The End of An Era for U.S. Women’s Soccer

[0] From New York Times, I'm Michael Mabarro.

[1] This is a daily.

[2] A few days ago, when the U .S. women's team was eliminated from the World Cup, it marked the end of a history -making run of victory.

[3] But according to my colleague, Rory Smith, it also marked the end of something even bigger.

[4] An entire era that redefined women's sports.

[5] It's Friday, August 11th.

[6] Where are we exactly in the tournament right now?

[7] This is really confusing for me. So it's Friday in Australia and New Zealand when they start, which I think is still Friday in the UK, but might be Thursday.

[8] Thursday in the U .S., right.

[9] Yeah.

[10] And I can't, I just, I can't do the three.

[11] I can't do the three jumps.

[12] Yeah, two global time jumps is kind of all the brain can sustain.

[13] Well, as we're hinting at, right, you are in Australia covering.

[14] covering the waning days of the Women's World Cup, and you are graciously tolerating this ungodly time difference of 14 hours from all of us here in New York.

[15] I want to ask you to go back a little bit in the tournament, hit Rewind, and reconstruct the final moments of this game that has already become sports legend, the United States versus Sweden.

[16] Countdown is underway.

[17] Yeah, so it was a game in the round of 16, so the first knockout round of the World Cup.

[18] Three Sweden, number one, USA.

[19] And to be honest, it kind of played out, as we thought.

[20] It was very tight.

[21] There wasn't a huge amount of action, which maybe, you know, fit certain stereotypes that certain people still have about soccer.

[22] It was tense.

[23] Turns it back up field.

[24] It was pushed.

[25] And you could feel the nervousness of the players and, to be honest, of the crowd, building as the clock tick.

[26] Pre -kick U .S. It's getting chippy.

[27] And then, as these things tend to do when nobody scores, ball played long, it goes to penalties.

[28] That's it.

[29] Penalty kicks are going to determine who will go on and who will go home in this incredible battle.

[30] Right.

[31] And that's what I want to talk about.

[32] So you start off with five kicks each, and the first two.

[33] The kicks for both teams are scored.

[34] And the US scores its third, and Sweden misses.

[35] Which means that the US have to score, hit the ball and the goal twice.

[36] You are through to the quarterfinals of the World Cup.

[37] You know, you get to stay in the competition, you're still in the tournament, you're still favourites.

[38] And upsteps Megyn Rapino.

[39] Sire will leave in the US bench as Rapino steps up to take the next kick.

[40] Now, Medina Rapino famously doesn't miss penalties.

[41] You know, she's one of the most experienced players on this U .S. team.

[42] She's arguably still the brightest star in women's soccer.

[43] Megan Rapino knows about pressure.

[44] And one of her specialties is taking penalties.

[45] She's a sure thing.

[46] And she steps up and she looks, as she always does, incredibly cool and collected.

[47] And she misses.

[48] And she misses.

[49] And she turns and walked back to her teammates who are all kind of gathered on the halfway line with this rueful smile on her face as though she can't believe the absurdity of the situation.

[50] But it looks, fortunately, for Rapino, like she might kind of get away with it because the Swedish player who follows her also miss it, which means Sophia Smith can win it for the States.

[51] But she misses.

[52] This one doesn't even come close.

[53] And you get to this situation where no one can really believe what's happening, because you never see that many penalties missed in a row in a penalty shootout.

[54] But even that was kind of normal compared to what followed.

[55] If she scores, Sweden wins, the US is out.

[56] We come to the end of the shootout.

[57] The Swedes need to score one to go through.

[58] Hartig!

[59] And Alyssa Naya, the American goalkeeper, saves the shot.

[60] But instead of the ball spinning away from the doll, as it normally would, it spins quite slowly back towards the line.

[61] And Naya, because of her incredible reflexes, manages to save it again.

[62] I thought it was going in, but it happened so quickly.

[63] Naya walks out of the doll, shaking her head, pointing to the referee saying, I've saved it, I've saved it.

[64] Hurted the Swedish player, this pleading with the referee, did it cross the line?

