Flat-Out Fantastic

By Bill Saporito

We've already won," declared Hank Steinbrecher, the general secretary of U.S. Soccer, even before the American women's team's draining, dramatic penalty-kick shoot-out win over China on Saturday, "no matter what the score is going to be." But when defender Brandi Chastain blasted the team's fifth penalty kick past Chinese goalkeeper Gao Hong after 120 scoreless minutes, including two overtime periods, the American put a fitting exclamation point on a summer of soccer that had swept the nation off its feet. And then, before more than 90,000 screaming fans, including President Clinton, she whipped off her shirt in celebration--hey, her name is Chastain, not Chaste. "I felt very confident," she said of the kick (though that statement could easily apply more broadly). "My team trusted me."

This sweet, sweet victory was very much an act of faith--not the end of a game so much as of a crusade. The U.S. women were good, they were good looking, and they were on a mission to prove that women's team sports, and soccer in particular, deserve the same kind of attention, admiration and money that the guys' get. "I grew up watching Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, men I could never emulate," says Julie Foudy, the thoughtful, funny midfielder who leads the team in quotes. "Girls need role models." The goal of Women's World Cup is no less than the establishment of a women's professional league to create those role models, a strategy similar to one the men used to launch Major League Soccer after the phenomenally successful 1994 men's World Cup, also held in the U.S.

The women's final on Saturday had a look that observers of the men's game found familiar: a taut, defensive contest that tightens leg muscles, turns feet into anchors and transforms a 116-yd. by 72-yd. field into a postage stamp. At their own end, the Americans completely snuffed out the Chinese offense, allowing scoring star Sun Wen precious little room to maneuver. At midfield, Michelle Akers, a 33-year-old orthopedic disaster, made her last World Cup game a memorable one. On defense, she owned the air, hurling herself at anything round that moved--a recklessness that would force her out of the game near the end of regulation time, when she crashed into goalie Briana Scurry. "Akers is one of the greatest women athletes in history," said U.S. coach Tony DiCicco. "Michelle Akers inspires me."

Late in a nerve-racking overtime, the U.S. sensed its moment and pressed the Chinese defense, but it would not break, denying a frenzied crowd a sudden-death triumph. And China almost stole the match away in the final minutes, when Fan Yunjie's header off a corner kick was cleared off the line by Kristine Lilly.

So it went to a penalty-kick shoot-out, which soccer players dread. The pressure is enormous, the consequences huge and the shoot-out no real indicator that the best team won. "There are two champions here," noted coach DiCicco diplomatically after the match. "There is only one taking the World Cup home." But the shoot-out is soccer's tie breaker: 12 yds. out, shooter against keeper, with the odds overwhelmingly against the keeper. That was true of the first four penalty kicks. On China's third shot, however, Scurry stepped forward, guessed left and threw herself in that direction, where she met Liu Ying's kick. "I just went totally on instinct," she said. "I knew if I could get one, it would be O.K." The crowd erupted and, after Lilly's left-footer beat Chinese goalie Gao, sensed something big was about to happen. China's next two shooters, Zhang Ouying and Sun, calmly found their marks, leaving it all up to Chastain, who had committed a huge gaffe against Germany in the quarterfinals when she scored in her own net. This time she found the right one, prompting the spontaneous strip. "Momentary insanity, nothing more, nothing less," she explained. "I wasn't thinking about anything. I thought, My God, this is the greatest moment of my life on a soccer field! I just lost my head."

Even before Chastain's heroics, something magical had been brewing for this team as the tournament progressed. As the NHL and NBA playoffs came and went--Dallas and San Antonio, remember them?--this was the one sports story that continued to build like a thunderstorm.

Four years ago in Sweden, the American team was dismissed in the semifinals before a scant 3,000 souls. In the days before last week's final, nearly that many fans were showing up to watch the team practice, and the players needed police escorts to make their way off the field. Foudy described this spring's frenzied postgame autograph sessions as a "Beatles-concert-slash-slumber-party." Teenagers, boys and girls, have besieged them, and several of the players tell stories of girls' breaking into tears upon receiving an autograph--or just getting near team members. "It's showing little girls that they have something to look up to if they want to play sports," said Rashad Brown, 32, of Hacienda Heights, Calif., as he led his three daughters--a future midfield perhaps--toward the Rose Bowl for the final. Said his wife Margarita: "Before, we never had this kind of support for a women's event. It's great for our daughters to see such a large crowd supporting a women's event."

