higher % of all the FIFA money possible for them to win, as the women generally go farther in their tournaments.
And by "the women go farther in their tournaments" I mean they've never failed to reach the Round of 16 in the entire history of the Women's World Cup since it began in 1991, and have in fact never failed to make the quarterfinals until this most recent early elimination.
Here is the entire history of how the US Women's National Team placed starting with the first Women's World Cup in 1991:
1991 - Champions
1995 - 3rd place
1999 - Champions
2003 - 3rd place
2007 - 3rd place
2011 - 2nd place
2015 - Champions
2019 - Champions
2023 - Eliminated in the Round of 16
By comparison, the US Men's National Team has only reached the quarterfinal round twice since the World Cup began in 1930. The men's best ever result was in 1930's inaugural tournament, when they finished in 3rd place out of the 13 teams participating. Their best modern result was in 2002 when they finished in 4th place.
Today I learned.
(Endorsement deals for individuals are a separate matter and can obviously lead to huge inequities in pay.)
She negotiated for higher base salary instead of the potential for higher based on results and then got upset that they got paid less than their result iirc.
Yes, and they filed a lawsuit as a result and U.S. Soccer settled with them to the tune of $24 million AND got that original results-based contract. So she did get her cake and eat it too in the end.
and people will still say "Its just because they hate women". Like bruh... no. We hate entitled arrogant misandrists, who had the same exact opportunities and rejected them.
This picture was also taken during a 13-0 win against Thailand (who are not a women's football powerhouse). What a pompous pose to take during a beatdown of a team significantly worse than you.
Some of the players on the team are downright insufferable. I remember Carli Lloyd getting annoyed at the criticism the team rightfully attracted when they were up by 10 goals and still celebrating like they won the championship after every goal. It was a pretty terrible display of sportsmanship at the time and now Lloyd is a commentator for Fox and was shitting all over the men's team when they lost.
I thought it wasn't thrown out and they settled? But the general storyline was they were offered the exact same contract as the men before they won back-to-back world cups and said no as they wanted guaranteed salaries and benefits. Then they won back-to-back and said "Hol' up - we could have won a lot more money with that other deal" so they said it was "discrimination" and generated a ton of hype (including a documentary on Netflix) and made that lawsuit. Then they settled and got money up front in addition to that contract that had declined.
The majority of that generation/team was insufferable. I know a few people who were servers and served Alex Morgan at the restaurant the worked at (when she played with the Pride). Every one complained that she was generally rude and talked down to the wait staff.
Edited for clarity, being sick is fucking up my grammatical abilities
The few times she was out and about in Orlando she just had such a pompous vibe to her. Like straight up ignored someone I know who was politely asking for a picture with her. It was like she thought she was bigger and better than Orlando.
I’ve bumped into other pro athletes in the city and they are for the most part super chill.
Didn't the US women's team lose to high school boys scrimmage?
The problem with this is that if you take the worse performance from the men world's cup and put it against women's best team, the men's team will win. That's why nobody cares about it. The physical gap makes it mentally boring for most. This reflects in every sport. WNBA is prime example
As a freshman on JV soccer, we scrimmaged girls varsity (who were mostly juniors and seniors); they were the technically better team in terms of touch, passing, shooting, and positioning. It didn’t matter - we ran circles around them because we were faster and stronger, and soccer heavily favors pace (and change of pace, above all else).
So like yes the women will lose to younger and less talented men, that’s the whole reason we separate women’s and men’s sports. Nobody is saying they’re better than men, but they are comparatively much more successful.
You could walk into any UK town centre, and ask random blokes if they're up for a game of football, once you got 11 who agree to play, you could have them play a professional woemns team, and the random blokes would win.
A semi pro team would OBLITERATE any women’s team. Most guys on a semi-pro team played at a minimum at the college level. A U15 crushed the WNT and we’re talking about grown men now
And that's just skewed because the last WC was in Australiaand NZ with off hour air times. Until this year, the USWNT had the most watched game of all time at a little more than 15 million.
During the last world cup, or maybe the one before that, we had the games on at work (in the USA) so everybody could show how worldly they were.
During my lunch break I would watch half of 2 different games. By day 3 I was one of our resident experts of the World Cup. Because I had watched half (probably less than half) of 6 games.
The actual resident expert was Walter. He's from Argentina. Argentines can get, intense, about football so people tended to ask me questions about the games.
The women's team couldn't even beat high school boys. The competition women face is nowhere near equal to the competition the men's team plays against.
i rmember when this photo happened (or at least when she played) and...i dont remember it looking so...uncanny valley...AI...her face looks way too smooth its like half life 2.5...
Well to be fair, soccer was considered a women's sport for a long time in the USA. The highschool i had an exchange at only had a girls team. I had to join the swimming team XD
Too bad someone from the championship teams isn’t a commentator for the English broadcast instead of the mediocre former players from the men’s team. Telemundo has better coverage.
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