August 25, 2022 • 55 mins
Today’s episode is all about hope. The stunning success of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team offered FIFA a roadmap to a better way of doing business, one that promised soaring profits while embracing the organization’s core mission: to spread soccer and fair play around the globe. Instead, FIFA relegated the women’s game to second-class status even after seeing record crowds. In choosing to stick with its old corrupt ways, FIFA lost the one thing it cares about most: money. But women’s soccer still offers the last, best hope for a better FIFA.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's nothing new that women in sport are treated unequally
and face an uphill battle against sexism. But the stunning
success of the U s women's soccer team offered FIFA
a roadmap to a better way of doing business, a
cleaner way, a less corrupt way, a more fair way.
They didn't embrace it, but women's soccer still offers FIFA
(00:24):
a chance to crow out of its dark past, the
hope for a better tomorrow. That's what today's story is
all about. I'm Connor Powell. This is Episode eleven Equal Footing.
In May of two thousand and thirteen, the lords of
(00:46):
Soccer gathered on the remote island nation of Mauritius off
the coast of Africa for the sixty third FIFA Congress.
The meeting opened with a sixteen minute long series of
dazzling and colorful choreographed international music performances befitting of the
most ambitious of Broadway shows. Then set Bladder was called
(01:07):
upon to officially open the meeting. Gives you a great
pleasure and on a ladies and gentlemen, to now call
upon the president of the organization that has been referred
to as the guardian of our most precious game. The
presidents of FIFA Joseph S. Blatter to officially welcome all
of us yeah around of applause, describing set Bladder at
(01:29):
that moment as the guardian of soccer was ironic at best.
Welcome to the delegates to these sixty third Congress of FIFA.
On st bladders watch, FIFA had stumbled from scandal to scandal,
and as president, Bladder was awfully close to the center
of many of the accusations. As those bosses gathered in Mauritius,
(01:53):
the stink of corruption had only grown stronger. In recent years.
Bladder and FIFA felt grown in pressure to institute reforms
or you know, at least look like they were. So.
After one hundred and nine years, the lords of soccer
decided it was time to allow women into the club.
(02:13):
The plan was to elect a few ladies, as Bladder
like to say, to FIFA's executive Committee, and get a
much needed public relations win. But Bladder, with his proclivity
for making inappropriate comments, couldn't even execute this pr stunt.
In his attempt to praise Australian Moya Dodd, one of
(02:33):
the three female candidates up for election to FIFA's Executive Committee,
Bladder found a way to offend. You have a Condi
date and the good Condi date, and the good looking
Condi date. As Bladder giggled about Moya Dodd's looks, the
camera cut to Maria Dodd, who maintained a stone like stair,
(02:56):
you know, the type you put on when you're seething
with rage inside, but you don't want to show it.
And FIFA's president wasn't done putting his foot in his mouth,
though sadly there's no audio of this moment. After Dodd,
Lydia in Secara, and Sonya Benami were officially named to
FIFA's Executive Committee, Bladder stood at the podium and yelled
(03:19):
say something, ladies. You're always speaking at home, Now you
can speak here. It was typical Bladder and typical FIFA.
Even when seeming to do the right thing, it became
clear FIFA was doing it for all the wrong reasons.
As a global nonprofit, FIFA's mandate is to support soccer
(03:40):
around the globe, not just a men's game, but also
the women's. Of course, it's always put the men's game first.
FIFA did organize the first Women's World Championship tournament, in
sixty one years after the first Men's World Cup. That
nineteen tournament has been described by some as a silent trigger,
(04:04):
one that said in motion the modern women's game, and
there's some truth to that. In two thousand and nineteen,
more than a billion people around the world watched some
of the Women's World Cup, and that is a massively
forward compared to that tournament that was only carried live
in China and on tape delay in the US. But
(04:25):
the road to today's women's game is marked by decades
of sexism and shortsighted greediness. You're gonna hear about how
FIFA created and maintains the system that has forced women
to battle and claw for the scraps of FIFA's largest
all while the lords of soccer enriched themselves. It was
(04:53):
a run of the mill conference room, you know the
type with rows of foldable chairs and tables call fee
on the back. The room was full of sports apparel executives,
everyone hoping to strike a deal. In the months before
the FIFA Women's World Championship. That nondescript conference room is
(05:14):
where Michelle Acres found herself on a stage in Arizona,
in front of the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. I went
and said, hey, we need your support. Years old. At
the time, Acres was already one of the top women's
players in the world, probably the best. At nearly six
(05:35):
ft tall, Acres ruled the soccer pitch, playing as physically
dominant a game as anyone man or woman in the sport.
Yet Acres was a virtual unknown. Support and commercial opportunities
for the women's game were non existent. FIFA and its
regional federations had ignored women's soccer for decades, and as
(05:58):
a result, so did pretty much everyone else in the sport,
especially the sports marketing and apparel companies. Even though the
U S national team had just qualified for the World
Championship in China a few months later, Acres was struggling financially,
like all the women in the sport. Acres bagged the
(06:18):
suits in the room to support her, her teammates and
Team America. She told me, she pleaded, please invest in
women's soccer. We need us soccer. We need all the
corporations and people in soccer to support our team because
we're gonna go win a World Cup. And they laugh.
(06:38):
There was nothing funny about it, and nothing funny about
how ill equipped in cash strapped the U S women's
team was a few months before Acres launched her police
for help, she and her team had traveled to Haiti
desperately poor, politically chaotic, and dangerously unsafe. Haiti, the Caribbean nation,
was in the midst of year of political upheaval that
(07:01):
included assassinations and coups, but Conka Calf, FIFA's North American Federation,
shrugged off the dangers and decided to hold its qualifying
matches for FIFA Women's World Championship on the troubled island.
Acre says, it was as awful an experience as you
might expect. Even now, it's hard for me to believe
(07:24):
anyone in soccer thought Haiti was an appropriate place to
hold an international tournament, let alone the first women's qualifying tournament.
We stayed at this hotel that was surrounded by really
high cement wall, like maybe twenty ft high, with broken
glass and stuff at the top. The water was off
(07:48):
on and off all the time, electricity was on and
off all the time, and of course you couldn't drink
the water. We basically jumped in the pool like after
practices to shower. At this time, most of the top
male soccer players in the world were earning millions in
salaries and sponsorships. With a mere fifteen dollar a day
(08:09):
per diem and a thousand dollars a month stipend, Acres
and her teammates were literally playing for the love of
the game and the flag on their chests. But as
bad as the rundown hotel in Haiti was, the trip
to the stadium was even worse. We had these like
they're kind of like those kind of tourists buses that
(08:32):
hotels have that kind of take you from the airport
to the you know, hotel. That's what we had to
go to our games. So we're all stuffed on this
bus thing, uh gelopi bus thing, and all our gear
was like thrown on top of the bus like you
know Griswold station wagon. And we had guards hanging on
(08:52):
the sides of the bus with these huge automatic weapons,
and the people were like grabbing the bus and sucking
the bus and shaking. It was so it was scary.
Now FIFA treated all of the women's teams around the
globe like garbage. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, there
was no money for the women's game. But you might
(09:15):
think that the U S team, based in the largest
economy in the world would be given additional resources. That's America, right,
But they didn't. Everyone under FIFA's umbrella, from the regional
organizations to the advertisers to the government, they all refused
to cough up any money. And whatever American patriotism existed
(09:38):
in that Arizona conference room, it didn't extend to the
U S women's national team. Everyone ignored Acres except no
one believed except for one guy. That one guy was
Mike Hoban, vice president of soccer promotions at Umbro. What's Umbro?
(09:58):
If you're old enough, you might remember Umbro from your childhood.
In the nineteen eighties, it seemed like everyone had a
pair of their brightly colored nylon draw strings soccer shorts.
After a mildly successful pro soccer career in the nineteen seventies,
Hoban knew all about struggling financially to play the game
you love, Mick Hoeban gave me his card and said,
(10:22):
I'm with Umbro. I want to sign you. Umbro, which
sponsored the Brazilian legend Pelee, signed Acres to a major deal,
the first ever for a female soccer player and for
the first time in her career. Acre says she didn't
have to worry about money. She wasn't rich, but she
wasn't struggling either. But but, but but she was literally
(10:46):
the only woman in who could say that, and Acres
his financial success was completely due to Mick Hoban's personal interest,
not any of the lords of soccer who controlled the
sport or anyone else. And it with the first FIFA
Women's World Championship right around the corner, it looked like
the safe might be cracking. The money men who had
(11:09):
so long ignored the women's game might be ready to
make an investment. Welcome to China and a truly historic occasion.
With Chinese pop music blaring, Tianni Stadium and the busy
metropolis of quang Chu was buzzing. Sixty fans stopping, cheering
(11:32):
and yelling, It had all the trappions of a World
Cup final on the field. Pale always the ambassador for
the beautiful game. Welcome the two teams. It's the FEBA
Women's World Championship Final. For the eminem's gun, It's the
United States versus Norway. The presence of the greatest soccer
player ever only added to the pageantry and spectacle of
(11:56):
the moment. As the U S women took the pitch,
their white Adida's uniforms gleamed under the stadium's lights. With
the red and blue stripes, there was no doubt Team
America had arrived. Look a little closer at the photos
from the match, though, and you'll see how ill fitting
the uniforms really were. They were baggy and long. The
(12:19):
sleeves were designed for athletes with far broader shoulders than
any of the US players. Oh, there were guys uniforms.
They were from the guys team. The US women's team
were wearing hand me downs. The uniforms had once belonged
to an American boys youth squad. It was the latest
in a long line of slights and snubs for a
(12:40):
team on the cusp of a world championship. But most
of Acre's teammates didn't care. She didn't really care. They
were young and just happy to be playing, and they
hand me down uniforms were, if you can believe it,
a step up. Six years earlier, the US Soccer Federation
gave Acres and her teammates mismatched and numberless men's practice
(13:02):
jerseys for an international competition in Italy. We had to
sew the patches on um US soccer patch. It was
just kind of here you go. FIFA had brought the
eyes of the soccer world to southern China in the
fall of Still it wasn't anywhere near the gusto reserved
for the men's game. Remember, in nineteen FIFA demanded Argentina
(13:27):
install a new color TV transmission system to make sure
the World Cup and its sponsors looked perfect on TV.
