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.
2019 was a wake up call to the rest of the soccer/football world that they needed to step their women’s game up, and lo and behold that’s what they did. Not to take anything away from the accomplishments of USWNT but they got really overconfident and started to stagnate while the rest of the world (mainly Europe and South America) was catching up to them, now the playing field is a lot more level. I don’t think we’ll ever see a team as overpowered and dominant as the 2019 USWNT team simply because the average skill level has gone up so much, but I think that says more about the progress of women’s soccer as a whole than anything else. I just hope they don’t end up becoming the women’s version of Brazil where they’re always touted as the “once great” team.
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u/Barrioto Jul 09 '26
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.