Join NowThe Rise of Women's Soccer Globally
Nigeria advanced past the United States today in the quarter-finals of the U-20 Women's World Cup on penalty kicks, becoming the first African women's team to reach the semi-finals of a FIFA competition.
That result is all the more remarkable given the corrupt mess that is the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) at the moment, and speaks to the rapid development of women's soccer in Africa. Ghana were the other African representative in the tournament, giving the US quite a test in their opening group game, the Americans coming back to tie it 1-1 in the second half.
Nigeria's success also speaks to the global growth of women's soccer. The quarter finalists represented all regional FIFA confederations aside from Oceania:
North America: 2 countries (Mexico, United States)
South America: 1 country (Colombia)
Europe: 2 countries (Germany, Sweden)
Asia: 2 countries (North Korea, South Korea)
Africa: 1 country (Nigeria)
Perhaps even more importantly, in its five editions since it began as a U-19 competition in 2002, the leading global international youth women's competition has become notably more even: in 2002, no fewer than six countries (half the twelve present) contrived to lose by four more goals or more in at least one game. In 2010, as we we enter the semi-final stage, only Switzerland of the sixteen finalists have been beaten that badly so far.
The established powers don't have the field to themselves any longer. With their loss to Nigeria, albeit on PKs, the United States failed to reach the semi-final stage of the U-20 Women's World Cup for the first time. The quality of American talent has not particularly declined, as far as I can tell from watching their games: Sydney Leroux will be a star for the United States Women's National Team (sorry, Canada). The US did win the last U-20 Women's World Cup in 2008, for the first time since 2002.
But the days when the US simply crushed its opposition are long gone. In that 2002 U-20 Women's World Cup, the US won by the following ridiculous scorelines: 5-1, 4-0, 6-0, 6-0, 4-1, 1-0 (in the final over hosts Canada). In 2010, its scores were 1-1, 5-0 (poor Switzerland, who lost their other games 4-0 and 2-0), 1-0 and 1-1 (loss on PKs).
The rest of the world has simply caught up with the United States: this was to be expected, but the speed of it is impressive. Participation levels in women's youth soccer have risen enormously in so many countries since the 1990s: it's the fastest growing team sport in terms of participation worldwide. In England, for example, the number of registered girls' teams rose from 80 in 1993 to 8,000 by 2006.
We see this development worldwide reflected in the present U-20 Women's World Cup. Colombia became the second South American team to reach the semi-finals with their 2-0 victory over traditional European powerhouse Sweden in the quarter-finals (Brazilian women's soccer development appears to be stalling, unfortunately). Africa are there too with Nigeria, Europe with Germany, and right now, South Korea and Mexico are battling it out to see which continent will be the fourth represented in the semis.
As I write, South Korea are winning 3-0 over Mexico in their quarter-final, but they might not even be the strongest upcoming power on their peninsula: North Korea won the 2006 U-20 World Cup, reached the final in 2008 and won the inaugural U-17 World Cup the same year (in the current competition, they lost in the quarter-finals to a very strong German team).
The sixth FIFA Women's World Cup, to be held in Germany next year, promises to be the best yet judging from the development of the sport globally at youth level in the past few years.
Tom Dunmore runs the world soccer blog Pitch Invasion. Follow him @pitchinvasion on Twitter for more frequent ramblings and links.
That result is all the more remarkable given the corrupt mess that is the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) at the moment, and speaks to the rapid development of women's soccer in Africa. Ghana were the other African representative in the tournament, giving the US quite a test in their opening group game, the Americans coming back to tie it 1-1 in the second half.
Nigeria's success also speaks to the global growth of women's soccer. The quarter finalists represented all regional FIFA confederations aside from Oceania:
North America: 2 countries (Mexico, United States)
South America: 1 country (Colombia)
Europe: 2 countries (Germany, Sweden)
Asia: 2 countries (North Korea, South Korea)
Africa: 1 country (Nigeria)
Perhaps even more importantly, in its five editions since it began as a U-19 competition in 2002, the leading global international youth women's competition has become notably more even: in 2002, no fewer than six countries (half the twelve present) contrived to lose by four more goals or more in at least one game. In 2010, as we we enter the semi-final stage, only Switzerland of the sixteen finalists have been beaten that badly so far.
The established powers don't have the field to themselves any longer. With their loss to Nigeria, albeit on PKs, the United States failed to reach the semi-final stage of the U-20 Women's World Cup for the first time. The quality of American talent has not particularly declined, as far as I can tell from watching their games: Sydney Leroux will be a star for the United States Women's National Team (sorry, Canada). The US did win the last U-20 Women's World Cup in 2008, for the first time since 2002.
But the days when the US simply crushed its opposition are long gone. In that 2002 U-20 Women's World Cup, the US won by the following ridiculous scorelines: 5-1, 4-0, 6-0, 6-0, 4-1, 1-0 (in the final over hosts Canada). In 2010, its scores were 1-1, 5-0 (poor Switzerland, who lost their other games 4-0 and 2-0), 1-0 and 1-1 (loss on PKs).
The rest of the world has simply caught up with the United States: this was to be expected, but the speed of it is impressive. Participation levels in women's youth soccer have risen enormously in so many countries since the 1990s: it's the fastest growing team sport in terms of participation worldwide. In England, for example, the number of registered girls' teams rose from 80 in 1993 to 8,000 by 2006.