Thirteen years later, FIFA couldn't have cared less what the
women were wearing. Still, a tournament of this size for
women and nominally backed by FIFA had never been attempted before.
(13:47):
It was remarkable for an organization that had not just
ignored the women's game, but, as the journalist Grant Wall
points out, actively worked to undermine it for decades and decades,
FIFA his view women soccer with total disdain. Until the
early nineteen eighties, FIFA had supported bands on women playing soccer,
(14:09):
both professionally and recreationally in countries like the UK, Germany
and Brazil. It's really shameful how long it took FIFA
to get on board with women's soccer. Sexism has long
been the status quo for the lords of soccer. By
the mid nineteen eighties, that began to change ever so
slightly when at the forty five FIFA Congress, Ellen Villy,
(14:34):
a Norwegian delegate, address soccer's governing body. She told FIFA
to stop ignoring the women's game. Surprisingly, President Joel Havlange
and General Secretary Set Bladder agreed. That's how the tournament
came about. With communist China desperate to host an international
(14:54):
sporting event and willing to put the cost. Havlang and
Bladder saw a payday for FIFA up with little to
no financial risk if it failed, which, let's be honest,
the man of FIFA half expected it to. The candy
maker Mars signed on as the sole sponsor. Today's game
is presented by Myers Milky Way Bar. Enjoy the smooth
(15:18):
chocolate and caramel taste of the original Smoothie. It should
come as no surprise that the chauvinistic, male dominated organization
that is FIFA had some irrational concerns about women's biological
sporting abilities. The man who ran FIFA thought the women
should use a smaller ball, believing grown women incapable of
(15:40):
handling a regulation size one. That plan was ultimately scrapped,
but FIFA did shorten the women's games from the traditional
ninety minutes down to eighty one. US player joked at
the time that FIFA was afraid their ovaries would fall out.
U S goalkeeper Mary Harvey, who would later be come
a senior FIFA official, never understood the decision. It didn't
(16:05):
make sense. Why are we playing any minutes games? I
played ninety minutes with my club. Why am I playing
eighty minutes here? And we are on the way as
the blast ball flash? Really is what the side up.
Throughout the tournament, the twelve teams dismantled the idea women
were unable to play the sport at a high level.
(16:25):
The final was no different. America's star forward Michelle Acres
is physical and aggressive style was particularly impressive. There we
see Michelle a first golf Don't watch the so dangerous
pour off the wall, fade on the ground and the
newcapy figure jump high in the air, redirect the ball
(16:46):
at the ball. What a fantastic goal. If you watch
the games, you heard the commentators constantly reinforcing the idea
that the women's game wasn't inferior, wasn't daintier, like so
many global soccer headlong belief place scrappy. Here in the
opening stages of this second half, as Michelle is getting
up off the ground, I believe it's the old knee
(17:07):
making contact with face and that spencer. Certainly both the
police that one bit, Both Norway and the US were
proving just how wrong soccer's ruling elite had long been.
Seconds left in this World Championship when the final whistle blew,
we wait simply for the whistle and the United States
I finally won a World champions Jeff in soccer, and
(17:31):
look at the chimlation chall le field. Back home, the
U S women's team was hailed as heroes and we're
quickly booked on pretty much every national TV show, and
they were welcomed home with a New York City ticker
tape parade. Yeah sorry, I might have gotten carried away
a bit. That's what should have happened, But that's not
(17:55):
what happened. Let me see, Michelle Akers did score two goals,
and they may Americans did win the tournament in China,
that's true, but there was no ticker tape parade or
TV network opportunities, just three journalists waiting for the team
at New York's JFK Airport. Money Nope, no fifty million
dollar payday like the men's champions Just five dollars for
(18:19):
the players who are out of college. And they couldn't
even claim a World Cup victory. FIFA refused to bestow
the title of World Cup on the women's tournament. No. Instead,
they went with this ridiculous and no doubt financially lucrative title.
It's the Feball Women's World Championship Finals for the Eminem's Gun.
(18:44):
Did you catch that? The first ever FIFA Women's World
Championship wasn't merely sponsored by Eminem's. The trophy was literally
called the Eminem's Cup. Delectable chocolate morsels that never melt
in your mouth. Eminem's maybe, but they are still candy.
It makes me want to throw up. But I also,
(19:07):
you know, shake my head. I'm like, gosh, just you know,
it's mind blowing, and but it's it's sort of um
humiliating in one sence too, and also just it's an
outrage to me. And but it's also like laughable. The
trophy's name hardly seems appropriate, especially compared to the religious
(19:30):
reverence the men's hardware has long been given. FIFA at
least had the good sense the craft the trophy in
the shape of a soccer ball instead of a miniature eminem.
But knowing FIFA, my guess is Mars just didn't pony
up enough cash. Whatever outrage they felt at the name,
Mary Harvey says she knew what she and her teammates
(19:51):
had accomplished as far as I was concerned, we had
won the World Cup. It just happened to be the
Women's World Cup, and what FIFA chooses to call it
or not call it was kind of their problem, not mine.
They were the type of parties where you sip top
(20:11):
shelf liquor while standing underneath a ten ft ice sculpture
and eating orders from a waitress that would be on
the cover of some fashion magazine in a few months.
These are the types of parties FIFA is known for,
and the types of parties Michelle Acres found herself attending
following Team America's victory that would be at these World
(20:32):
Cups or men's events and being treated kind of like
Royalty as the best women's soccer player in the world
and with an Umbro deal to prove it. Acres was
soccer Royalty, robbing elbows with the sports ruling elite as
they enjoyed the gluttony of FIFA's empire. Acres knew all
(20:52):
of the lords of soccer, most of them by first name,
Jal Horse, Franz, Chuck, and of course Sep. I would
be wearing a dress and you know, all these black
tie things, and they would stand there and look me
up and down, and then step he would come over
and he'd extend his hand and oh, Michelle, you look
so lovely. Can we see more? The leering, the suggestive comments,
(21:19):
the demeaning questions, they were all features of life inside
of FIFA's inner circle. I'm in the room and this
is their culture. So I accepted that part of it
to be in their culture to try and change it.
Access to the room, as Acres described it, allowed her
to see FIFA's outrageous wealth and culture up close, and
(21:43):
how it's fortune was shared with the men of the sport.
I started seeing everything the guys had and then what
we had. And when I said okay, well, we're going
to have that, and I didn't talk about it with
my team. I just did it. When it came to
funding the wins game, FIFA showed little interest in spreading
the wealth. It wasn't recruiting long term sponsors or cultivating
(22:06):
corporate partners like it was doing on the men's side.
US Soccer mimic FIFA's position, insisting it couldn't sell interest
in the women's game. The sponsorship opportunities, they said over
and over, just weren't there. And yet American officials still
demanded US female soccer players where Adida's gear at all
(22:26):
times without providing it like they did for the men.
The women were trapped in a contractual relationship that didn't
provide them with basic equipment and at the same time
limited their ability to pursue outside sponsorships. I said, guys,
they should be giving us cleats. If they're not going
(22:48):
to give us cleats, then they can't demand we wear
a brand. When I signed with Umbro, I came into
camp wearing Umbro stuff because they didn't give us anything
to wear. Then US Soccer got mad and said, no,
you can't do that, and I said, yes, I can
then give us gear to wear off the field, Whispers
(23:08):
that Acres was difficult A troublemaker soon followed. Younger teammates,
many of whom were still in college, were urged by
male US officials to keep their distance. God help them,
don't go near her, because you don't want any of
that rubbing off on you. Acres the line of attack
went wasn't standing up for her teammates, but selfishly promoting
(23:31):
her own Umbro contract over US Soccers deal with Adidas.
There was blowout from my team to me about that.
It was sort of seen as this, yeah, selfish kind
of act, rubbing in their face act, when it really wasn't.
As Women's World Cup approached, this have versus have not competition,
(23:55):
encouraged by the wealthy leaders of FIFA, would begin to
undermine Team USA's asked for a repeat championship. It was
just ten minutes into the much anticipated rematch, so it's
been a branch start for the Norwegians. When Norway's growth
(24:15):
set maneuvered and adjusted the ball ever so slightly along
the white corner arc, lining up a shot in the
opening minutes of the FIFA Women's World Cup semi final,
you could hear the importance of the moment as the
Americans set their defense against Norway's corner kick or what
(24:37):
a cola cake throw espath will take it? That you
could even hear the Americans talking so clearly in Sweden's
ros Valen Stadium is still surprising to me. To this dick,
what's the difficult one for the don't keeper? And it
said brow I had laid, I think it's It was
(24:58):
the biggest rivalry in FIFA's blossoming Women's World Cup tournament,
and the Swedish stadium was basically empty. The four thousand
or so spectators on hand were a far cry from
the sixty thousand who saw the US and Norraway play
in China four years earlier. If championship for the Eminem's
(25:21):
Cup was a massive step forward for the women's game,
tournament was easily two steps back, not only for the
U S side, which lost to their arch nemesis Norway
in the semifinals and the USA find themselves a girl behind,
but also for the women's game in general. Gone were
the pack Chinese stadiums were placed instead by a few
(25:43):
hundred family and friends in near empty Swedish venues. FIFA
had done little to invest in or grow the women's
game in the four years between the tournaments. In front
of the camera set Bladder love to praise the women's game.
The development of women's football since nine is tremendous. The
(26:06):
future of football will be feminine, and FIFA conferred the
title of a World Cup on the tournament, but not
much Ellens had improved. The US star Mia Ham joined
Michelle Eacres with a massive endorsement deal, landing Nike as
her financial backer, but the economics of the sport on
(26:28):
the whole still sucked for female soccer players in both
the US and around the world. Soccer was no road
to riches. It remains an economic sacrifice. Only a select
few were paid anything but a measly per diem. Women's
World Cup champions Norway received a ten thousand dollar a
(26:50):
year stipend from the Norwegian Soccer Federation. That's it. One
of their top players, Linda Madalin, survived by making a
living as a part time private investigator, earning the nickname
the Magnum p i of international soccer. And it was
just as bad for the Americans. Most of them were
still largely living off of their meager daily food per
(27:11):
diem at a thirty dollar a day stipend his compensation
for lost wages. America in Norway were the two biggest
brands in women's soccer, and they were playing too empty
seats and paint out of their own pockets to do it.
