England's goalkeeper Mary Earps and England's Rachel Daly celebrate after the Women's World Cup semifinal soccer match between Australia and England at Stadium Australia in Sydney on Aug. 16, 2023.Alessandra Tarantino/The Associated Press
When you look back on the history of the still-relatively-new Women’s World Cup, it hasn’t rung out with the names of traditional powers.
Finals such as United States versus Japan have a pleasing geopolitical sound, but they’re not Italy versus Argentina. They’re not soccer mad versus soccer even madder.
Without anyone needing to mention it, that was the role the women’s game settled into. It was the place from which the sport would colonize the few, remaining countries on Earth that didn’t put soccer at the top of their cultural pyramid. Women’s soccer was how FIFA would bring fire to the rubes.
It worked. Too well.
On Wednesday, England beat co-hosts Australia 3-1 to advance to the final of the 2023 Women’s World Cup. Before it started, this match was being sold as the real final. Sadly, the only people selling that line were the Australians.
After surviving on their wits for the entire tournament, the co-hosts walked into an English sleeper hold. They were gently cradled for an hour and then the pressure started.
England will play Spain in Sunday’s championship game.
It’s not the final people saw coming, but it’s also not not the final people saw coming. It was expected that despite signs it was doing a slow fade, the United States would reassert itself at Australia/New Zealand. But its era is over. Now it is the time for giants.
Twenty years ago, England didn’t qualify for this tournament. Twice. That was back when anyone who could afford plane tickets to wherever the Women’s World Cup was being held was welcome to come over and sleep on the couch.
Five years ago, England didn’t have a proper women’s league. The men’s Premier League ran from fall to spring. The women’s version ran over the summer. It was the scheduling equivalent of saying, ‘Don’t mind us.’
England has only become serious about the women’s game in the past couple of years. And now it is probably the best in the world at it.
Spain’s backstory is an even more extreme example of this sort of turnaround.
Spain did not qualify for the first six Women’s World Cups. Going into this tournament, it had won only one game at the sport’s biggest occasion.
Spain loves soccer. In a lot of ways, Spain is soccer. If Spain didn’t have soccer, it would just be another European economic basket case with nice beaches.
But that did not stop Spain from treating the women’s game with disdain. Its decades-old women’s league didn’t become professional until two years ago. When it made that announcement, the national government apologized for what it called an “injustice.”
The line at World Cups whenever Canada gets bumped off early is ‘The world is catching up.’
What that used to mean is that countries that couldn’t afford to properly fund a women’s national soccer program had half-funded one, and the women in it were determined to make it work anyway.
The implication was that people who weren’t meant to be that good were getting a little better. Maybe it was time for the countries who’d run the shop since it opened (i.e. the United States, Norway, Canada, etc.) to get a bit more serious and show them what’s what.
What was ‘the world is catching up’ not supposed to mean? That countries that knew the game inside-out and, through narrow-mindedness or apathy, hadn’t been bothered with it, were starting to come around. Because whenever that happens, the name cards at the head table are going to change forever.
That just happened.
Spain and England are both playing in their first Women’s World Cup final. That will create a virtuous circle in both countries. You need a few things to capitalize on these sorts of moments. What you need most is history. If you have history and you win a World Cup, people say, ‘We should win every World Cup forever.’
If you have no history, people say, ‘That was amazing. Call us in four years. Or not. We might have plans.’
If the Spains and Englands of the world have now decided that women’s soccer is important to them, well, I’ve got bad news for you. Canada is hooped. America, too.
This is not to say that Canada and America will never be good again. It is to say that they are no longer top of the class just because they show up. There aren’t going to be any more freebies.
There’s a reason the same countries rise to the top at the men’s World Cup every time – because there is relentless pressure back home for them to do that. When they fail, it’s a national disaster.
Do you think there is relentless pressure for the senior national Canadian soccer teams to win? When they fail, as they both just have, is it a national disaster?
No amount of new funding or pay equity is going to solve that problem. It’s a cultural issue.
Why does Canada win at hockey? Not just sometimes, but all the time? Because Canada has to win at hockey. That’s non-negotiable. It’s the one thing we can depend on. If we can’t depend on that, then what? What else can’t we depend on?
The new world thrived at women’s soccer for 25 years because the old world wasn’t paying attention. They let an easy opportunity go.
They’re not doing that any more. England, Spain, France, Netherlands – countries with money, professional infrastructure and a long history of expressing their global relevance through strategic deployment of soccer players – have arrived. They’re not leaving.
History has proved that that’s not going to be difficult for everyone else to beat. It’s going to be close to impossible.