Make no mistake: this is a campaign that has been carefully managed and almost perfectly marketed by the Women's World Cup Organizing Committee and such team and event sponsors as Nike, Gatorade, Adidas and Bud Light. Each of the games has been televised and accompanied by ingenious advertising.

Marla Messing, CEO of the organizing committee, had persuaded soccer's mostly male pooh-bahs at the Federation Internationale de Football Association to stage the games in big stadiums. Messing knew Americans love big events, but she also sensed that the moment had arrived. "We have established a world-class, world-caliber, stand-alone event for women like none other," she crowed. "In a small way, we have all been a part of history. The sport of women's soccer is growing around the world."

The first taste of glory would come at Giants Stadium near New York City, where Mia Hamm helped hammer Denmark in a 3-0 win, opening the scoring with a terrific strike in the 17th minute. That was expected. What nobody expected, at least initially, was a crowd of 79,000 cheering fans. There were painted faces and flags and banners, and an entire section of fans wearing Kristine Lilly shirts. It looked as if someone had gone to suburban malls and parks and hijacked shoppers and picnickers to the stadium. The players were stunned, and after the game Hamm noted that the usually voluble Foudy was speechless. "That doesn't happen too often," Hamm said.

Reporters who wouldn't know an offside trap from a lobster pot were now descending on the team's lone media rep demanding exclusives. David Letterman pronounced himself "team owner" and began plugging away. Even Tom Brokaw went West for an on-the-scene report.

There were plenty of good stories waiting to be discovered too--"eight- or nine-year overnight sensations," said Nike president Thomas Clarke. After all, this is a veteran group whose members have known one another and played together for a decade in some cases. They won the Olympic gold medal in 1996, and some, including Akers, were around in 1991, when the team won the inaugural World Cup, held in China, where the event apparently was kept a state secret. Indeed, the team barely played the next year because U.S. Soccer couldn't afford to pay anyone.

Since then, the team and the federation have been steadily raising their profile. "We came up with a marketing plan that really tapped into the grass roots," says Alan Rothenberg, chairman of the Women's World Cup board and past president of U.S. Soccer. "We might have 2,000 to 3,000 people at those early barnstorming games," he says, in Hershey, Pa., and in New York's Long Island. Wherever the team went in those days, the hero that girls sought out was Hamm, now 27, whose speed and finesse still give defenders the shakes. As the team's best known player--a distaff version of Michael Jordan--she had the burden of not only scoring goals but also being Miss Publicity. A self-described emotional child from a military family who lost an older brother to a rare blood disease (and still wears his initials on her soccer shoes), Hamm found the soccer field a perfect outlet for her inner fire. She's been on the national team since she was 15.

For Akers, who preceded Hamm to stardom, this Cup was a test of willpower. Dogged by chronic fatigue syndrome and damaged knees, she has pursued this Cup as relentlessly as she has tracked down opposing midfielders. With the Olympics coming up next summer, Akers has said she will listen to what her body is telling her about whether to play. That would be a first for someone whose body has been screaming at her for years.

Originally, Messing figured Women's World Cup could sell a total of about 312,000 tickets for the 17 doubleheaders (the semis were staged in conjunction with an MLS game). Instead the figure will be more like 650,000. While professional women soccer players are no match for the men in skill levels, their game is great entertainment because unlike the final, most games are freewheeling shoot-outs. It was all scintillating soccer, blissfully devoid of drunks and hooligans--just hundreds of thousands of soccer-loving Americans out for good, clean fun.

Now that the American team has reclaimed the championship, however, there is business to take care of. This is sports, after all. The members will take a victory tour to help prepare the defense of their Olympic gold medal in Sydney next summer. They are eager to get a pro league started, perhaps with some of the profits this tournament will have generated quite unexpectedly. And there is the matter of the players' contract with U.S. Soccer, which expires soon. Some team players earn less than $30,000--coffee money for a male professional. Says Steinbrecher, sounding like a negotiator: "We can't afford to pay them what we think they're worth." He may just have to try a little harder. Welcome to the big time, ladies.

--With reporting by James Willwerth/Pasadena

With reporting by James Willwerth/Pasadena