Behind the scenes, the women's team were pressing for a
new labor contract with US Soccer, and this is why
(27:34):
the team said they lost. They were too focused on
fighting for better treatment to focus on the game. As
the Olympics approached, the leaders of the women's national team
said they would not go to Atlanta without first inking
a better financial deal. Even before the fax machine started
(28:00):
eeping and slowly churning out the offer sheet, the stars
of the U S women's national team knew what it
would say. Michelle Acres, Mia Ham, Julie Faulty, Christine Lily
and Joy Faucet had been negotiating, really battling with soccer
officials for better resources for nearly a decade. Akers remembers,
(28:21):
we just want to be the best in the world.
We want to have the best coaches, we want to
have the best training environments, we want to have the
best gear. We want to play in the best tournaments.
We want to develop as athletes, we want that same opportunity.
So to me, it was all about gaining equal access
to that. But this offer, now staring them in black
(28:45):
and white, was as disappointing as it was unacceptable. Win
gold at Atlanta Olympics or get nothing, no bonus for silver,
and certainly no money for bronze. It was in stark
contrast to the men's deal, which paid out bonuses for
each win, and the men they weren't even expected to meddle.
(29:12):
Olympics may not have officially been a FIFA event, but
US Soccer was a FIFA member. The decision by the
Lords of Soccer to limit financial support to the women's
game set the tone for all soccer federations. It allowed
you a soccer to cry poverty when it came to
the women's team, while at the same time ramping up
spending on the men's side. It was a particularly unequal
(29:36):
system since the US women's side had established itself as
the premier team in the world. Former U S goalkeeper
Mary Harvey says the team felt second class. It hurts
sometimes when we saw things that, you know, no matter
what kind of what we did, we didn't see the
economic benefit of it. By the time the contract offer
(29:57):
came in, Acres and her teammates had had enough. We need,
you know, basic things that the men's team had had
for a long time, and US Soccer said no. With
the Atlanta Olympics just months away, for the first time,
the US women had leverage, their leverage the star players,
(30:19):
Mary Harvey remembers they took the lead in the negotiations.
The players who were starting, players who had more leverage
than the rest of us. Did this on behalf of
all of us because they wanted us to have better conditions.
Starting midfielder Julie Faudy reviewed the offer. She crossed out
the Olympic bonus, clauses and facts back the contract. The
(30:42):
message was simple, do better pay us what we're worth.
Like FIFA, US Soccer had never really contemplated what women's
soccer was worth. The women's side was viewed as a
financial drain, and so in retaliation for using its offer,
US Soccer canceled the team's flights to an upcoming training camp,
(31:06):
locking out the nine most important players on the U
S women's team. US Soccer then went on the offensive
in the media, attacking the stars of the team. They
tried everything they could to demean us and basically called
us little girls. The women held strong. US Soccer wanted gold,
(31:28):
they needed it, and eventually they caved a green, not
only to provide bonuses for gold, silver, and bronze, but
also agreeing to provide pregnancy leave and nanny's for players
with small children. US Soccer realized they couldn't bully us
are intimidate. It was going to be a bigger game
(31:48):
than just these little girls acting out. This is going
to be a legal battle against giants. Ironically, US Soccer
was rewarded with something far later than just a gold medal,
which the US women won. Seventy six thousand rabbid and
passionate fans were on hand to watch the US women's game,
(32:09):
proving there was a gigantic, untapped market for women's soccer.
Here's Mary Harvey. We weren't a curtain raiser, we were
the event. That's a big deal, and people was there.
FIFA saw that. On June the traffic on the Jersey
(32:35):
Turnpike was brutal, even worse than usual. When Team USA's
bus did move, it was only a few feet at
a time. Jolting forward and then jerking to a stop.
The team was anxious to get to New Jersey's Meadowlands
Stadium for the first game of the World Cup. They
had spent the last year training and doing every TV
(32:56):
interview and commercial they could to sell ticket and build anticipation.
Corporate America had noticed, and the stars of the team
were everywhere. I could be champion of Women's World Cup Soccer.
I can be a goal like soccer or power power.
Are you ready for Women's World Cup Soccer? Brought to
(33:21):
you by Blood Light. After the heroics of the Olympics,
interest in women's soccer had surged. FIFA, however, remain skeptical
that a Women's World Cup could attract global attention. So
we were up against the prejudice, an old way of thinking.
That's Donna Dave Verona, a former Olympic swimmer and chair
(33:43):
of the Women's World Cup organizing Committee. That's skepticism from
FIFA weighed on the players who remembered the empty stadiums
four years earlier in Sweden. As they pulled into the
Meadowlands parking lot. They couldn't believe their eyes. Americans are
(34:04):
cheering on this team in this sport unlike just about
any other. They heard the screams of go USA and
of we love you, Mia, Mia worship, and then saw
thousands of fans primed and ready to go, young girls
and white women's jerseys, not just soccer moms and their
(34:26):
kids attending games, teenage boys with their shirts off and
Team USA painted across their chests. Take by the opening
match was a sellout. Seventy seven thousand fans filled the stadium,
and the excitement only grew as Team USA kept scoring
(34:55):
Christy in winning. In the summer of the sports world
was consumed by the Women's World Cup, not just the
U S team, but the entire slate of matches. The
average attendance for the thirty two games was thirty seven
(35:17):
thousand fans, with more than seventy eight thousand on hand
to watch Mexico in Brazil. By comparison, a year earlier
in France, the average attendance at the Men's World Cup
was roughly forty three thousand people per match. By any measure,
this was a success, But these crowds at Women's World Cup,
(35:41):
they almost didn't happen. The international organization that governed soccer, FIFA,
George stadiums would be half empty. Stephen Vanderpool, the head
of media relations for the Women's World Cup, told me
FIFA didn't believe there was any real interest. FIFA envisioned
a smaller event, a tournament that was held in smaller stadiums,
(36:05):
basically in the eastern part of the United States. Thankfully,
the people that were involved with the big committee for
the Women's World Cup and the people that ran it
had worked on the ninety World Cup for the men
and knew what was possible. FIFA didn't believe women's soccer
players could draw sizeable crowds. The lords of soccer wanted
(36:28):
a safe event in small five to ten thousand seed stadiums,
definitely not New Jersey's massive meadowlands or California's Grand Canyon
like Rose Bowl. World Cup organizers like Donna Dave Verona
instead bet big and ignored FIVA, believing the interest was there.
(36:49):
I think it has to do with chauvinism and the
fact that the FIFA membership wants to protect the men's game,
and some of them felt if the women encroach on
the game, it somehow undermines the credibility of the men's game.
FIFA didn't argue or try to stop them, but they
(37:11):
didn't do much to help either. The American public believed
in US, but a lot of the top sponsors didn't.
Even as ticket sales were steadily growing in the months
before the opening game, FIFA's powerful marketing arm once again
stayed on the sidelines, unwilling to help the women's brand,
and let's be honest, probably leaving money on the table.
(37:31):
We had to really struggle with the sponsors to get
them to activate the sponsorship. Many didn't. They just didn't
believe we could do it. Some global brands like McDonalds, Fuji,
and Gillette ultimately did sign up as advertisers, but reluctantly,
and even when they did sign sponsorship deals, they went small.
That was a mistake, Vanderpool says. When we sold out
(37:55):
the opening game, I think it was such an eye
opener to everybody in the world. By the time the
tournament got underway, the brench of World Cup fever has
reached a crescendo. In just three short weeks. Everyone was
scrambling to find ways to ride the wave of anticipation.
Even ESPN and ABC, FIFA's official broadcast partners, had to
(38:19):
rework their TV schedules to capitalize on the interests. This
is the biggest game in the lives of these USA players,
and you could say that for China to US an
what in front of a record ninety thousand fans Women's
World Cup Final was nothing short of extraordinary. Acres Michelle
(38:42):
Acres cuts to land, but it's right at Gohl and
yes she can score from there. Exciting, hard fought one
hundred and twenty minutes of utterly gripping athleticism, played under
the hot California's son and the historic Rose Bowl Stadium,
and it would end in one of the most spectacular
moments in sports history. Refereece just looked at the watch.
(39:08):
That's it the winner. I'll be Women's World Cup will
be sited on pedalt kicks. When the whistle blew, the
game was tied nil nil, one by one China in
the US came to the line to take their penalty kicks.
They found themselves tied once again, four to four, with
(39:29):
a single US player left to take her shot. Chat
Stain will take it. She missed a penalty kick against
charlat Pump and they lost that air. Then Brandy Chastain
just drilled the penalty kick past China's golding Chastain, sprinted
(39:50):
and then dropped to her knees, ripping off her jersey
and flexing her arms in an explosion of pure celebration.
It is to this day one of the most iconic moments,
not just in women's sports, but in all of sports.
Women's World Cup was a success. It's set records and
(40:12):
both live attendance and TV audience, and it even turned
a profit of four million dollars on a paltry thirty
million dollar budget. Still, while FIFA President Set Bladder was ecstatic,
Donna Dave Verona said some FIFA members still refused to
believe there was a market for women's soccer outside of
(40:33):
the US. They wouldn't believe their own eyes. Some of
the FIFA members says, after we sold it out and
it was so exciting. Not in my country. This is
not going to happen in my country. The photos had
(40:56):
all the blood and gore of a crime scene. In
one photo, shins with the skin sheared off. In another,
a once white Nike sock saturated with blood from knee
to ankle. The photos had been tweeted out in two
thousand and thirteen by American Sydney LaRue in Australian Sam Kerr,
(41:19):
two of the best female soccer players in the world.
To say they were angry, it would be an understatement.
Some of the world's top female soccer players are fuming
they may have to play on artificial grass and next
year's Women's World Cup finals in Canada. Canada had been
awarded the upcoming two thousand and fifteen Women's World Cup
and FIFA had approved a decision to play most of
(41:41):
the games not on grass but on synthetic skin ripping,
blood inducing plastic turf. Players like all time leading US
score Abby Wombach were piste and speaking out should be
grass names, not blood. It was almost twenty five years
since the first women's tournament in China, and once again
(42:02):
the women's side was having to speak out about unequal treatment.