[65] Unfortunately, no one has to make their case because the referees were a special watch which is connected to goal line technology, which tells them if the ball has crossed the line.

[66] And the whole world is kind of standing still here, waiting for the call.

[67] Waiting for a watch to buzz.

[68] And eventually it does.

[69] Sweden wins.

[70] And a second later, Hurtig is celebrating, the Swedish player.

[71] And Alyssa Naya has got kind of and a thousand -yard stare, and Sweden are through in this impossible fashion, and the United States are out.

[72] Right.

[73] And at this point, viewers at home are absorbing the idea that the U .S. has lost, and they have lost by literally a millimeter.

[74] Well, the thing that struck me the day after it is that the U .S. was knocked out by a unit of measurement the country does not recognize.

[75] they were knocked out by 0 .04 inches.

[76] Thank you for the translation.

[77] So, Roy, once you pick your jaw up off the ground after these excruciating mistakes by the U .S. women's team and this loss, what are you thinking?

[78] I suppose the first thought that you have is that it felt like the end of an era.

[79] The U .S. has been the defining force in women's soccer realistically for 30 years.

[80] But particularly over the last 10, they've won the World Cup twice, they have been home to the biggest stars, the most famous players, they have developed a profile that I think exceeds the bounds of athleticism and goes into advocacy and activism.

[81] They have always given the impression that this is kind of their tournament.

[82] But the idea that the US are the default winners, the chance of the challenge.

[83] champions in waiting, that is over, not just for this tournament, but for maybe every tournament from now on.

[84] So what you're saying is that the era of inevitability is what's really over for women's soccer.

[85] This team is now fallible.

[86] They can now fail, and they have.

[87] And with that in mind, Roy, tell us the bigger story of how this women's team ever became so dominant.

[88] what the dominant era represented, ultimately, and why it's now ending?

[89] That's a big question.

[90] So I think for a long time, the US had a kind of systemic advantage in women's soccer.

[91] You know, bear in mind this is a sport that was outlawed, as crazy as that seems to say, that it was banned completely in Britain at a kind of professional level until the night.

[92] 1970s.

[93] Hmm.

[94] It was banned for women.

[95] Women were not allowed to play professional, organized soccer in Britain until the early 1970s.

[96] In the U .S., Title IX, which was passed in the 1970s, and made provision for the equal treatment of men's and women's sports, certainly at the college level, meant that there was an organized form of women's soccer being played.

[97] They were at colleges that had coaching staffs and training programs.

[98] and played competitive games in competitive leagues.

[99] And that means you get a pipeline of talent.

[100] Right.

[101] So when FIFA get round to organizing a World Cup for women, the first official one is in 1991, the US are kind of unmatched.

[102] They are the standard bearers, the pioneers of women's soccer.

[103] But that's not the moment that makes this team, this program so significant.

[104] That comes in 1999, when you have this starburst that gives not just U .S. soccer, but kind of the American sporting firmament, players like Mia Hamm, who for a long time was regarded as the finest women's player in history, Brandy Chastain, this team that become genuine stars.

[105] And they become genuine stars because in 1999.

[106] The two very best teams in this World Cup going at it.

[107] The World Cup is held in the United States.

[108] This is the biggest game in the line.

[109] of these USA players, and you could say that for China too.

[110] The Americans make the final.

[111] Referee has just looked at the watch.

[112] That's it.

[113] The winner of the 1999 Women's World Cup will be decided on penalty kicks.

[114] And Brandy Chastain Chastain will take it.

[115] Hates the penalty kick that beats China.

[116] Go!

[117] Brandy Chastain does it.

[118] And the USA are world champions once again.

[119] And you get this iconic shot of Chastain in celebration, taking her jersey off to reveal her sports bra and kind of sinking onto the turf on her knees.

[120] And after a torrid two hours of football, the USA win, five, four -arm penalties.

[121] This look of complete and utter overwhelming delight on her face.

[122] Jubilation, on and off the field.

[123] That image goes across America, it goes around the world.

[124] Those sorts of iconic images have a power.

