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Lasting impression U.S. women make a mark in World Cup, leave lingering questions
Posted: Wednesday July 14, 1999 01:04 AM
By Jim Litke, The Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The lasting image is of game-winning goal scorer Brandi Chastain sliding on her knees near the penalty spot, celebrating the U.S. Women's World Cup triumph with a full-throated roar and waving her jersey instead of wearing it. What remains to be seen is whether a nation that fell under the spell of a sport and the female athletes who played it this summer will still love them both by next week. "Let's be real about this," Hank Steinbrecher, general secretary of the U.S. Soccer Federation, said Sunday. "We caught lightning in a bottle. The Queen Mother doesn't have enough money to pay these women what they deserve right now." Steinbrecher spoke just minutes before Chastain and her teammates swept past during a parade at Disneyland. It marked the start of a two-day, two-coast whirlwind tour that will put the team in front of the cameras that missed them the first time around -- when they crisscrossed America en route to winning the 16-nation, 32-game tournament that concluded Saturday with a 5-4 victory over China on penalty kicks following a scoreless tie. The Americans' thrilling triumph produced the most-watched soccer game ever on U.S. network television, with ABC estimating that 40 million viewers tuned in. The game posted a 13.3 overnight rating and a 32 share for the network, 4 percent more than the previous record, a 12.8 for the 1994 men's World Cup final, also played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. The rating was nearly double the 6.9 overnight for last year's men's World Cup final between Brazil and France. Meanwhile, Michelle Akers, the 33-year-old grande dame of the American team, did not make the Disneyland parade because she was still recovering from heat exhaustion. And U.S. coach Tony DiCicco skipped the festivities, too, saying he wanted to get back home to the wife and four sons he's barely seen since April. Both are expected to be back when the U.S. team resumes training in August. The Americans will meet several as-yet-unnamed national teams in October's U.S. Open Cup. The team will remain largely intact to defend its Olympic gold medal next summer in Sydney, Australia, and at the 2003 World Cup. For the moment, satisfying demand after this World Cup will be tough enough. Chastain turned up on Sunday morning news programs, stunned by her instant celebrity when she heard the voices of fellow guests First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright through her earpiece. Chastain and her teammates were paid between $25,000 and $45,000, plus a bonus that has been increased from $12,500 to between $40,000 and $50,000 each for winning the tournament. From Disneyland, the U.S. women headed to a downtown rally and then were set to fly to New York for another round of television appearances on Monday. It was a far cry from 1991, when the U.S. women returned victorious from the World Cup staged in China. Back then, midfielder Julie Foudy was a student at Stanford University and the only person who even mentioned "finals" to her was a professor, who wasn't sympathetic about granting her extra time to finish her course work or the exam. That explained, in part, why even as they soaked in the applause and adulation this time around, the women and U.S. soccer officials like Steinbrecher made plans to get back to work. At the top of their agenda is charting a course to make sure the momentum built up during the past three weeks doesn't dissipate. After all, the United States played host to the men's World Cup in 1994, but the men's national team and the professional league created soon afterward are still struggling for attention in a crowded sports landscape. Undaunted, most of the U.S. women team members want a professional league of their own. And despite startup costs as high as $50 million, they sounded determined to get it. "This team is about making things happen," Chastain said. "If it takes each one of us knocking on doors to get that, we'll do it." The U.S. Soccer Federation, which developed the business plan for Major League Soccer before turning the enterprise over to private investors, has launched a similar feasibility study for a women's league. And while Steinbrecher was cautious about whether the World Cup had been successful enough to launch and sustain a pro league, he had no doubts about its success in another, more important sense. "The goal is to take what we've learned about women's equity, what we've learned about women as equal partners and not subordinates, and export it around the world," he said. "I think we're on the cutting edge of a revolution." Confirmation of that was practically at Steinbrecher's elbow, where Jeff Marquis and his family, from nearby Corona, sat along Disneyland's Main Street, waiting for the open-air buses carrying the team to go by. Marquis came into possession of two tickets for the final only last week, no small feat after the U.S. team packed stadiums in New Jersey, Chicago, Boston, Washington and Palo Alto, Calif. He decided to take his 15-year-old daughter, Brittany, because she plays on her high school team. And besides, he already had tickets to take his 13-year-old son, Bryce, to the Dodgers game. "When they were growing up, I don't think I ever imagined that they'd have equal opportunities to play sports," Marquis said. "But even before this thing exploded, she had many of the same things he got out of sports -- a network of friends, the confidence, the power." Asked whether he could envision his daughter playing professionally as easy as his son, Marquis paused. "Everybody always ties it to that," he said, "but I'm not sure that's the most important thing." He may be right. Brittany said the most important thing to her was how good she and her friends felt to be on a soccer field, knowing that their boyfriends had come to see them play -- instead of the other way around. On Saturday, her younger brother was one of those boys watching the girls play and he admitted loving every minute. "I didn't see any difference," Bryce said, "except at the end, the ripping-off-the-shirt part. I haven't ever seen that before." There are about 10 million full-time soccer players in the United States, and 44 percent are women.
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