The stars of the women's game rightfully argued that men
would never be subjected to a plane surface as harsh
as turf. It is a gender equality issue. No chance
would the men ever play a World Cup on turf,
and I think that the women are being treated as
guinea pigs. FIVA remained unmoved by the social media pressure,
(42:27):
and in two thousand and fourteen, eighty one players from
more than a dozen countries sued FIFA in the Canadian
Soccer Federation for gender discrimination. It was the type of
bad pr FIFA's embattled but all powerful president set Bladders
didn't need, with the rumors of vote buying, bribery and
corruption and a US federal probe swirling around, and there
(42:49):
was an easy fix. For a couple of million dollars,
Canada's skin ripping artificial fields could be retrofitted and replaced
by soft, lush, safe grass. FIFA had made a profit
of four billion dollars on the previous two thousand and
fourteen Men's World Cup in Brazil and had billions in
the bank. Money wasn't the issue. Sexism was. The Men's
(43:13):
World Cup was given brand new stadiums, brand new venues
around Brazil, and all we're asking is for a great
circuit plan. Fighting the women on this issue seems such
a tone deaf, short sighted decision, especially for Bladder, who
had long prided himself as the original supporter inside FIFA
of the women's game. Women's football is definitely my wouldn't
(43:38):
say my baby, but I considered myself a little bit
as a good father of the organization of women's football
in FIFA. As an organization, FIFA had spent most of
the last four decades short changing the women's game. Still,
Mary Harvey, the U S women's goalie in the early
who lived through years of pathetic resources, remembers as often
(44:01):
the lone voice of support for the women's competition. You know,
I saw Bladder do some things that helped advance woman's football.
After her playing career wrapped up, Harvey joined FIFA in
two thousand and three as the Director of Development and
remembers pushing for the creation of an under seventeen women's
World Cup like the men had. I went into the
(44:23):
President's office and lobbied for it. Bladder not only listened,
but decided seemingly unilaterally to follow Harvey's advice and announced
his decision at an executive committee meeting. We're doing this.
Anybody object when the FIFA president says that, right, who's
dumb enough to actually open their mouth and say something?
Answers nobody, But I mean that's an example of where
(44:45):
he said we're doing this. Donna Dave Verona, the chair
of Women's World Cup, also remembers Bladder as someone who
could plant a seed of an idea within FIFA and
make it happen. Step had his negative aspects, but he
he was a vision narry. He wasn't afraid to say
that stuff. So he planted a seed. But were they
(45:05):
going to be a thousand percent behind it and put
the money where the math is? No. At the same time,
Bladder would also make public comments that would undermine the
women's game, as he did in two thousand and four.
Recently he was asked how should women's soccer be made
more popular? He said, well, they should wear shorts or shorts.
If Bladder and FIFA wanted to make the changes to
(45:27):
Canada's field turf, it would have happened, but it didn't,
and instead FIFA threatened to suspend any player who challenged
in court FIFA's artificial turf mandate. The women dropped the
lawsuit and FIFA agreed in the future never to host
a tournament on artificial grass. It was a small consolation
(45:47):
for the players who still had to face plastic fields
and bloody kneecaps. After seventeen years at the helm of
international soccer, it's hard to know where set Bladder begins
and FIFA ends. The two had been intimately linked for decades.
(46:09):
FIFA was his baby. Nowhere was this more true, says
journalist Grant Wall, than on the women's side of the sport.
He takes a lot of pride in the role that
he had and created the first Women's World Cup hosted
by FIFA. But FIFA had done a terrible job with
women's soccer over the decades. Then, almost overnight, Bladder was gone,
(46:30):
pushed out by the sports sponsors in two thousand and fifteen,
under a shadow of corruption. FIFA president Set Bladder has resigned.
With Bladder gone, and after more than a dozen senior
soccer officials were indicted by the U S Department of Justice,
there was optimism this would lead to a new attitude
within FIFA on issues of equality. Former U S star
(46:53):
turned TV analyst Julie Foudy tweeted, quote, Hallelujah, Set Bladder
is out. Unquote. The US star Carly Lloyd was optimistic
that decades of sexism and organizational inequality might soon be
a thing of the past. I think it's going to
be really really good for our game, and I think
the next leader um person in charge really needs to
(47:17):
step in and create equal rights for men and women.
FIFA does have a new human rights policy and a
female General secretary. However, when Bladder's replacement, Gianni Infantino, stepped
forward to present the US women their World Cup trophy
in France in two thousand nineteen, a deluge of booze
rained down on him. Fans were angry at the seemingly endless,
(47:46):
crappy treatment women suffered at FIFA's hands. Little it seems
has changed. Corruption is still a problem at FIFA, and
as Mary Harvey pointed out, it's not just what the
corrupt FIFA members did with the money, that's what they
didn't do. I mean, I got pretty angry because you've
been told your whole life women's football candid this, or
(48:08):
you can't have that because there's no money. And then
one day you lift the veil and see what people
were doing with the money. It makes you pretty angry.
As journalist Grant Wall explains, the issues of inequality within
FIFA remain pronounced. The legacy of all of that is
still there today, where FIFA likes to say it's enlightened
today about women's soccer, but these entrenched attitudes from men
(48:32):
inside FIFA towards the sport of women's soccer are still there.
I'm told FIFA has significantly increased the prize money for
the women's game, setting aside thirty million dollars for the
two thousand and nineteen Women's World Cup. As the winners,
the US team walked away with a four million dollar
pay day, more than double the two thousand fifteen award
(48:56):
and a massive step forward from the pay to play
days of their es, but it's still a paltry amount
compared to the men whose prize pool in two thousand
and eighteen was four hundred million dollars, with the French
team earning a staggering thirty eight million dollars for its victory.
(49:17):
FIFA's attitude has long been the men's World Cup makes
more money and they should enjoy a larger payday. However,
FIFA is a nonprofit and it's mandate is the support
soccer around the world. That mandate doesn't distinguish between the
men's game and the women's game. Increasingly, FIFA is out
(49:37):
of step with the sporting world. Many other nonprofits that
oversee both men's and women's sports, particularly in tennis, I've
already started to even out prize money Wimbledon, the French Open,
the US Open. There's a business case to be made
to invest more in women's soccer. The Men's World Cup
is likely only to grow incrementally in the future. It's
(50:00):
already a ratings behemoth. However, there's a lot of growth
left on the women's side. Want proof. In two thousand
and twenty two, fans crowded into camp No Stadium in
Barcelona for a semifinal match between Barcelona and Wolfsburg, breaking
the record set back in at the Women's World Cup final.
(50:24):
Barcelona FC has poured money into their women's team and
the results speak for themselves. Serious investment by others would
likely lead to greater revenues, which FIFA should one. There's
still a lot of frustration in the women's soccer community
that not only did FIFA not support women soccer for decades,
(50:46):
there's still not doing nearly enough to make the Women's
World Cup into the type of money making extravaganza that
they did with the Men's World Cup. However, Gianni Infantino
is just as dismissed of the women's game as his
predecessors were defending the pay and balance by sarcastically saying
(51:06):
maybe one day women's football will generate more than men's football.
Not only is that unlikely to happen given the sheer
popularity of a men's game, but FIFA and its regional
partners around the world are still actively working to prevent
any real investment in the women's sport. Local federations like Conka,
Caffe or come Bowl or only asked to spend fIF
(51:30):
of the nine million dollar global development budget on the
women's game. Mary Harvey, the former US goalie and FIFA
development official, belies FIFA should have treated the women's game
in the late nine nineties similar to a growth stock
like Google or Amazon. I think it could be much bigger,
or it could have been bigger faster if maybe it
(51:52):
had been treated as a high growth opportunity earlier. FIFA,
though a humble nonprofit on paper, has proven at the
end of the day, it cares most about maximizing profit,
so it's never too late to embrace that investment strategy.
It's very clear that FIFA is leaving money on the table.
They haven't maximized what's out there potentially for the Women's
(52:16):
World Cup and in the sport on a regular basis.
I think Mary Harvey said it best. A corrupt organization
busy stuffing money into its suit pockets is not investing
wisely in the future. But that can change. The potential
growth on the women's side is not just in revenue,
but in goodwill, in karma. FIFA, bruised and battered by scandal,
(52:41):
has a chance to do the right thing in a
global way. That's not just good public relations, it's just
playing good and that, more than anything, is what the
beautiful game needs now. And the thing is, the calls
for change aren't going to stop. In February of two
thousand and twenty two, US Soccer and the women's national
(53:03):
team reached an agreement to pay four million dollars in
back pay and to close the pay gap between the
men's and women's sides. The agreement settles a gender discrimination
lawsuit filed in two thousand and nineteen, and it puts
the onus on FIFA to either equalize pay between the
men's and women's teams or force the US men's side
(53:26):
to take a pay cut to make up the gap,
though it remains to be seen how this will play out.
This kind of pressure is needed, Michelle Laker says, to
force FIFA to reckon with its past discrimination of women.
They should be uncomfortable, they should change, and I shouldn't
have to ask for that. Change doesn't happen unless it
(53:48):
makes people uncomfortable, unless it's demanded, unless it's radicalized. Almost
you have to force change. You can't be nice about
asking for equality. For me to even say ask for
equality is just ridiculous. On the next episode of the
(54:11):
Lords of Soccer, the eyes of the world are on Qatar,
the host of the two thousand and twenty two Men's
World Cup. The tiny nation is furiously building infrastructure to
handle the tournament, but at a horrific cost. Is FIFA
ready to own up to the scandal in the desert?
(54:33):
The Lords of Soccer, How FIFA Stole the Beautiful Game
is an Inside Voices Media production in conjunction with I
Heart Radio. The series was written and executive produced by
Gary Scott and me Connor Powell. Logan Heftel and Katie
mcmurran provided the sound design with assistance from j. C.
Swaddick and Jake blue Note. Alec Cowen is our associate producer,
(54:57):
and Jeffrey Katz was our story editor. Fact checker is
Alexa O'Brien, and thanks to Miles Gray, who produced the
series for I Heart Radio. If you have any comments
or questions, please reach out. You can find us on Twitter.