[125] they resonate with people and suddenly it feels as though women's soccer has arrived certainly in the US and to an extent I think you can make the case everywhere and I think that victory not only determined that that generation of US women's players became certainly the first real superstars of women's soccer but also it gave them a platform and a voice and a kind of broader significance that brought them into other areas that weren't necessarily just about what they did on the field.

[126] Explain that.

[127] They start talking about better conditions, about better pay, more equitable treatment.

[128] And the US national team kind of develops this activist edge to the extent that it becomes almost inseparable, really, from the US women's team.

[129] And the most obvious impact of that, I guess, is the establishment of the first professional women's soccer lead in the States than arguably kind of worldwide.

[130] which means that the players can devote themselves to soccer in a way that isn't really available to a lot of people in Europe and South America.

[131] And that creates this impression, really, that the US is this superpower that just can't be caught, that its dominance is going to be kind of almost eternal or at least as close to eternal as sport can realistically manage.

[132] So what you're describing is a very virtuous cycle where the dominance of the US women's team and the activism leads to, things like a professional league, which cements the dominance, and it strengthens the pipeline and begets even more dominance.

[133] Yes, and all of that coalesces in the next truly great U .S. team.

[134] It starts to beget genuine household names, players who are famous in sports and the culture as a whole.

[135] And that is people like Alex Morgan, the striker.

[136] And most of all, I suspect, it's Megan Rapino, who comes to be seen almost as the avatar of that generation.

[137] And remind us what makes her such an avatar of the sport?

[138] Well, first and foremost, it's how she played.

[139] She burst into kind of soccer's consciousness 2011, 2012.

[140] Absolutely wonderful for Megan Rapino.

[141] She's the sort of play that catches the eye.

[142] She's not necessarily the biggest or the quickest or the strongest, but she plays with a swagger, which I think a lot of people are drawn to.

[143] Ropino looking for the finish, and repeat, she can do.

[144] I think there is an ineffable quality to stardom that you can't always really explain.

[145] Sometimes, you know, some people are LeBron or Michael Jordan, they're just like loads better at the sport than anybody else, and so that they obviously become stars.

[146] But I think there are other players who, tend to stand out because of something in their body landward, something about the way they carry themselves.

[147] You need to close down Mega Rapino because look at that ball.

[148] A sense that they might do something exciting.

[149] Megan Rapino!

[150] Wyatt for sound.

[151] We've all seen the YouTube of her playing the guitar.

[152] Now we can listen to her sing as well.

[153] And I think Rapino is in that category.

[154] She is the sort of player who you.

[155] kind of have to keep an eye on, because you never quite know what she's going to do.

[156] That's Rapino on the field.

[157] But increasingly, as her profile grows, she actually becomes as significant, really, for what she does off the field as what she does on it.

[158] Like what?

[159] Well, particularly initially, LGBT rights.

[160] Why would I ever not come out?

[161] Why would I never not take this stand and say, this is who I am, and I'm very proud of that?

[162] She came out in 2012.

[163] She's one of the first openly gay players, if not the first openly gay player on the U .S. Women's National Team.

[164] And then in 2016, several star soccer players on the U .S. women's national team have filed a lawsuit demanding equal pay.

[165] Together with the few of her teammates, Rupino leads this legal battle against U .S. soccer, her employers effectively, to try and achieve pay equity with the men's team.

[166] And it takes a long time.

[167] The legal kind of procedure is very complicated.

[168] But they do eventually force U .S. soccer to change the way that players are compensated.

[169] Megan Rapino knelt during the national anthem before her game last night with the Seattle rain.

[170] And then later in 2016, she becomes one of the first professional athletes outside of the NFL to kneel in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick's protest against racial inequality.

[171] She told reporters being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all.

[172] of your liberties, end quote.

[173] And, you know, that's a risk, because if you look at what happened to Kaepernick, he was effectively forced to sacrifice his career to make his principles clear.

[174] And a lot of athletes have been told not to do it.

[175] Organizing bodies didn't want them to do it.

[176] And Rapino did it anyway.

[177] Well, two days before her women's national team takes on France in the quarterfinals of the Women's World Cup, co -captain, Megan Rapino, is in another match with President Trump.

