N.B.: It is always possible that links below will have expired, or that the link will take you to an archive, where you must part with $3.00 or so for a 750-word article. Another possibility is that a subscription or registration of some sort will be required. We apologize for any inconvenience, noting only that there frankly are too many links on the site to keep up with them all.

If, however, you would like us to find a now-expired article in our archives, we'd be happy to send it to you, if available. Please use the contacts link.

---

• Atlanta | 12 October 2003 . . . They truly are footballers' footballers. Not the gold medal–winning Germany side, but female soccer players in America who are winning roster spots on high school and college teams in American football. Carlos Frías of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on several in Georgia, from whence hail the first woman to kick a field goal in a college football game (Tonya Butler for West Alabama) and the first woman to play and score a point in Division I (Ashley Martin [left] at Jacksonville State, also in Alabama). All the women profiled were or are soccer players. "Some believe youth soccer, which is strong in the south metro area [of Atlanta], is leading girls to football," Frías writes. . . . And what about that German team, by the way? Despite controversy concerning the free kick that led to the golden goal—Sweden coach Marika Domanski Lyfors berated match referee Floarea Cristina Ionescu for the call—Germany was the best side in the tournament. Coincidentally, at the same time as the final we were reading John Lanchester's account of the 2002 men's World Cup finals ("A Month on the Sofa," London Review of Books, 11 July 2002), in which he hatches the admittedly mad theory that

German sides' tendency to win big games right at the end, and often unjustly, is connected with the way German speakers have to wait for the main verb at the end of a sentence, thus developing habits of patience and concentration. That characteristic German goal in the 80-oddth minute is a verb.

This time the goal came in the 98-oddth minute, and did not seem terribly unjust. | back to top

• Carson, California | 11 October 2003 . . . It's a day for North American soccer, as Canada and the United States compete for third place. The Canadian Press alludes to the national side's inferiority complex: "The women's U.S. soccer team is about packed stadiums, pictures on billboards and big budgets. It's Mia Hamm on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Brandi Chastain's picture splashed around the world. . . . The Canadian women toil in obscurity, receive little in payment and could get arrested and still not get their name in the newspaper." Converted Canada defender Charmaine Hooper, though, is no stranger to seeing her name in boldface type. "We're going to be out there with reckless abandonment," she says, "remembering all the reasons why we dislike them." . . . Canada coach Even Pellerud credits the advantage to North American and northern European women's teams to "gender thinking, gender equity," but notes how other sides are making inroads. The 104 goals scored in the tournament so far, however—compared to 161 in the men's World Cup finals in 2002, in more than twice the number of games—attests to a lack of overall parity (e.g., Germany 7-1 over Russia in one quarterfinal). One could also say, we suppose, that the women play more positively, with more interest in attacking than the men. In the same analysis by the New York Times's Jere Longman, we get one of the few mentions of the Russia team. "Unfortunately, women's football is not very popular" in Russia, said coach Yuri Bystritsky. "We are out of players and out of coaches." | back to top
• Portland, Oregon | 7 October 2003 . . . Of all the ink spilled on Germany's 3-0 semifinal defeat of the United States, perhaps the most reasonable statement comes from ESPNSoccernet.com's Marc Connolly: "It was just the simple case of allowing an early goal and having to play for the equalizer the rest of the match against an organized defense and all-world goalkeeper who didn't give an inch. It's a familiar scenario played out all over the world most every weekend." This actually provides cheering perspective when unanswerable questions are being raised about the future of the women's game in America: "Despite its glorious past, the United States faces an uncertain future. . . . Will [younger players] have the same fierce resolve as Hamm, Lilly, Foudy and Fawcett? Will they stay in the sport if there is no professional league to cultivate their talents? Is organized American soccer too structured to develop creativity that matches athleticism?" (Jere Longman, "Cup Defeat Reflects End of Era for U.S.," New York Times, 7 October 2003). It seems more realistic to say simply that women's soccer is growing up: evenly matched teams are contesting each other and risking failure. As U.S. striker Tiffeny Milbrett said afterward, "We were playing against an opponent that is equal and very challenging, and a team that has every opportunity and chance to beat us." The Germany-U.S. match even featured two streakers (distaff variety), one carrying a sign, "Adidas Kills Kangaroos." It reminded us of last season's UEFA Cup final, between Celtic and Porto, when a streaker took the field before the second-half kickoff and flashed a red card to the referee. As with the women players, however, the women streakers at least seemed interested in a cause. | back to top
