This started at an international fair in Japan, as many things do... Women's football was part of the festival 'Portopia '81' in Kobe, which marked the opening of the new artificial Port Island. It seems they played the matches on dry land - but the winning team, Italy, later adopted the tournament for itself. Italy hosted four more editions. They were named the Mundialito, a significant event in 1980s football. Italy was one of the world leaders in women's soccer at the time, with a league founded in 1968 and some ambitious clubs. Nishigaoka stadium in Tokyo (pd) 1981: Known as the International Ladies Football Festival, the initial 'Portopia' tournament was played at Central Stadium in Kobe and at Tokyo's Nishigaoka, now a home ground of champion club NTV Beleza. As discussed on @mcruic's forum The Roon Ba, it used a strange format - round robin with only 2 games each. The tournament looks incomplete, but an abandoned event is unlikely, since the guest teams had come 8,000km to Japan. The winners were Italy on goal difference - the other guests were well chosen, as Denmark and England were European semi-finalists with Italy in 1979. "Mundialito 1984 (Italy)" https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/roonbafr/mundialito-1984-italy-t2759.html (Archive) "In 1981 the Japanese FA was farsighted enough to fund a visit by England, Denmark and Italy to Japan to play the inexperienced home side in a small tournament. The Japanese knew that their team could benefit from matches by the then superior European squads. It was a long term plan which paid off handsomely in 2011 when Japan won the Women’s World Cup beating the USA in the final in Germany." - (WFA History)
1984: Held on the Adriatic coast of Italy with 3 guest nations, the first Italian 'Mundialito' was very evenly-matched. European finalist that year, England managed only a hard-fought 3rd place win v Belgium. The top team in the group was a future powerhouse of women's football, West Germany (without East Germany at this time). But in the final, Italy recovered to win the title 3-1. The player most strongly associated with this championship is Rose Reilly. Born in Scotland, she was banned by the Scottish FA when she signed a professional contract in Italy. Reilly has had an incredible life and career, and she belongs beside the great names of football: Rose Reilly: the Scottish footballer who won the World Cup as Italy captain https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jul/17/rose-reilly-scottish-footballer-world-cup-italy-milan (Guardian) Rose Reilly at Milan Ladies, 1975
...And here's the actual 1984 final match, thanks to the Women's Soccer History video channel. The match was in Caorle and was shown on Italy's Rai TV - @blissett may know more phrases, but here's my essential guide to Calcio Commentator Italian: 1. "shot" = "conclusione" 2. er, that's it [1984-08-26] Mundialito Femminile (Final) // Italy 3-1 West Germany www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjZXI3Mvrj8 Team lineups/scorers, from Giampaolo at TheRoonBa: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/roonbafr/mundialito-1984-italy-t2759.html#p27541 (Archive) A 1984 Italian match report by Emanuela Audisio is on La Repubblica's site (Archive) Dunno if the translator is accurate, but it's very poetic "In fact, they run out of money, but in a very sober way: the richest earn a million or two a month [Lira, obv], the others are satisfied with half or a little inflated expense reimbursements. Marisa Perin, 'Miss Gentile' of the national team, not because of the delicacy of mind but because of some rough marking, runs a farm in Vedelago and must follow 400 beasts." - (La Repubblica)
1985: England won the title, 3-2 in the final against Italy, after the Italian hosts had gone unbeaten in the group. "From 1974 to 1985 we were, and still are at the time of writing, the most successful England Women’s Team. Not only did we win the Home International Championship in 1976, we went on to 4th place in the 1979 unofficial European Cup ... runners-up in the 1984 European Championship and winners of the 1985 Mundialito, thereby becoming World Champions (with many of that squad going on to to win the 1988 Mundialito). Comparisons with the modern era would be unfair. You only compete in your own time!" - (Carol Thomas) In 3rd place was Denmark, and narrowly in 4th and last place, The Ooosa! played their first games under US Soccer's management, after it tried to form a team for a few years. Some nice memories from this tournament are in articles from 2005 (on ussoccer.com). 1986: Now it was a 6-team event, while 3 countries made their sole Mundialito appearances: Mexico, and the very new Brazil team (after women's football was banned for 40 years), and that year's Asian champions China. These were Japan's first recorded games outside Asia. But in the semi-finals, the east Asian teams were beaten by Italy and the U.S.; the final was 1-0 for Italy (Antonella Carta 11'). 