[178] And then most notably in 2019, around the time of the World Cup in France, France, she doesn't have any problem at all with standing up to the president of the United States.

[179] Traditionally, a winning team would be invited to the White House so that the president of the day can, like, bask in their reflected glory.

[180] And Rapino says, she will not go.

[181] No. To which Trump responds.

[182] Maybe Rapino should win first.

[183] You have to finish the job first.

[184] And that's what the Americans do.

[185] They get all the way to the final and against the Dutch in Leon.

[186] Rapino scores the decisive goal that means the US have retained the World Cup and when they get back to the States I stand by the comments that I made about not wanting to go to the White House with the exception of the expletive my mom will be very upset about that Rapino and the entire team don't go to the White House.

[187] I would encourage my teammates to think hard about lending that platform or having that co -opted by an administration that doesn't feel the same way and doesn't fight for the same things that we fight for.

[188] She makes it very very, very clear that she does not approve of anything that Trump is doing and that she will not allow him to use her stardom to make himself look better.

[189] And of course, there's real risk here for Rapino and for the entire team in taking on someone like Donald Trump.

[190] Yes, Rapino and the entire team, really, found themselves in a more central role in a kind of ongoing broiling culture war than I think they probably anticipate or the many people would have said is ideal.

[191] That's never really been something that has concerned Medin Rapino, I think, that she is absolutely willing to stand up for what she believes in, regardless of who that might antagonize or alienate or upset.

[192] If there's a cause that she believes is worth fighting for, or a cause that is close to her heart, or something that she feels she should stand up for, she will stand up for, and she will use the platform she's got.

[193] And Rapino was always very clear that all of that was contingent because while sport is a great way to distrust things that people might not want to discuss things that they might want to avoid it all depends on how successful you are if you are winning games if you are winning trophies if you are one of the best players in the world if you are a world champion then people kind of have to listen to you they want to hear what you've got to say rapino has always said that first and foremost you have to win the stuff that people care about, and that is what gives you your platform.

[194] And now after all those years and years of winning, the U .S. women's soccer team has now lost.

[195] Yeah, for the first time in more than a decade, it has lost a World Cup game.

[196] It looks like the end of an era, and it looks also like the rest of the world has kind of caught up.

[197] We'll be right back.

[198] So Roy, how does the rest of the world manage to catch up to?

[199] U .S. women's soccer.

[200] I think the first step was unbanning the sport.

[201] That was quite helpful.

[202] And then what you really see probably starts 10 to 15 years ago, where the major club teams of Europe start to take an interest in women's soccer.

[203] And you see the major teams of the Premier League and of, you know, the top divisions in Italy and Spain and Germany belatedly.

[204] And it's really important we don't cast anyone here.

[205] as the good guys, because this was in the 21st century.

[206] This is the sort of thing I should really be describing from like the Victorian period, but it's not.

[207] This is the 21st century.

[208] But these clubs know exactly how to produce footballers.

[209] They are extremely good at it.

[210] They're also extremely good at finding footballers.

[211] And they have the brilliant light -balled moment of, if we can do this for men, it'll probably work for women too.

[212] Right.

[213] What you see is within the clubs themselves, you see all of these facilities.

[214] suddenly populated not just by boys, but by girls, that you get players who are recruited to youth academies at the age of 10, 11, sometimes earlier.

[215] This seems slightly uneasy saying it, but if there's a talented kid playing soccer somewhere in an, like an organized setting in Europe, the local professional team will know by the time they're six.

[216] Wow.

[217] Like, we're all finished after six.

[218] If you've not been spotted by the time you're six, you are done.

[219] But it is a machine.

[220] It is a talent spotting and a talent creation machine.

[221] And you see this rapid growth in women's soccer that the European teams get better and they get better really fast.

[222] Right.

[223] And the US, of course, does not have a comparable system.

[224] No, the US is a complete outlier in global soccer.

[225] And in women's soccer, there is a real issue with pay to play that women's soccer in the US has always been kind of a middle class pursuit.

[226] And because of that, it's obviously a little bit exclusive, and that has this effect of limiting the number of players who can have access to it.