• Los Angeles | 3 October 2003 . . . Tom Goldman of National Public Radio reports from the Liga Regional Femminile of Southern California on the obstacles facing Hispanic girls in football. Lupe Verdugo (spelling uncertain), 36, said her father thought "girls belong in the house, the girls can't do this, girls can't do that. And I'm the only girl out of five kids—I have four brothers. So my father never let me do any kind of activity outside . . . school." One player, Myra Cruz (spelling uncertain), 13, tellingly does not recognize the name of Mia Hamm, but she does know the stars of Mexico's Chivas. She was not asked if she had heard of Maribel Dominguez (left) or Iris Mora of Mexico's national team. . . . Unsurprisingly, FIFA concludes in its technical analysis of the tournament thus far that "men's style" tactics have prevailed. "China's demise is surely a case in point," FIFA states. "Even though the Asians averaged over 60% possession in their four games, carving out far more chances than their opponents, they were let down by their physical weakness and unceremoniously dumped out of the competition." Such teams—FIFA also places Brazil and North Korea in this category—"will need to learn the delicate art of getting stuck in and battling for the right to play." . . . Regarding women's athletics more generally, see Laura Pappano's "Gender Games" in the 28 September edition of the Boston Globe Magazine. It is always worth pointing out, as Pappano does, that many differences between men and women are "cultural inventions." Further, results from endurance events, such as swimming and long-distance running, show that top-level women athletes often are more capable than their male competitors. "The habit of viewing men and women in black-and-white terms," Pappano writes, "has made us prisoners of generalizations, eager to attribute characteristics to one sex or the other." Recognizing women's capabilities, she concludes, can strengthen society: "The truth is that winning matters, and sports are about more than play. They are about political, social, and economic power." | back to top
• London | 2 October 2003 . . . Successive installments of the World Football program (BBC World Service) have addressed the decline of the Women's United Soccer Association and the state of women's football. Jody Meacham, director of public relations for the San Jose (Calif.) CyberRays, tells BBC presenter Alan Green (20 September) when asked for a message to would-be sponsors (link opens Real Media Player): "They should know that [in] the sport of soccer in the United States, half of the athletes, half of the coaches, half of the fans of this sport are women. It's much easier for a man to go ask for financial support for his sport in this country than it is for a woman, despite the equality in the size of the market. . . . What we're talking about here is an irresistible force in human society that women are coming to the full fruition of equal opportunity and equal participation in . . . all aspects of that society, including sports. That is a historic inevitablity." Our buddy Ashish Sharma (see September 24 diary entry) got his microphone working and speaks with the New York Power's Emily Janss and Robert Wagman of Soccer Times on 27 September. . . . U.S. women's players show high technical competence as they chronicle almost every move of their cross-country sojourn for FIFA—stopping at McDonald's, polling passersby about their favorite women's sports and playing like Weather Channel reporters durring Hurricane Isabel. Each seems to carry digital camera (video and still), cellphone and laptop, documenting the experience from her own perspective (à la Al Franken [above] when he wore a satellite dish atop his head for skits on Saturday Night Live). | back to top