I'm at Connor M. Powell and Gary is at Gary
Robert Scott and if you have any stories about FIFA,
(55:20):
let us know. If you like what you hear, please
give us a shout out at the hashtag Lords of
Soccer
It's nothing new that women in sport are treated unequally
and face an uphill battle against sexism. But the stunning
success of the U s women's soccer team offered FIFA
a roadmap to a better way of doing business, a
cleaner way, a less corrupt way, a more fair way.
They didn't embrace it, but women's soccer still offers FIFA
(00:24):
a chance to crow out of its dark past, the
hope for a better tomorrow. That's what today's story is
all about. I'm Connor Powell. This is Episode eleven Equal Footing.
In May of two thousand and thirteen, the lords of
(00:46):
Soccer gathered on the remote island nation of Mauritius off
the coast of Africa for the sixty third FIFA Congress.
The meeting opened with a sixteen minute long series of
dazzling and colorful choreographed international music performances befitting of the
most ambitious of Broadway shows. Then set Bladder was called
(01:07):
upon to officially open the meeting. Gives you a great
pleasure and on a ladies and gentlemen, to now call
upon the president of the organization that has been referred
to as the guardian of our most precious game. The
presidents of FIFA Joseph S. Blatter to officially welcome all
of us yeah around of applause, describing set Bladder at
(01:29):
that moment as the guardian of soccer was ironic at best.
Welcome to the delegates to these sixty third Congress of FIFA.
On st bladders watch, FIFA had stumbled from scandal to scandal,
and as president, Bladder was awfully close to the center
of many of the accusations. As those bosses gathered in Mauritius,
(01:53):
the stink of corruption had only grown stronger. In recent years.
Bladder and FIFA felt grown in pressure to institute reforms
or you know, at least look like they were. So.
After one hundred and nine years, the lords of soccer
decided it was time to allow women into the club.
(02:13):
The plan was to elect a few ladies, as Bladder
like to say, to FIFA's executive Committee, and get a
much needed public relations win. But Bladder, with his proclivity
for making inappropriate comments, couldn't even execute this pr stunt.
In his attempt to praise Australian Moya Dodd, one of
(02:33):
the three female candidates up for election to FIFA's Executive Committee,
Bladder found a way to offend. You have a Condi
date and the good Condi date, and the good looking
Condi date. As Bladder giggled about Moya Dodd's looks, the
camera cut to Maria Dodd, who maintained a stone like stair,
(02:56):
you know, the type you put on when you're seething
with rage inside, but you don't want to show it.
And FIFA's president wasn't done putting his foot in his mouth,
though sadly there's no audio of this moment. After Dodd,
Lydia in Secara, and Sonya Benami were officially named to
FIFA's Executive Committee, Bladder stood at the podium and yelled
(03:19):
say something, ladies. You're always speaking at home, Now you
can speak here. It was typical Bladder and typical FIFA.
Even when seeming to do the right thing, it became
clear FIFA was doing it for all the wrong reasons.
As a global nonprofit, FIFA's mandate is to support soccer
(03:40):
around the globe, not just a men's game, but also
the women's. Of course, it's always put the men's game first.
FIFA did organize the first Women's World Championship tournament, in
sixty one years after the first Men's World Cup. That
nineteen tournament has been described by some as a silent trigger,
(04:04):
one that said in motion the modern women's game, and
there's some truth to that. In two thousand and nineteen,
more than a billion people around the world watched some
of the Women's World Cup, and that is a massively
forward compared to that tournament that was only carried live
in China and on tape delay in the US. But
(04:25):
the road to today's women's game is marked by decades
of sexism and shortsighted greediness. You're gonna hear about how
FIFA created and maintains the system that has forced women
to battle and claw for the scraps of FIFA's largest
all while the lords of soccer enriched themselves. It was
(04:53):
a run of the mill conference room, you know the
type with rows of foldable chairs and tables call fee
on the back. The room was full of sports apparel executives,
everyone hoping to strike a deal. In the months before
the FIFA Women's World Championship. That nondescript conference room is
(05:14):
where Michelle Acres found herself on a stage in Arizona,
in front of the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. I went
and said, hey, we need your support. Years old. At
the time, Acres was already one of the top women's
players in the world, probably the best. At nearly six
(05:35):
ft tall, Acres ruled the soccer pitch, playing as physically
dominant a game as anyone man or woman in the sport.
Yet Acres was a virtual unknown. Support and commercial opportunities
for the women's game were non existent. FIFA and its
regional federations had ignored women's soccer for decades, and as
(05:58):
a result, so did pretty much everyone else in the sport,
especially the sports marketing and apparel companies. Even though the
U S national team had just qualified for the World
Championship in China a few months later, Acres was struggling financially,
like all the women in the sport. Acres bagged the
(06:18):
suits in the room to support her, her teammates and
Team America. She told me, she pleaded, please invest in
women's soccer. We need us soccer. We need all the
corporations and people in soccer to support our team because
we're gonna go win a World Cup. And they laugh.
(06:38):
There was nothing funny about it, and nothing funny about
how ill equipped in cash strapped the U S women's
team was a few months before Acres launched her police
for help, she and her team had traveled to Haiti
desperately poor, politically chaotic, and dangerously unsafe. Haiti, the Caribbean nation,
was in the midst of year of political upheaval that
(07:01):
included assassinations and coups, but Conka Calf, FIFA's North American Federation,
shrugged off the dangers and decided to hold its qualifying
matches for FIFA Women's World Championship on the troubled island.
Acre says, it was as awful an experience as you
might expect. Even now, it's hard for me to believe
(07:24):
anyone in soccer thought Haiti was an appropriate place to
hold an international tournament, let alone the first women's qualifying tournament.
We stayed at this hotel that was surrounded by really
high cement wall, like maybe twenty ft high, with broken
glass and stuff at the top. The water was off
(07:48):
on and off all the time, electricity was on and
off all the time, and of course you couldn't drink
the water. We basically jumped in the pool like after
practices to shower. At this time, most of the top
male soccer players in the world were earning millions in
salaries and sponsorships. With a mere fifteen dollar a day
(08:09):
per diem and a thousand dollars a month stipend, Acres
and her teammates were literally playing for the love of
the game and the flag on their chests. But as
bad as the rundown hotel in Haiti was, the trip
to the stadium was even worse. We had these like
they're kind of like those kind of tourists buses that
(08:32):
hotels have that kind of take you from the airport
to the you know, hotel. That's what we had to
go to our games. So we're all stuffed on this
bus thing, uh gelopi bus thing, and all our gear
was like thrown on top of the bus like you
know Griswold station wagon. And we had guards hanging on
(08:52):
the sides of the bus with these huge automatic weapons,
and the people were like grabbing the bus and sucking
the bus and shaking. It was so it was scary.
Now FIFA treated all of the women's teams around the
globe like garbage. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, there
was no money for the women's game. But you might
(09:15):
think that the U S team, based in the largest
economy in the world would be given additional resources. That's America, right,
But they didn't. Everyone under FIFA's umbrella, from the regional
organizations to the advertisers to the government, they all refused
to cough up any money. And whatever American patriotism existed
(09:38):
in that Arizona conference room, it didn't extend to the
U S women's national team. Everyone ignored Acres except no
one believed except for one guy. That one guy was
Mike Hoban, vice president of soccer promotions at Umbro. What's Umbro?
(09:58):
If you're old enough, you might remember Umbro from your childhood.
In the nineteen eighties, it seemed like everyone had a
pair of their brightly colored nylon draw strings soccer shorts.
After a mildly successful pro soccer career in the nineteen seventies,
Hoban knew all about struggling financially to play the game
you love, Mick Hoeban gave me his card and said,
(10:22):
I'm with Umbro. I want to sign you. Umbro, which
sponsored the Brazilian legend Pelee, signed Acres to a major deal,
the first ever for a female soccer player and for
the first time in her career. Acre says she didn't
have to worry about money. She wasn't rich, but she
wasn't struggling either. But but, but but she was literally
(10:46):
the only woman in who could say that, and Acres
his financial success was completely due to Mick Hoban's personal interest,
not any of the lords of soccer who controlled the
sport or anyone else. And it with the first FIFA
Women's World Championship right around the corner, it looked like
the safe might be cracking. The money men who had
(11:09):
so long ignored the women's game might be ready to
make an investment. Welcome to China and a truly historic occasion.
With Chinese pop music blaring, Tianni Stadium and the busy
metropolis of quang Chu was buzzing. Sixty fans stopping, cheering
(11:32):
and yelling, It had all the trappions of a World
Cup final on the field. Pale always the ambassador for
the beautiful game. Welcome the two teams. It's the FEBA
Women's World Championship Final. For the eminem's gun, It's the
United States versus Norway. The presence of the greatest soccer
player ever only added to the pageantry and spectacle of
(11:56):
the moment. As the U S women took the pitch,
their white Adida's uniforms gleamed under the stadium's lights. With
the red and blue stripes, there was no doubt Team
America had arrived. Look a little closer at the photos
from the match, though, and you'll see how ill fitting
the uniforms really were. They were baggy and long. The
(12:19):
sleeves were designed for athletes with far broader shoulders than
any of the US players. Oh, there were guys uniforms.
They were from the guys team. The US women's team
were wearing hand me downs. The uniforms had once belonged
to an American boys youth squad. It was the latest
in a long line of slights and snubs for a
(12:40):
team on the cusp of a world championship. But most
of Acre's teammates didn't care. She didn't really care. They
were young and just happy to be playing, and they
hand me down uniforms were, if you can believe it,
a step up. Six years earlier, the US Soccer Federation
gave Acres and her teammates mismatched and numberless men's practice
(13:02):
jerseys for an international competition in Italy. We had to
sew the patches on um US soccer patch. It was
just kind of here you go. FIFA had brought the
eyes of the soccer world to southern China in the
fall of Still it wasn't anywhere near the gusto reserved
for the men's game. Remember, in nineteen FIFA demanded Argentina
(13:27):
install a new color TV transmission system to make sure
the World Cup and its sponsors looked perfect on TV.
Thirteen years later, FIFA couldn't have cared less what the
women were wearing. Still, a tournament of this size for
women and nominally backed by FIFA had never been attempted before.