[227] And at the same time, the place that leads isn't to professional teams.

[228] It leads to colleges.

[229] And the colleges provide good quality coaching.

[230] It's a professionalized environment, even if it's not fully professional.

[231] But that's at, what, 18, 19?

[232] You're competing with European and South American and to an extent, even African kids now who have been trained professionally at professional elite teams since they were 10 or 11, that's an awful lot of catching up to do for, you know, someone who's 18 or 19 and going into college, that there is a natural disadvantage to that U .S. system when it's exposed to global competition.

[233] So once Europe decides to really invest in this pipeline for women's soccer, whatever advantages the U .S. had with systems like Title IX, they basically evaporate.

[234] Yeah, and it evaporates really fast because the European clubs can move so quickly and with so much money.

[235] So you start to see really since the 2019 World Cup in France, which is obviously one that the Americans won, it starts to feel even there like the gap is closing, the aura that they had, the sense of fear that they inspired in European teams, the idea that that was the final boss in a video game, like you had to beat the American national team.

[236] That starts to dissipate, and I think coming into this World Cup, there was a real sense among the European teams and, for the sake of being able to walk around safely, I should say, Australia, that the U .S. team was kind of there to be taken down, that they weren't what they used to be, and that there was nothing to be afraid of anymore.

[237] And so what does this year's World Cup look like when that U .S. aura begins to dissipate?

[238] Well, they kind of arrived here, knowing that for quite a few of the players, this would be their last hurrah, or what they hoped would be their last hurrah.

[239] You know, Megan Rapino was retiring.

[240] She has already announced that.

[241] Several of the members of the team are in their mid to late 30s, and without wanting to be agist, that tends to mean that you are in the autumn of your professional athletic career.

[242] They probably won't come back either.

[243] And to be honest, they've kind of looked like a team that's at the end of a road.

[244] You know, they played four games.

[245] They beat Vietnam.

[246] They drew with the Dutch and with Portugal.

[247] And P .S., when you say drew to stupid Americans tie.

[248] Yeah, they tie, sorry.

[249] But they never really looked particularly exciting or imaginative or inventive.

[250] They didn't feel like they were the defining story, the must watch, draw of this tournament.

[251] They felt like a faded force.

[252] They looked a shadow of what the world.

[253] expects from the United States women's team and what the U .S. women's team expects from itself.

[254] Right.

[255] And that extends quite clearly to the final game that you described at the beginning of our conversation against Sweden when Rapino misses her penalty kick and Sweden's last penalty shot goes in by that painful millimeter.

[256] Yeah, and there was a temptation in the immediate aftermath to see it as being a really closer on the thing that the World Cup had been ended by a millimeter.

[257] But that's not really true, because that millimeter was just a culmination of all of the rest of the tournament, which in turn was the culmination of all of the last four years, and that in turn probably would link to the growth of women's soccer around the world, to the inevitable march of time for some of the most important players on the US team.

[258] So it wasn't unforeseeable that the US should not win the World Cup.

[259] It wasn't really an injustice that they went out to Sweden.

[260] The only thing that struck me as being particularly cruel was the fact that Rapino, with her last ever kick at a World Cup, should miss a penalty.

[261] That felt like it wasn't really the coda that her World Cup career deserved, given all that she's achieved for the sport as a whole and in terms of the causes that matter to her.

[262] And she expressed all that after the games.

[263] I mean, this is like a sick joke.

[264] For me personally, I'm just like, this is dark comedy.

[265] I missed a penalty.

[266] He called it a sick joke that that would be.

[267] be her final contribution to a World Cup.

[268] I think this team has always fought for so much more.

[269] And, you know, to know that we've used our really special talent to do something, you know, that's really like changed the world forever.

[270] I think that means it most to me. And, you know, the players in this locker room here.

[271] And she talked about how she's tried to use the platform that the U .S. national team provides.

[272] That's the best part.

[273] We're going to miss you.

[274] Thank you, Megan, for everything.

[275] Thank you.

[276] Thank you.

[277] And she has always said that without the winning, you don't get the microphones.

[278] You don't get to say whatever you want all of the time.