• Portland, Oregon | 1 October 2003 . . . Area print media deserve plaudits for their coverage thus far, especially of the Ghanaian team and supporters. For the first time in the tournament, it seems, journalists are beginning to look at the football as a cultural phenomenon. Molly Blue, for example, of the Oregonian, profiles Ghana's Mimi Osei-Agyemang and touches on the Columbia University graduate's dual identity as an American-born child of a Ghanaian father. "I'm a voice people here can understand," she says. "That's probably my greatest contribution to the team." At the same time, however, she feels her distinctiveness. She lives full-time in Portland and works as a researcher at the Northwest Veteran Affairs Cancer Research Center. "Being the first player in the World Cup for Ghana who isn't Ghana-born, I'm always under scrutiny, from the media and from Ghana's fans. . . . The styles of soccer are different. It's a different language with the feet." . . . We look forward to more columns from Matthew D. LaPlante of the News-Register in McMinnville, Oregon. LaPlante took the cultural pulse of Portland's PGE Park on Saturday, mingling among Ghanaian, Australian, Russian and Chinese supporters. Our favorite comment, though, came from Portland's own Kyra Duffy, 14: "It's soccer. We don't know much about the teams, but it's soccer and that's why we're here." . . . Frank Dell'Apa of the Boston Globe takes a studied look at the women's game as represented by the eight quarterfinalists, concluding that "there is no proven formula, no age/experience equation guide for excellence." Some national programs (Brazil, Germany, Russia, Sweden), Dell'Apa writes, follow the male model, building teams through established club systems. Yet China, Norway, the United States, Australia, Canada and the Koreas have built from scratch, "indicating that a prerequisite for Women's World Cup success might be for a country to lack a winning tradition in men's soccer." | back to top
• Columbus, Ohio | 29 September . . . Both Korean sides have been eliminated following group play, but their supporters have left an impression. The SoRi-MoRi Cultural Troupe of Philadelphia backed the North Koreans at Lincoln Financial Field, banging the kkwaenggwari (left), a percussion instrument, loudly enough so that one fan complained. The Americans' Joy Fawcett said of the North Koreans, "[W]e haven't had the chance to hang out with them." That the North Koreans are withdrawn, mysterious and inaccessible seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. "They don't talk on the field or when shaking hands, even. They're just very quiet," Fawcett said, as reported by Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star. We would have been more surprised, however, had they discoursed in fluent English before Sunday's critical match, asking Fawcett about her kids and the state of the WUSA. A more measured view comes from team liaison Ha Chun Tae, who says of the North Koreans that "they are very interested in diversity, culture, race. Most of them are very young, with very limited international experience. A lot of them, they've never seen African-Americans or people with, uh, unique hairstyles." Meanwhile, the North Korean government has shown great cogency in calling U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a "psychopath" and a "stupid man." (Just kidding, folks. We know the guy's not stupid.) For more insight into North Korea, refer to the September issue of the online literary journal Words without Borders, featuring several North Korean works in translation. . . . Music also played a role in Ghana's 2-1 victory Sunday over Australia in Portland, Oregon (the best game of the tournament thus far, to the Global Game's thinking). Ghanaian supporters danced the match away, so that "it felt like we were in Ghana," according to the Black Queens' Alberta Sackey, who collected the brace. Sackey, Africa's woman footballer of the year in 2002, criticized Ghana's football association and coach Oko Aryee for mismanagement, which she said helped lead to the side's ouster. (See Global Game 7 for more on the Ghanaian striker.) Also showing musical talent were the Matildas, who belted out the Australian anthem before the game. They stood in contrast to most World Cup sides, who seem to be mumbling their way through the national songs. . . . James Chung of a Boston-based market-research firm thinks the temporarily defunct WUSA needed to target older kids than the 8- to 12-year-old group. According to Chung, girls "found the league to be 'uncool' once they reached middle school. They became 'somewhat embarrassed' to consider themselves fans or to wear league merchandise. . . . When they watched games on television, they tended to watch them alone instead of with friends" (Jere Longman, "Miscasting W.U.S.A.'s Target Audience," New York Times, 28 September 2003). | back to top