(13:47):
It was remarkable for an organization that had not just
ignored the women's game, but, as the journalist Grant Wall
points out, actively worked to undermine it for decades and decades,
FIFA his view women soccer with total disdain. Until the
early nineteen eighties, FIFA had supported bands on women playing soccer,
(14:09):
both professionally and recreationally in countries like the UK, Germany
and Brazil. It's really shameful how long it took FIFA
to get on board with women's soccer. Sexism has long
been the status quo for the lords of soccer. By
the mid nineteen eighties, that began to change ever so
slightly when at the forty five FIFA Congress, Ellen Villy,
(14:34):
a Norwegian delegate, address soccer's governing body. She told FIFA
to stop ignoring the women's game. Surprisingly, President Joel Havlange
and General Secretary Set Bladder agreed. That's how the tournament
came about. With communist China desperate to host an international
(14:54):
sporting event and willing to put the cost. Havlang and
Bladder saw a payday for FIFA up with little to
no financial risk if it failed, which, let's be honest,
the man of FIFA half expected it to. The candy
maker Mars signed on as the sole sponsor. Today's game
is presented by Myers Milky Way Bar. Enjoy the smooth
(15:18):
chocolate and caramel taste of the original Smoothie. It should
come as no surprise that the chauvinistic, male dominated organization
that is FIFA had some irrational concerns about women's biological
sporting abilities. The man who ran FIFA thought the women
should use a smaller ball, believing grown women incapable of
(15:40):
handling a regulation size one. That plan was ultimately scrapped,
but FIFA did shorten the women's games from the traditional
ninety minutes down to eighty one. US player joked at
the time that FIFA was afraid their ovaries would fall out.
U S goalkeeper Mary Harvey, who would later be come
a senior FIFA official, never understood the decision. It didn't
(16:05):
make sense. Why are we playing any minutes games? I
played ninety minutes with my club. Why am I playing
eighty minutes here? And we are on the way as
the blast ball flash? Really is what the side up.
Throughout the tournament, the twelve teams dismantled the idea women
were unable to play the sport at a high level.
(16:25):
The final was no different. America's star forward Michelle Acres
is physical and aggressive style was particularly impressive. There we
see Michelle a first golf Don't watch the so dangerous
pour off the wall, fade on the ground and the
newcapy figure jump high in the air, redirect the ball
(16:46):
at the ball. What a fantastic goal. If you watch
the games, you heard the commentators constantly reinforcing the idea
that the women's game wasn't inferior, wasn't daintier, like so
many global soccer headlong belief place scrappy. Here in the
opening stages of this second half, as Michelle is getting
up off the ground, I believe it's the old knee
(17:07):
making contact with face and that spencer. Certainly both the
police that one bit, Both Norway and the US were
proving just how wrong soccer's ruling elite had long been.
Seconds left in this World Championship when the final whistle blew,
we wait simply for the whistle and the United States
I finally won a World champions Jeff in soccer, and
(17:31):
look at the chimlation chall le field. Back home, the
U S women's team was hailed as heroes and we're
quickly booked on pretty much every national TV show, and
they were welcomed home with a New York City ticker
tape parade. Yeah sorry, I might have gotten carried away
a bit. That's what should have happened, But that's not
(17:55):
what happened. Let me see, Michelle Akers did score two goals,
and they may Americans did win the tournament in China,
that's true, but there was no ticker tape parade or
TV network opportunities, just three journalists waiting for the team
at New York's JFK Airport. Money Nope, no fifty million
dollar payday like the men's champions Just five dollars for
(18:19):
the players who are out of college. And they couldn't
even claim a World Cup victory. FIFA refused to bestow
the title of World Cup on the women's tournament. No. Instead,
they went with this ridiculous and no doubt financially lucrative title.
It's the Feball Women's World Championship Finals for the Eminem's Gun.
(18:44):
Did you catch that? The first ever FIFA Women's World
Championship wasn't merely sponsored by Eminem's. The trophy was literally
called the Eminem's Cup. Delectable chocolate morsels that never melt
in your mouth. Eminem's maybe, but they are still candy.
It makes me want to throw up. But I also,
(19:07):
you know, shake my head. I'm like, gosh, just you know,
it's mind blowing, and but it's it's sort of um
humiliating in one sence too, and also just it's an
outrage to me. And but it's also like laughable. The
trophy's name hardly seems appropriate, especially compared to the religious
(19:30):
reverence the men's hardware has long been given. FIFA at
least had the good sense the craft the trophy in
the shape of a soccer ball instead of a miniature eminem.
But knowing FIFA, my guess is Mars just didn't pony
up enough cash. Whatever outrage they felt at the name,
Mary Harvey says she knew what she and her teammates
(19:51):
had accomplished as far as I was concerned, we had
won the World Cup. It just happened to be the
Women's World Cup, and what FIFA chooses to call it
or not call it was kind of their problem, not mine.
They were the type of parties where you sip top
(20:11):
shelf liquor while standing underneath a ten ft ice sculpture
and eating orders from a waitress that would be on
the cover of some fashion magazine in a few months.
These are the types of parties FIFA is known for,
and the types of parties Michelle Acres found herself attending
following Team America's victory that would be at these World
(20:32):
Cups or men's events and being treated kind of like
Royalty as the best women's soccer player in the world
and with an Umbro deal to prove it. Acres was
soccer Royalty, robbing elbows with the sports ruling elite as
they enjoyed the gluttony of FIFA's empire. Acres knew all
(20:52):
of the lords of soccer, most of them by first name,
Jal Horse, Franz, Chuck, and of course Sep. I would
be wearing a dress and you know, all these black
tie things, and they would stand there and look me
up and down, and then step he would come over
and he'd extend his hand and oh, Michelle, you look
so lovely. Can we see more? The leering, the suggestive comments,
(21:19):
the demeaning questions, they were all features of life inside
of FIFA's inner circle. I'm in the room and this
is their culture. So I accepted that part of it
to be in their culture to try and change it.
Access to the room, as Acres described it, allowed her
to see FIFA's outrageous wealth and culture up close, and
(21:43):
how it's fortune was shared with the men of the sport.
I started seeing everything the guys had and then what
we had. And when I said okay, well, we're going
to have that, and I didn't talk about it with
my team. I just did it. When it came to
funding the wins game, FIFA showed little interest in spreading
the wealth. It wasn't recruiting long term sponsors or cultivating
(22:06):
corporate partners like it was doing on the men's side.
US Soccer mimic FIFA's position, insisting it couldn't sell interest
in the women's game. The sponsorship opportunities, they said over
and over, just weren't there. And yet American officials still
demanded US female soccer players where Adida's gear at all
(22:26):
times without providing it like they did for the men.
The women were trapped in a contractual relationship that didn't
provide them with basic equipment and at the same time
limited their ability to pursue outside sponsorships. I said, guys,
they should be giving us cleats. If they're not going
(22:48):
to give us cleats, then they can't demand we wear
a brand. When I signed with Umbro, I came into
camp wearing Umbro stuff because they didn't give us anything
to wear. Then US Soccer got mad and said, no,
you can't do that, and I said, yes, I can
then give us gear to wear off the field, Whispers
(23:08):
that Acres was difficult A troublemaker soon followed. Younger teammates,
many of whom were still in college, were urged by
male US officials to keep their distance. God help them,
don't go near her, because you don't want any of
that rubbing off on you. Acres the line of attack
went wasn't standing up for her teammates, but selfishly promoting
(23:31):
her own Umbro contract over US Soccers deal with Adidas.
There was blowout from my team to me about that.
It was sort of seen as this, yeah, selfish kind
of act, rubbing in their face act, when it really wasn't.
As Women's World Cup approached, this have versus have not competition,
(23:55):
encouraged by the wealthy leaders of FIFA, would begin to
undermine Team USA's asked for a repeat championship. It was
just ten minutes into the much anticipated rematch, so it's
been a branch start for the Norwegians. When Norway's growth
(24:15):
set maneuvered and adjusted the ball ever so slightly along
the white corner arc, lining up a shot in the
opening minutes of the FIFA Women's World Cup semi final,
you could hear the importance of the moment as the
Americans set their defense against Norway's corner kick or what
(24:37):
a cola cake throw espath will take it? That you
could even hear the Americans talking so clearly in Sweden's
ros Valen Stadium is still surprising to me. To this dick,
what's the difficult one for the don't keeper? And it
said brow I had laid, I think it's It was
(24:58):
the biggest rivalry in FIFA's blossoming Women's World Cup tournament,
and the Swedish stadium was basically empty. The four thousand
or so spectators on hand were a far cry from
the sixty thousand who saw the US and Norraway play
in China four years earlier. If championship for the Eminem's
(25:21):
Cup was a massive step forward for the women's game,
tournament was easily two steps back, not only for the
U S side, which lost to their arch nemesis Norway
in the semifinals and the USA find themselves a girl behind,
but also for the women's game in general. Gone were
the pack Chinese stadiums were placed instead by a few
(25:43):
hundred family and friends in near empty Swedish venues. FIFA
had done little to invest in or grow the women's
game in the four years between the tournaments. In front
of the camera set Bladder love to praise the women's game.
The development of women's football since nine is tremendous. The
(26:06):
future of football will be feminine, and FIFA conferred the
title of a World Cup on the tournament, but not
much Ellens had improved. The US star Mia Ham joined
Michelle Eacres with a massive endorsement deal, landing Nike as
her financial backer, but the economics of the sport on
(26:28):
the whole still sucked for female soccer players in both
the US and around the world. Soccer was no road
to riches. It remains an economic sacrifice. Only a select
few were paid anything but a measly per diem. Women's
World Cup champions Norway received a ten thousand dollar a
(26:50):
year stipend from the Norwegian Soccer Federation. That's it. One
of their top players, Linda Madalin, survived by making a
living as a part time private investigator, earning the nickname
the Magnum p i of international soccer. And it was
just as bad for the Americans. Most of them were
still largely living off of their meager daily food per
(27:11):
diem at a thirty dollar a day stipend his compensation
for lost wages. America in Norway were the two biggest
brands in women's soccer, and they were playing too empty
seats and paint out of their own pockets to do it.