1988: One more time, England beat Italy in the final, a 2-1 result in this match. Perhaps the tournament was losing its sheen, as only 4 guests joined and Italy enlisted its A and B teams. The previous month in China, the Not A World Cup cup was a big success. "Italy was always keen to have England visit and there were to be several appearances at the Mundialito over the years with England victories coming in 1985 and 1988. The 1988 success also brought recognition for England when they won Team of the Year at the inaugural Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards." - (WFA History) England's Mundialito team in 1984 - (JJheritage.com) ⬤ Italy provided the Mundialito's top goalscorers every time - Carolina Morace and Elisabetta Vignotto are the famous names, but Ida Golin won or shared the golden boot twice ('85 and '86) and Anna Mega won in 1988. Other tournament info RSSSF / Wikipedia in Italiano
⬤ Closely related were the ALFC Asian Women's Championship from 1975 biennially, and the women's European championship. By now, the sport had more organized events than ever before. The Mundialito is recognizable as an intercontinental cup with national representative women's teams, and thus it has a direct lineage today. Worldwide tournaments had often been played before as a kind of club/international hybrid, most obviously shown in the 1978–1987 World Invitational tournaments in Taiwan (maybe a more interesting mix!) ... To me, the (un)official labels are much less important than the question: "Who helped the sport?" Until the mid-'80s Fifa was uninterested in women's football, and often acted against it. In some ways, this continues now. Although it wants to help the current sport, Fifa's version of women's history is self-centred and sexist. It ignores its own failings, it omits whole tournaments that it didn't create, and mistreats those players again by forgetting them. Male football is different - Fifa.com happily covers the pre-1930 era, men's amateur games in Olympics and in Britain, even decades before Fifa existed. Search the same site for the early Women's World Cups or Mundialito, and there's little mention of them.
Italy's team in 1981/82 What are your memories of the Mundialito? When you won, did you feel like World Champions? “I have good memories of all three editions of the Mundialito that Italy won in the 1980s. I have particularly fond memories of the 1986 edition, because I scored against China and also because we beat the USA in the final… that was a one-off. I was just making a name for myself as a footballer at that point, but I felt good. There was massive competition for places in the Italy side. "[In 1991] We finished in fifth place, and – given the teams we faced along the way – I think that was a very good result. We were knocked out by Norway, who were one of the best teams in the world back then. People in the industry in Italy were really excited, but there wasn’t much interest back home." Q+A: AS Roma coach Elisabetta Bavagnoli on the state of the game in Italy https://equalizersoccer.com/2019/03/29/qa-as-roma-coach-elisabetta-bavagnoli-interview-womens-italy/ (Archive)
An advert for the Mundialito 1984, and some pages from the 1985 tournament program (from England's National Football Museum) That Italy v England match, a 1-1 draw in August 1985, was notable as the countries' first meeting in football after the Heysel Stadium disaster. - Champions and double standards – Uruguay won the first men's World Cup in 1930, but why do they wear 2 extra stars on their jerseys? This got a passing mention from Sophie Lawson this week, and the story checks out. It also has implications for the women's championships. The 1924 and 1928 Olympic football tournaments were run by Fifa - and were designated as men's football world championships, both at the time and long after, and quietly on Fifa's website today. In the absence of a World Cup, those popular tournaments made sense as a replacement, and Uruguay are still proud of winning both gold medals - but they were still amateur events devised by the IOC. (pd) The unequal treatment of 1930 (men's) and 1988 (women's) is frustrating. Fifa has almost disowned the 1988 Women's International Tournament in China because it was invitational - the 6 confederations chose their teams. But the famed 1930 men's World Cup had no such logic. The 1930 tournament was a near-failure: no qualifying, many FAs rejected the event, and it was open to any team that could travel to Uruguay at that time. This is not to disparage the 1924-30 efforts, but it is a reason to take a more holistic, incremental approach to the women's tournaments, not remove them from history. While the Mundialito and Taiwan/Xi'an events never claimed to crown world champions (with apologies to Italy and England), the three other world tournaments in the '70s and '80s were some of women's sport's biggest events, largely successful, and impressive to organize at all, given the situation in soccer then. At those events, Denmark was women's world champion twice, Thread TBC, and Norway won in 1988.