• Accra, Ghana | 26 September . . . Apparently six weeks' training in Portland, Oregon, have drained the coffers of the Ghanaian side. The Accra Mail asks citizens to send cash. "As they continue vigorously with this difficult task to raise the image of our dear country, they will need your support both spiritually and financially. We understand that the team is in high spirits and going to make us proud. However, this is the time they need your support to strengthen their chances in the tournament." The article says to send money to the Ghanaian embassy in Washington, payable to the "Black Queens Fund." . . . Steffi Jones of Germany tells Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that, despite (or perhaps because of) having played for the Washington Freedom of the WUSA, she is motivated to beat the United States. "The Americans are conceited and arrogant and overflowing with self-confidence," Jones says. (These comments appear in translation in the newspaper's English edition.) "But athletically, we're stronger. I'm convinced that we have players with better technique. Few of [the U.S. players] have the hunger to win. They play for the money, and because they can get advertisement deals. I've seen five national matches. It was nothing, just a bunch of messing around." (Addendum, 8 Oct: Through Brian Straus of the Washington Post and Scott French of Soccer America, Jones, recognized as one of the classiest figures in the women's game, says that FAZ got it all wrong. She writes in an e-mail to Straus: "I had lots of trouble already here in Germany because of that article. The translation wasn't right and also just cut out a sentence. I'm so sorry for it.") . . . Although Sun Wen (pronounced "Some Way" in Mandarin) played for the WUSA's Atlanta Beat for two seasons, we had never heard the vignette reported in the Los Angeles Times, that Sun once had serenaded the Atlanta side by singing "The Wind beneath My Wings" outside the team bus. . . . Numerous articles have touted a possible resuscitation for the WUSA, involving a scaled-down schedule in the 2004 Olympic year. We have not been mentioning these rumblings, mainly because we don't want to be a jinx. | back to top
• Washington | 24 September . . . Michael T. Shepard, in this morning's Washington Post, discusses the place of women's football within the Brazilian football federation. The women's team's negative progress is attributed to corruption and indebtedness within Brazil's professional leagues. "Barely able to make payroll for their first division men's teams," Shepard writes, "the clubs have scaled back, or dropped altogether, their women's teams." Shepard notes the prohibitions on women's play that lasted until the 1980s; as with other national teams, including the United States, performance in the ongoing tournament is seen as crucial to the sport's development. "If we do well here, it will end up giving the women's game more structure," says Brazil coach Paulo Gonçalvès. . . . Erstwhile San Diego Spirit players Mercy Akide and Florence Omagbemi, who now play for the W-League's Hampton Roads (Va.) Piranhas, discount the loss of their jobs before the last WUSA season as motivation against the United States. "Nigerian players just want to play soccer," Omagbemi tells Mark Zeigler (and, no doubt, many others) of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Taking a wider view, Akide says of Nigeria, "Our culture is kind of tough for women who want to play sports. They want us to stay at home." Zeigler continues, "In Nigeria, parents don't sign up their daughters for the local [youth soccer] team when they turn 5, don't buy them cleats and shin guards. Akide and most of her Nigerian teammates were forbidden from playing soccer by their fathers and punished severely when they were caught sneaking out to play with the neighborhood boys. Most played barefoot." He might be over-generalizing. Fourteen of the Nigerian players are based domestically, but their backgrounds are less well-known. Another common theme of reporting on the Super Falcons is their toughness. Nigeria's Patience Avre, whose club side is the W-League's Charlotte Lady Eagles, says "soccer is for strong people." The Chicago Tribune's Philip Hersh suggests the players have acquired their aggressiveness by battling restrictions: "In most of Nigeria's Muslim-dominated northern states, which have adopted some form of the strict Islamic judicial system known as Sharia, the idea of women wearing shorts has become unacceptable. Even in the southern and eastern parts of the country, where Avre and the other Nigerian national team players grew up, it wasn't easy to break gender barriers." . . . The Canadian Press delves somewhat into the backgrounds of Argentineans Marisol Medina and Rosana Gomez. Canada coach Even Pellerud criticizes the Argentines' uneven team play, but the reasons for a lack of cohesion are understandable. Medina, the Press writes, "grew up playing on the street and didn't join a full 11- a-side league until five years ago. . . . Medina said she's spent her career fighting outdated notions about women's soccer. 'What others say doesn't bother me because basically I'm doing what I enjoy. . . . To pull on the blue and white shirt is something to be proud of, and there's no room for weakness, you have to give it your all.' " Gomez's father lost his job in the Argentine economic crisis of 2001; she returned to support her family, leaving club side Boca Juniors. | back to top