Behind the scenes, the women's team were pressing for a
new labor contract with US Soccer, and this is why
(27:34):
the team said they lost. They were too focused on
fighting for better treatment to focus on the game. As
the Olympics approached, the leaders of the women's national team
said they would not go to Atlanta without first inking
a better financial deal. Even before the fax machine started
(28:00):
eeping and slowly churning out the offer sheet, the stars
of the U S women's national team knew what it
would say. Michelle Acres, Mia Ham, Julie Faulty, Christine Lily
and Joy Faucet had been negotiating, really battling with soccer
officials for better resources for nearly a decade. Akers remembers,
(28:21):
we just want to be the best in the world.
We want to have the best coaches, we want to
have the best training environments, we want to have the
best gear. We want to play in the best tournaments.
We want to develop as athletes, we want that same opportunity.
So to me, it was all about gaining equal access
to that. But this offer, now staring them in black
(28:45):
and white, was as disappointing as it was unacceptable. Win
gold at Atlanta Olympics or get nothing, no bonus for silver,
and certainly no money for bronze. It was in stark
contrast to the men's deal, which paid out bonuses for
each win, and the men they weren't even expected to meddle.
(29:12):
Olympics may not have officially been a FIFA event, but
US Soccer was a FIFA member. The decision by the
Lords of Soccer to limit financial support to the women's
game set the tone for all soccer federations. It allowed
you a soccer to cry poverty when it came to
the women's team, while at the same time ramping up
spending on the men's side. It was a particularly unequal
(29:36):
system since the US women's side had established itself as
the premier team in the world. Former U S goalkeeper
Mary Harvey says the team felt second class. It hurts
sometimes when we saw things that, you know, no matter
what kind of what we did, we didn't see the
economic benefit of it. By the time the contract offer
(29:57):
came in, Acres and her teammates had had enough. We need,
you know, basic things that the men's team had had
for a long time, and US Soccer said no. With
the Atlanta Olympics just months away, for the first time,
the US women had leverage, their leverage the star players,
(30:19):
Mary Harvey remembers they took the lead in the negotiations.
The players who were starting, players who had more leverage
than the rest of us. Did this on behalf of
all of us because they wanted us to have better conditions.
Starting midfielder Julie Faudy reviewed the offer. She crossed out
the Olympic bonus, clauses and facts back the contract. The
(30:42):
message was simple, do better pay us what we're worth.
Like FIFA, US Soccer had never really contemplated what women's
soccer was worth. The women's side was viewed as a
financial drain, and so in retaliation for using its offer,
US Soccer canceled the team's flights to an upcoming training camp,
(31:06):
locking out the nine most important players on the U
S women's team. US Soccer then went on the offensive
in the media, attacking the stars of the team. They
tried everything they could to demean us and basically called
us little girls. The women held strong. US Soccer wanted gold,
(31:28):
they needed it, and eventually they caved a green, not
only to provide bonuses for gold, silver, and bronze, but
also agreeing to provide pregnancy leave and nanny's for players
with small children. US Soccer realized they couldn't bully us
are intimidate. It was going to be a bigger game
(31:48):
than just these little girls acting out. This is going
to be a legal battle against giants. Ironically, US Soccer
was rewarded with something far later than just a gold medal,
which the US women won. Seventy six thousand rabbid and
passionate fans were on hand to watch the US women's game,
(32:09):
proving there was a gigantic, untapped market for women's soccer.
Here's Mary Harvey. We weren't a curtain raiser, we were
the event. That's a big deal, and people was there.
FIFA saw that. On June the traffic on the Jersey
(32:35):
Turnpike was brutal, even worse than usual. When Team USA's
bus did move, it was only a few feet at
a time. Jolting forward and then jerking to a stop.
The team was anxious to get to New Jersey's Meadowlands
Stadium for the first game of the World Cup. They
had spent the last year training and doing every TV
(32:56):
interview and commercial they could to sell ticket and build anticipation.
Corporate America had noticed, and the stars of the team
were everywhere. I could be champion of Women's World Cup Soccer.
I can be a goal like soccer or power power.
Are you ready for Women's World Cup Soccer? Brought to
(33:21):
you by Blood Light. After the heroics of the Olympics,
interest in women's soccer had surged. FIFA, however, remain skeptical
that a Women's World Cup could attract global attention. So
we were up against the prejudice, an old way of thinking.
That's Donna Dave Verona, a former Olympic swimmer and chair
(33:43):
of the Women's World Cup organizing Committee. That's skepticism from
FIFA weighed on the players who remembered the empty stadiums
four years earlier in Sweden. As they pulled into the
Meadowlands parking lot. They couldn't believe their eyes. Americans are
(34:04):
cheering on this team in this sport unlike just about
any other. They heard the screams of go USA and
of we love you, Mia, Mia worship, and then saw
thousands of fans primed and ready to go, young girls
and white women's jerseys, not just soccer moms and their
(34:26):
kids attending games, teenage boys with their shirts off and
Team USA painted across their chests. Take by the opening
match was a sellout. Seventy seven thousand fans filled the stadium,
and the excitement only grew as Team USA kept scoring
(34:55):
Christy in winning. In the summer of the sports world
was consumed by the Women's World Cup, not just the
U S team, but the entire slate of matches. The
average attendance for the thirty two games was thirty seven
(35:17):
thousand fans, with more than seventy eight thousand on hand
to watch Mexico in Brazil. By comparison, a year earlier
in France, the average attendance at the Men's World Cup
was roughly forty three thousand people per match. By any measure,
this was a success, But these crowds at Women's World Cup,
(35:41):
they almost didn't happen. The international organization that governed soccer, FIFA,
George stadiums would be half empty. Stephen Vanderpool, the head
of media relations for the Women's World Cup, told me
FIFA didn't believe there was any real interest. FIFA envisioned
a smaller event, a tournament that was held in smaller stadiums,
(36:05):
basically in the eastern part of the United States. Thankfully,
the people that were involved with the big committee for
the Women's World Cup and the people that ran it
had worked on the ninety World Cup for the men
and knew what was possible. FIFA didn't believe women's soccer
players could draw sizeable crowds. The lords of soccer wanted
(36:28):
a safe event in small five to ten thousand seed stadiums,
definitely not New Jersey's massive meadowlands or California's Grand Canyon
like Rose Bowl. World Cup organizers like Donna Dave Verona
instead bet big and ignored FIVA, believing the interest was there.
(36:49):
I think it has to do with chauvinism and the
fact that the FIFA membership wants to protect the men's game,
and some of them felt if the women encroach on
the game, it somehow undermines the credibility of the men's game.
FIFA didn't argue or try to stop them, but they
(37:11):
didn't do much to help either. The American public believed
in US, but a lot of the top sponsors didn't.
Even as ticket sales were steadily growing in the months
before the opening game, FIFA's powerful marketing arm once again
stayed on the sidelines, unwilling to help the women's brand,
and let's be honest, probably leaving money on the table.
(37:31):
We had to really struggle with the sponsors to get
them to activate the sponsorship. Many didn't. They just didn't
believe we could do it. Some global brands like McDonalds, Fuji,
and Gillette ultimately did sign up as advertisers, but reluctantly,
and even when they did sign sponsorship deals, they went small.
That was a mistake, Vanderpool says. When we sold out
(37:55):
the opening game, I think it was such an eye
opener to everybody in the world. By the time the
tournament got underway, the brench of World Cup fever has
reached a crescendo. In just three short weeks. Everyone was
scrambling to find ways to ride the wave of anticipation.
Even ESPN and ABC, FIFA's official broadcast partners, had to
(38:19):
rework their TV schedules to capitalize on the interests. This
is the biggest game in the lives of these USA players,
and you could say that for China to US an
what in front of a record ninety thousand fans Women's
World Cup Final was nothing short of extraordinary. Acres Michelle
(38:42):
Acres cuts to land, but it's right at Gohl and
yes she can score from there. Exciting, hard fought one
hundred and twenty minutes of utterly gripping athleticism, played under
the hot California's son and the historic Rose Bowl Stadium,
and it would end in one of the most spectacular
moments in sports history. Refereece just looked at the watch.
(39:08):
That's it the winner. I'll be Women's World Cup will
be sited on pedalt kicks. When the whistle blew, the
game was tied nil nil, one by one China in
the US came to the line to take their penalty kicks.
They found themselves tied once again, four to four, with
(39:29):
a single US player left to take her shot. Chat
Stain will take it. She missed a penalty kick against
charlat Pump and they lost that air. Then Brandy Chastain
just drilled the penalty kick past China's golding Chastain, sprinted
(39:50):
and then dropped to her knees, ripping off her jersey
and flexing her arms in an explosion of pure celebration.
It is to this day one of the most iconic moments,
not just in women's sports, but in all of sports.
Women's World Cup was a success. It's set records and
(40:12):
both live attendance and TV audience, and it even turned
a profit of four million dollars on a paltry thirty
million dollar budget. Still, while FIFA President Set Bladder was ecstatic,
Donna Dave Verona said some FIFA members still refused to
believe there was a market for women's soccer outside of
(40:33):
the US. They wouldn't believe their own eyes. Some of
the FIFA members says, after we sold it out and
it was so exciting. Not in my country. This is
not going to happen in my country. The photos had
(40:56):
all the blood and gore of a crime scene. In
one photo, shins with the skin sheared off. In another,
a once white Nike sock saturated with blood from knee
to ankle. The photos had been tweeted out in two
thousand and thirteen by American Sydney LaRue in Australian Sam Kerr,
(41:19):
two of the best female soccer players in the world.
To say they were angry, it would be an understatement.
Some of the world's top female soccer players are fuming
they may have to play on artificial grass and next
year's Women's World Cup finals in Canada. Canada had been
awarded the upcoming two thousand and fifteen Women's World Cup
and FIFA had approved a decision to play most of
(41:41):
the games not on grass but on synthetic skin ripping,
blood inducing plastic turf. Players like all time leading US
score Abby Wombach were piste and speaking out should be
grass names, not blood. It was almost twenty five years
since the first women's tournament in China, and once again
(42:02):
the women's side was having to speak out about unequal treatment.