We see this development worldwide reflected in the present U-20 Women's World Cup. Colombia became the second South American team to reach the semi-finals with their 2-0 victory over traditional European powerhouse Sweden in the quarter-finals (Brazilian women's soccer development appears to be stalling, unfortunately). Africa are there too with Nigeria, Europe with Germany, and right now, South Korea and Mexico are battling it out to see which continent will be the fourth represented in the semis.
As I write, South Korea are winning 3-0 over Mexico in their quarter-final, but they might not even be the strongest upcoming power on their peninsula: North Korea won the 2006 U-20 World Cup, reached the final in 2008 and won the inaugural U-17 World Cup the same year (in the current competition, they lost in the quarter-finals to a very strong German team).
The sixth FIFA Women's World Cup, to be held in Germany next year, promises to be the best yet judging from the development of the sport globally at youth level in the past few years.
Tom Dunmore runs the world soccer blog Pitch Invasion. Follow him @pitchinvasion on Twitter for more frequent ramblings and links.
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Did the rest of the world get better or is the US just not as strong as years past? Or both?
I'm not asking to be snide, I don't follow women's soccer nearly as closely as men's, especially at the YNT level, and am genuinely curious.Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 01:06 PM by Sandon Mibut 
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those PKs were total BS, american keep stops a PK twice against the same person and the ref makes her retake until the 3rd time she scored. nigeria played well in the second half but it was a classless display of brutality. the american defenders never even attempted to try to win the 50/50s and one of our defenders got steamrolled in extra time. 2010 has been a year that i can no longer root for african teams
Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 01:19 PM by 00Kevin
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Sandon - this isn't an outstanding US team by its extremely high standards (there's a good blog on that here), but it's definitely much more of a case of the rest of the world catching up. As I mentioned, this was always to be expected, but perhaps not as rapidly as it has happened in just a few recent years.Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 01:20 PM by Tom Dunmore
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I always think it's funny when we speak condescendingly of the mess some other federation is in, like Nigeria. The primary difference between USSF and them is that their criminals probably know something about soccer.
As far as the U20 debacle, I guess you wouldn't want to blame the coach, although this level of success tracks her record in the NCAA's.Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 01:20 PM by Morris20
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Morris20 -- it's not condescending to point to the mess of Nigeria's federation. It's corrupt, its leadership has been fired and is under serious investigation with millions of dollars missing. It's just a fact, and the same simply isn't true of US Soccer.
Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 01:23 PM by Tom Dunmore
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True, Nigeria played a brutal game. Think Netherlands in the World Cup final, dialed up to 11. But the ref called a couple of dozen fouls on them. And Henninger did appear to go off the line on the penalties. So I don't think we can blame the refs for this loss. Nairn was atrocious on her free kick and corner kick opportunities, and when Leroux wasn't finding service from the mids, there was no Plan B. Also, US seemed stunned for 25 minutes after Nigeria's goal. Only when Morris was subbed in did the team perk up. But by then, Leroux and Mewis were spent.
Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 02:15 PM by MAR2010
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I think it is safe to say that Nigeria will not win the Fair Play award this year--26-5 in fouls and 4-0 in cards--but Nigeria also was bigger and seemed more fit. You need a combo of skill and size and physicalness and I'm not sure the US had the latter two.
Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 03:30 PM by kgilbert78
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Tom, if by "the quality of American talent has not particularly declined", then we in the USA have tons of problems. I watched the Germany game yesterday and saw a team that actually knows how to play the sport; from the fundamentals to the tactical. This USA team was nowhere near where the German team was. They couldn't trap, they made passes to no one, took weak shots when they had better options, dribbled too much when the early pass would send a teammate through, made passes when they had shots inside the box, and with time on the ball kicked the ball upfield to no one in particular. The defense was strong and anticipated well but otherwise this team had no business being a "WC favorite".
This is a game that should have been won by 2-3 goals and they were lucky not to lose before the PK's.
Kevin, the decision to rekick three times was correct. The GK kept taking two steps forward off the line before the kick was taken. That's against the laws of the game. Again, fundamentals.Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 04:21 PM by DGA57
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You're absolutely right, but the frustrating thing here is that refs never ever make that call.Quote:Originally Posted by DGA57
Kevin, the decision to rekick three times was correct. The GK kept taking two steps forward off the line before the kick was taken. That's against the laws of the game. Again, fundamentals.
As for the overall gist of the post. Yes, it is clear that the rest of the world is getting better. It is also clear that the US is not getting better. At this point the mens national team is more tactically developed than the women's team, which is sad considering where both teams started compared to everyone else of the same respective gender.
Our women's program has stagnated, if not then it has gotten worse. We have not improved over the past decade and you can't tell me that we reached our full potential in 2000 after at best a decade of even trying to develop the sport.Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 05:17 PM by winster
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I think Tom is right that the rest of the world is getting better more than the US is declining. Having said that, we should be getting better, too, but we're not. Or at least not enough to notice by comparison.
It's not just us either. As someone else said on the women's forum, who would've guessed the semi-finals would be missing, not only the USA, but Sweden, Norway, Brazil, AND North Korea? (And we're not even mentioning China who didn't even make the tournament). The only traditional women's powerhouse to make it is Germany.
Good, specific observations but boy, it was also a case of two halves, wasn't it?Quote:Originally Posted by DGA57
Tom, if by "the quality of American talent has not particularly declined", then we in the USA have tons of problems. I watched the Germany game yesterday and saw a team that actually knows how to play the sport; from the fundamentals to the tactical...Posted 25 Jul 2010 at 05:38 PM by kolabear
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