• Philadelphia | 23 September . . . Mike Steinberger comments in the Financial Times ("North Korean Soccer Should Be Sent Off," p. 17; subscription required) that Korea DPR's presence in the tournament is unwelcome. He criticizes Kim Jong-il and his regime for wasting hard currency on women's football—money that could be spent on social programs— and worries about the "propaganda coup" that could result with the team's success. "If you doubt this," Steinberger writes, "think back to 1966 and the exploits of the (male) North Korean team in England in the World Cup tournament. . . . The shock victory achieved 37 years ago over mighty Italy, and the subsequent gallant defeat to Portugal, have left as their legacy a rosy glow that has still not died away." Our tendency is to view the North Korean side as a collection of individuals with their own dreams. We see no reason they should be denied a chance to compete. . . . From the Nigeria camp, the Washington Post's Steven Goff profiles coach Sam Okpodu, who played at North Carolina State University with a heavily international contingent in the early 1980s. (Okpodu is still the Atlantic Coast Conference leader in career points [191] and goals [78].) U.S. coach April Heinrichs pays tribute to Okpodu, who helped form the Virginia Tech women's team in 1993 and coached the Hokies for nine seasons: "The Nigerians are more organized than before. People have said, even about the Nigerian men's team, that they're athletic, they're creative, they're unpredictable, their hair's on fire, but if you could organize them, they could do some damage. . . ." Viewers of KATU-TV, an ABC affiliate, in Portland, Oregon, were denied a chance to watch U.S.-Sweden live—especially surprising since Portland's PGE Park hosts six matches, including both semifinals on 5 October. The match was preempted by a gardening show. Oregonian columnist Brian Meehan writes, "The station did not return several calls Monday. I guess they still were brushing the mulch from their faces." Markets in Richmond, Va., and Jonesboro, Ark., were the only other domestic TV audiences not to see the match live. . . . Famed Italian referee Pierluigi Collina apologizes in his autobiography, The Rules of the Game, for a mistaken assumption he made at the 1996 Olympic soccer tournament in Georgia. "On the way to the organizing committee's office where our identification cards and passes were being issued, we had to walk past a pitch where, at that moment, a team was training," he writes. "Some players were practicing long shots and I remember that, from far off, I was particularly impressed by the power and precision of one of them. Then, as I got nearer, came the surprise: I discovered that the team in question was the United States women's lineup and the player was Mia Hamm. And today I still wonder how I ever managed to mistake her for a man." | back to top
• Philadelphia | 22 September . . . Korean fans turned out to support Korea DPR at Lincoln Financial Field, unfurling, according to Brian Straus of the Washington Post, a banner reading "Korea Is One." Jin Pyol Hui, who scored twice in North Korea's 3-0 victory over Nigeria, said she appreciated the fans' presence. "I feel Korean people are one nation and of one blood. I very much like them to support our team." . . . Diane Pucin of the Los Angeles Times analyzes women's pro sports as an outgrowth of Title IX, suggesting that women's games have not had time to grow "organically," as men's sports did. "Games were invented because a few guys got together with bats and balls, hoops and goals, sticks and ice, and played," Pucin writes. "They formed teams, they got better. Their families started to come to the field to watch. Then friends and a few neighbors." Except for the distinction about men "inventing" games, we're not sure how women's sports are supposed to be different. . . . On the way to Washington, we had time to read Gary Smith's 11-page article on Mia Hamm in today's Sports Illustrated. Among the interesting nuggets is that father Bill Hamm had supported Fiorentina—"bicycling to the stadium and falling in love with the throng and the drama and the way one man with a ball on his foot can bring a city to its feet"—and that Mia first touched a soccer ball in Florence. Although Smith rarely allows Hamm to speak for herself, she does offer a wonderful statement about her shyness and keeping her head down: "I'm sure I miss some things about the