The stars of the women's game rightfully argued that men
would never be subjected to a plane surface as harsh
as turf. It is a gender equality issue. No chance
would the men ever play a World Cup on turf,
and I think that the women are being treated as
guinea pigs. FIVA remained unmoved by the social media pressure,
(42:27):
and in two thousand and fourteen, eighty one players from
more than a dozen countries sued FIFA in the Canadian
Soccer Federation for gender discrimination. It was the type of
bad pr FIFA's embattled but all powerful president set Bladders
didn't need, with the rumors of vote buying, bribery and
corruption and a US federal probe swirling around, and there
(42:49):
was an easy fix. For a couple of million dollars,
Canada's skin ripping artificial fields could be retrofitted and replaced
by soft, lush, safe grass. FIFA had made a profit
of four billion dollars on the previous two thousand and
fourteen Men's World Cup in Brazil and had billions in
the bank. Money wasn't the issue. Sexism was. The Men's
(43:13):
World Cup was given brand new stadiums, brand new venues
around Brazil, and all we're asking is for a great
circuit plan. Fighting the women on this issue seems such
a tone deaf, short sighted decision, especially for Bladder, who
had long prided himself as the original supporter inside FIFA
of the women's game. Women's football is definitely my wouldn't
(43:38):
say my baby, but I considered myself a little bit
as a good father of the organization of women's football
in FIFA. As an organization, FIFA had spent most of
the last four decades short changing the women's game. Still,
Mary Harvey, the U S women's goalie in the early
who lived through years of pathetic resources, remembers as often
(44:01):
the lone voice of support for the women's competition. You know,
I saw Bladder do some things that helped advance woman's football.
After her playing career wrapped up, Harvey joined FIFA in
two thousand and three as the Director of Development and
remembers pushing for the creation of an under seventeen women's
World Cup like the men had. I went into the
(44:23):
President's office and lobbied for it. Bladder not only listened,
but decided seemingly unilaterally to follow Harvey's advice and announced
his decision at an executive committee meeting. We're doing this.
Anybody object when the FIFA president says that, right, who's
dumb enough to actually open their mouth and say something?
Answers nobody, But I mean that's an example of where
(44:45):
he said we're doing this. Donna Dave Verona, the chair
of Women's World Cup, also remembers Bladder as someone who
could plant a seed of an idea within FIFA and
make it happen. Step had his negative aspects, but he
he was a vision narry. He wasn't afraid to say
that stuff. So he planted a seed. But were they
(45:05):
going to be a thousand percent behind it and put
the money where the math is? No. At the same time,
Bladder would also make public comments that would undermine the
women's game, as he did in two thousand and four.
Recently he was asked how should women's soccer be made
more popular? He said, well, they should wear shorts or shorts.
If Bladder and FIFA wanted to make the changes to
(45:27):
Canada's field turf, it would have happened, but it didn't,
and instead FIFA threatened to suspend any player who challenged
in court FIFA's artificial turf mandate. The women dropped the
lawsuit and FIFA agreed in the future never to host
a tournament on artificial grass. It was a small consolation
(45:47):
for the players who still had to face plastic fields
and bloody kneecaps. After seventeen years at the helm of
international soccer, it's hard to know where set Bladder begins
and FIFA ends. The two had been intimately linked for decades.
(46:09):
FIFA was his baby. Nowhere was this more true, says
journalist Grant Wall, than on the women's side of the sport.
He takes a lot of pride in the role that
he had and created the first Women's World Cup hosted
by FIFA. But FIFA had done a terrible job with
women's soccer over the decades. Then, almost overnight, Bladder was gone,
(46:30):
pushed out by the sports sponsors in two thousand and fifteen,
under a shadow of corruption. FIFA president Set Bladder has resigned.
With Bladder gone, and after more than a dozen senior
soccer officials were indicted by the U S Department of Justice,
there was optimism this would lead to a new attitude
within FIFA on issues of equality. Former U S star
(46:53):
turned TV analyst Julie Foudy tweeted, quote, Hallelujah, Set Bladder
is out. Unquote. The US star Carly Lloyd was optimistic
that decades of sexism and organizational inequality might soon be
a thing of the past. I think it's going to
be really really good for our game, and I think
the next leader um person in charge really needs to
(47:17):
step in and create equal rights for men and women.
FIFA does have a new human rights policy and a
female General secretary. However, when Bladder's replacement, Gianni Infantino, stepped
forward to present the US women their World Cup trophy
in France in two thousand nineteen, a deluge of booze
rained down on him. Fans were angry at the seemingly endless,
(47:46):
crappy treatment women suffered at FIFA's hands. Little it seems
has changed. Corruption is still a problem at FIFA, and
as Mary Harvey pointed out, it's not just what the
corrupt FIFA members did with the money, that's what they
didn't do. I mean, I got pretty angry because you've
been told your whole life women's football candid this, or
(48:08):
you can't have that because there's no money. And then
one day you lift the veil and see what people
were doing with the money. It makes you pretty angry.
As journalist Grant Wall explains, the issues of inequality within
FIFA remain pronounced. The legacy of all of that is
still there today, where FIFA likes to say it's enlightened
today about women's soccer, but these entrenched attitudes from men
(48:32):
inside FIFA towards the sport of women's soccer are still there.
I'm told FIFA has significantly increased the prize money for
the women's game, setting aside thirty million dollars for the
two thousand and nineteen Women's World Cup. As the winners,
the US team walked away with a four million dollar
pay day, more than double the two thousand fifteen award
(48:56):
and a massive step forward from the pay to play
days of their es, but it's still a paltry amount
compared to the men whose prize pool in two thousand
and eighteen was four hundred million dollars, with the French
team earning a staggering thirty eight million dollars for its victory.
(49:17):
FIFA's attitude has long been the men's World Cup makes
more money and they should enjoy a larger payday. However,
FIFA is a nonprofit and it's mandate is the support
soccer around the world. That mandate doesn't distinguish between the
men's game and the women's game. Increasingly, FIFA is out
(49:37):
of step with the sporting world. Many other nonprofits that
oversee both men's and women's sports, particularly in tennis, I've
already started to even out prize money Wimbledon, the French Open,
the US Open. There's a business case to be made
to invest more in women's soccer. The Men's World Cup
is likely only to grow incrementally in the future. It's
(50:00):
already a ratings behemoth. However, there's a lot of growth
left on the women's side. Want proof. In two thousand
and twenty two, fans crowded into camp No Stadium in
Barcelona for a semifinal match between Barcelona and Wolfsburg, breaking
the record set back in at the Women's World Cup final.
(50:24):
Barcelona FC has poured money into their women's team and
the results speak for themselves. Serious investment by others would
likely lead to greater revenues, which FIFA should one. There's
still a lot of frustration in the women's soccer community
that not only did FIFA not support women soccer for decades,
(50:46):
there's still not doing nearly enough to make the Women's
World Cup into the type of money making extravaganza that
they did with the Men's World Cup. However, Gianni Infantino
is just as dismissed of the women's game as his
predecessors were defending the pay and balance by sarcastically saying
(51:06):
maybe one day women's football will generate more than men's football.
Not only is that unlikely to happen given the sheer
popularity of a men's game, but FIFA and its regional
partners around the world are still actively working to prevent
any real investment in the women's sport. Local federations like Conka,
Caffe or come Bowl or only asked to spend fIF
(51:30):
of the nine million dollar global development budget on the
women's game. Mary Harvey, the former US goalie and FIFA
development official, belies FIFA should have treated the women's game
in the late nine nineties similar to a growth stock
like Google or Amazon. I think it could be much bigger,
or it could have been bigger faster if maybe it
(51:52):
had been treated as a high growth opportunity earlier. FIFA,
though a humble nonprofit on paper, has proven at the
end of the day, it cares most about maximizing profit,
so it's never too late to embrace that investment strategy.
It's very clear that FIFA is leaving money on the table.
They haven't maximized what's out there potentially for the Women's
(52:16):
World Cup and in the sport on a regular basis.
I think Mary Harvey said it best. A corrupt organization
busy stuffing money into its suit pockets is not investing
wisely in the future. But that can change. The potential
growth on the women's side is not just in revenue,
but in goodwill, in karma. FIFA, bruised and battered by scandal,
(52:41):
has a chance to do the right thing in a
global way. That's not just good public relations, it's just
playing good and that, more than anything, is what the
beautiful game needs now. And the thing is, the calls
for change aren't going to stop. In February of two
thousand and twenty two, US Soccer and the women's national
(53:03):
team reached an agreement to pay four million dollars in
back pay and to close the pay gap between the
men's and women's sides. The agreement settles a gender discrimination
lawsuit filed in two thousand and nineteen, and it puts
the onus on FIFA to either equalize pay between the
men's and women's teams or force the US men's side
(53:26):
to take a pay cut to make up the gap,
though it remains to be seen how this will play out.
This kind of pressure is needed, Michelle Laker says, to
force FIFA to reckon with its past discrimination of women.
They should be uncomfortable, they should change, and I shouldn't
have to ask for that. Change doesn't happen unless it
(53:48):
makes people uncomfortable, unless it's demanded, unless it's radicalized. Almost
you have to force change. You can't be nice about
asking for equality. For me to even say ask for
equality is just ridiculous. On the next episode of the
(54:11):
Lords of Soccer, the eyes of the world are on Qatar,
the host of the two thousand and twenty two Men's
World Cup. The tiny nation is furiously building infrastructure to
handle the tournament, but at a horrific cost. Is FIFA
ready to own up to the scandal in the desert?
(54:33):
The Lords of Soccer, How FIFA Stole the Beautiful Game
is an Inside Voices Media production in conjunction with I
Heart Radio. The series was written and executive produced by
Gary Scott and me Connor Powell. Logan Heftel and Katie
mcmurran provided the sound design with assistance from j. C.
Swaddick and Jake blue Note. Alec Cowen is our associate producer,
(54:57):
and Jeffrey Katz was our story editor. Fact checker is
Alexa O'Brien, and thanks to Miles Gray, who produced the
series for I Heart Radio. If you have any comments
or questions, please reach out. You can find us on Twitter.
I'm at Connor M. Powell and Gary is at Gary
Robert Scott and if you have any stories about FIFA,
(55:20):
let us know. If you like what you hear, please
give us a shout out at the hashtag Lords of
Soccer
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.