[279] Because people in Rapino's telling listen to winners, they want to hear what winners have to say.

[280] And in her view, if you don't win, then that might go away.

[281] Right.

[282] She seemed to recognize that this platform is now in jeopardy.

[283] I wonder, Rory, to the degree that the era that we've been talking about truly is over, and based on the pipeline and Europe's success in building it that we've been talking about, it might be over for some time.

[284] The U .S. might not be able to catch up to Europe's catching up to the U .S. for years.

[285] Maybe it will be impossible to catch up.

[286] We're not going to know that for a while.

[287] But I'm curious, what do you think that this era of extraordinary dominance and success and activism will have meant with U .S. women's soccer?

[288] Well, first of all, I think that maybe the U .S. will just have to get used to being one of several nations that can win major tournaments, and there's no great shame in that.

[289] You know, I don't think the U .S. is going to be bypassed as a soccer force.

[290] They will be back.

[291] They might win the next World Cup.

[292] But I think the era of them being default champions is probably over for good.

[293] There will always be other countries that can challenge them now and challenge them in a convincing, consistent way.

[294] what I don't think will change is the kind of spiritual, philosophical legacy of this team that women's soccer all over the world has an activist edge.

[295] And I think in no small part that's because most of these women have had to fight for something, the right to play, the right to be paid as much as they deserve, the right to have access to the same facilities as the men, the right to have their sports projected in the way that it ought to be.

[296] So women's soccer is always accompanied by a degree of advocacy.

[297] But to me, Rapino and this generation of the US national team, I think they were the embodiment of that.

[298] And I suspect that they inspired quite a lot of people within women's soccer to stand up on the issues that they believed in.

[299] I mean, it's been really interesting here in the last week or so to see how defensive really, Players from other countries have been about the US national team.

[300] I don't want to kind of cause any offence when I say that the rest of the world generally quite like seeing Americans lose at things.

[301] But that's not the case in women's soccer.

[302] There is an abide in respect and admiration for this team.

[303] They feel quite protective of the US, I think, in a way that's quite rare.

[304] And that, I think, speaks to two things.

[305] One is what this generation of the US national team has meant in a sporting sense, that athletes admire winners.

[306] and this U .S. team have been relentless winners.

[307] But also I think there's an element in there of what they've represented as people.

[308] The admiration for what they've achieved both on and off the field will continue long after we've forgotten kind of how they got knocked out of this World Cup.

[309] Well, very much.

[310] Thank you very much.

[311] We appreciate it.

[312] Thank you for having me. We'll be right back.

[313] Here's what else you need to another day.

[314] In a major diplomatic breakthrough, the United States and Iran have reached a deal to win the freedom of five imprisoned Americans, most of whom have been charged by Iran without evidence of spying.

[315] In exchange for the Americans' release, the U .S. will release several jailed Iranians and unfreeze about $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue.

[316] The release of the Iranian money could prove controversial, given Iranians, history of funding armed militants across the Middle East.

[317] But the U .S. says that Iran will have no direct access to the money, which will be held by a bank in Qatar.

[318] To access the money, Iran must submit orders to the bank for humanitarian products like food and medicine that have no military purpose.

[319] And, tragedy that hits one of us is felt by all of us.

[320] With lives lost and properties decimated.

[321] We are grieving with each other during this inconsolable time.

[322] Officials on the Hawaiian island of Maui say that the recovery from the wildfires that have killed dozens of people there will take years.

[323] The fires have burned hundreds of buildings, including homes, businesses, hotels, a school and a museum.

[324] In a video posted on Thursday, Maui's mayor, Richard Bisson, asked residents for their patience.

[325] In the days ahead, we will be stronger as a Kaya Ulu or community as we rebuild with resilience and aloha.

[326] Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennis Gitter, Sydney Harper, and Olivia Nade, with help from Carlos Prieto.

[327] It was edited by M .J. Davis Lynn, with help from Paige Cowan.

[328] Contains original music by Mary Lazzano, Diane Wong, Alicia Baitoum, Roe Mimistow, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

[329] Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landfork of Wonderly.

[330] I'm Michael Bavar on Monday.