world, but I can tell you a lot about my shoes." Personally, as with many of Smith's past treatments, we find his approach audacious. He writes with assumed omniscience about the person's inner and outer lives, as if his narrative were unassailable. It's an audacity we could never muster, dreading the phone call from the subject, in tears, saying "How could you?" . . . Related to Elise Edwards's contribution of a manga-style L-League brochure cover to Global Game issue 8, BBC News offers some background, tracing manga's roots to ninth-century "Buddhist scrolls which caricatured the aristocracy as bunnies and frogs." Amazingly, 45 percent of books and periodicals sold in Japan are cartoon (manga) books. . . . Buried in an Agence France-Presse story is a statement from Worawi Makudi, FIFA's women's football chief, that FIFA might help revive the WUSA: "The World Cup can be helpful to the US league to get finances." | back to top
• New York | 19 September . . . Hamm adorns the cover of the current Sports Illustrated (issue date, 22 September), with the magazine's Grant Wahl adding online observations about the women's game in its curiously tender state: "For better or worse, if you're involved in American pro soccer—as a player, journalist, organizer or fan—you're also expected to be an economist, a sociologist and an expert in ethnic and gender studies." We did not realize that Wahl had coined the phrase "pigtailed hooligans," before it morphed into "pony-tailed hooligans." A spot in the Oxford English Dictionary awaits. . . . Be sure to examine today's Doonesbury cartoon, with a football-oriented take on the California gubernatorial race. | back to top
• Dingwall, Scotland | 18 September . . . Former San Diego Spirit striker Julie Fleeting sounds more optimistic than most regarding a possible WUSA revival as she plies her trade for the women's side at Ross County Football Club of Scotland's Division One. Meanwhile, she must get used—Hurricane Isabel notwithstanding—to the more volatile weather and less enthusiastic crowds in the Scottish Highlands. "The Sunday afternoon grind of drizzling rain and echoing grounds might seem a hardship for a player now used to sunshine and the screams of 7,000-plus, but Fleeting insists it is not an issue," writes Ginny Clark of The Scotsman. . . . At present writing it is raining in Philadelphia and Washington, both sites of weekend openers. Isabel-related rain is expected, too, in Columbus, Ohio, another host. (Los Angeles looks clear.) North Korea and Nigeria, however, should have already finished their workouts at the University of Pennsylvania. Players for Sweden, based in Arlington, Va., were tired of hearing about the storm, team secretary Cecilia Sandell tells FIFA. Meteorologist Anthony Gigi helpfully suggests that the Swedes stock peanut butter in case of power outages, since "peanut butter is good for athletes and it doesn’t need refrigeration." . . . In a long analysis assessing the WUSA's place among women's sports, the Kansas City Star's Mechelle Voepel rightly chides sports media for its "active and aggressive indifference" toward women's athletics. "[I]f there are not direct connections [among] all women's sports," Voepel concludes, "there certainly is kinship, empathy, shared frustration and joy." | back to top
• Santa Clara, California | 17 September . . . With the demise of the WUSA, the question becomes, Now what? Santa Clara University striker Veronica Zepeda tells the San Jose Mercury News that she would still play football regardless: "I want to play soccer and then be a coach. I don't want to work." Reactions of players, potential players, executives and fans also are available from Atlanta, Boston, New York, North Carolina, Philadelphia, San Diego and Washington. Brian Straus of the Washington Post addresses criticism that the league did not market itself to the "hardcore" football fan: "[Why] do hardcore soccer fans need to be lured? Should the [Washington] Freedom have signed Beckham? Should they sponsor fights in the terraces? If you're a 'hardcore' fan you should be at Northern Virginia Royals games on Friday nights, high school games on Tuesday afternoons. You shouldn't need anything more than date, time and place to show up and watch the sport you love." . . . The Times (London) offers a nice package on the women's game, talking with Mia Hamm (who?) and England women's coach Hope Powell and musing about the hermeneutics of Bend It Like Beckham, now that professional football for women is not an option: "Just one season on from its release, the film is all but out of date. If Jess were real, and her free kicks had taken her to a club such as the New York Power or the Philadelphia Charge, her contract would be cancelled and she would have swapped shirts with the likes of Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain for the last time." . . . The Canadian Press covers the turnaround of national-team striker Charmaine Hooper (see picture below), called a "disruptive entity" after she complained about then-coach Neil Turnbull in 1999 and protested a lack of funding. Now some see her "as a saviour of women's soccer in Canada." . . . The Herald of Harare, Zimbabwe, reports that women footballers are protesting cancellation of the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations women's tournament scheduled for this month. Protesters carried placards questioning the dispensation of $75,000 for developing the women's game in Zimbabwe. One placard read, "The girl child's right must be observed." . . . Since Billie Jean King is mentioned below, we note that 20 September is the 30th anniversary of her seminal match with Bobby Riggs. Still, Susan K. Cahn, associate professor of history at the University of Buffalo, tells the Portland Oregonian that "where the power lies, men are still pretty entrenched." | back to top

• Atlanta | 16 September . . . First the SARS virus in China, then Hurricane Isabel bearing down on the East Coast, then—yesterday—the dark lords of global capitalism conquering and consuming the Women's United Soccer Association. What next for the Women's World Cup? (Sorry for the bleak imagery. We're depressed.) The amount of ink and posthumous praise for the WUSA has been overwhelming, making one wonder if daily press conferences on the league's demise should have been a core marketing strategy. Johnette Howard of Newsday calls the players the "most important groundbreakers in U.S. women's sports since Billie Jean King," then mentions a Brazilian at the 1999 Women's World Cup, weeping for his side's bronze medal. "You don't know what these women have to go through back home just to play. . . . You just don't know." Filip Bondy of the New York Daily News chides "phony corporations" too niggardly to invest in women's athletics. The WUSA's $20 million shortfall, Bondy writes, is "much less than Nike is investing in a single athlete, LeBron James." John Hendricks, the WUSA founder, echoes, "Every time I see a deal with a male athlete for a shoe for five, 10 million dollars, I say, 'Goodness, why don't you invest in 160 players and an international league and all these fans?' If you want some kind of gender equity in sports, you have to step up to the plate." . . . David Lynch of USA Today reports from China's camp in Dalian, mentioning the city's previous occupation by Russia and its current strength as a trading center. The Chinese women's team is mostly anonymous, though, and public interest has dropped. "The soccer team most people know is the team from four years ago," says Hu Songqing, editor of the weekly Zuqiu (Soccer). | back to top

• Warrington, Pennsylvania | 15 September . . . This hamlet 20 miles from Philadelphia serves as training center for the team from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Jere Longman of the New York Times joined the side at its training table, for a volatile combination of ribs and kimchi. The North Koreans have received assistance from State Senator Stewart J. Greenleaf (R-Montgomery County) and from the Ukrainian-American Sports Club; the cook is Robert Egan, a New Jersey–based restaurateur and trade-group president. Greenleaf said, "I thought it was important to show that we are a generous and kind and peace-loving country." . . . Grahame L. Jones of the Los Angeles Times writes that Brazil's Milene Domingues, who is married to Ronaldo, has been nicknamed "Barbie" by teammates. Jones quotes Agence France-Presse, whom Domingues told, "Funnily, when I was small I never played with dolls, I always pulled off their heads to run out and play football." . . . U.S. midfielder Aly Wagner tells the WUSA website that she was prejudiced against the University of North Carolina—the most successful program in women's collegiate soccer—when time came to select a school. "I knew that I didn't want to go to North Carolina and be a Tar Heel," she said. "I didn't want to go win their 20th national championship or whatever they were on." UNC has won the national title 17 times. | back to top
• Carson, California | 8 September . . . "Legend and a legacy" are the words U.S. women's coach April Heinrichs uses to describe midfielder Julie Foudy in an interesting USA Today profile. Foudy's forays into Title IX politics are detailed, along with her comments on the California gubernatorial race. Of Republican candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger (left), Foudy says, "Every time he pulls out one of those Terminator lines, I'm like, 'You can't run on Terminator, my man.' " Full marks to USA Today, by the way, for being aware that the World Cup is around the corner. No one else seems to have noticed. | back to top