La provaFootball's first imitator of a Women's World Championship may have been in 1937 with British clubs. The successful teams, Dick Kerr Ladies and Edinburgh Ladies, each claimed to be "world's champions" in the annual matches and in a tournament in 1939. Such a title may now be downplayed as the bombast of a doomed empire, but their ambition for a global sport was right – by that time, women's football teams had formed as far afield as Vietnam and Australasia. Il prologoWomen's international football was an occasional event in the inter-war years in Europe. After the Second World War, it continued and some women's European championships were known to take place, including in 1957 in West Berlin, and in 1969 in Italy. That country became the foremost force in the women's game in this era. Serie A Femminile played its first season in 1968 and would become the world's top league. In 1970, the Italian women's federation FICF planned to host the groundbreaking Coppa del Mondo. I personaggiThese advances were never easy, and every gain for women's teams was difficult and contested. A world tournament for women's football should have been impossible. Although the game never disappeared in England or West Germany, the national FAs forbade it until 1970 – in the DFB's case, 3 months after this World Cup – but each nation had a team in the competition in Italy. The existing Czechoslovak women's squad, with no visas, were barred from crossing the Iron Curtain to take part. Mexico's presence in 1970 was vital, not only for expanding the tournament beyond Europe, but also in bringing one of the star teams, whose 3rd-place finish foreshadowed the extravaganza there in 1971. The Italian tournament was a special one and set some records that still stand today. The anniversary year has had retrospectives, which I'm planning to post here later. It's been great to look at the 20th-century tournaments, and a lot more history besides – if you're thinking of learning more about the past of women's football, I'm sure you'll find it just as interesting as the sport's future. (Above) World Cup launch event, July 1970 - (img: di_verso) (Below) Tournament poster
Match day 1: two quarter-finals, and a North/South divide. West Germany's team have an interesting story, despite them being knocked out on day 1. They also became the first team to be knocked out of the same World Cup twice... Like in some other countries, a club mainly represented the national team in the tournament – it was SC Bad Neuenahr, a famous club name for decades, which is preserved by the current team "SC 13" in their club history. Their home, a picturesque spa town, held several other tournaments: "In May 1970 Neuenahr organized a ladies' football tournament for the first time. Altogether twelve teams took part. In the following years, clubs came from Rome, Reims and Luton in England. Soon international competition developed into the world's biggest women's football tournament. Time and again, the press reported on the strong team from the Ahr Valley with 15-year-old centre-forward Martina Arzdorf, the 'female Gerd Müller', who had hit 37 goals in only eight games. 'Martina blasts the goals from 35 metres' ran the Bild am Sonntag headline on 5 July 1970." - (bpb.de) Coach Heinz Schweden and striker Martina Arzdorf, 1970 (Image: SWR Digit) West Germany had reinforcements from Bavaria in the squad: 3 players from Illertissen, including Margarethe Holl. The club team Bad Neuenahr played in Illertissen in a pre-World Cup friendly against an Augsburg student women's team; the usually reliable BPB states an incredible attendance of 20,000. (Margarethe Holl/SWP.de / Archive) More info on the German team is in the BPB article, "Die inoffizielle Weltmeisterschaft in Italien" (Archive) by Eduard Hoffmann/Jürgen Nendza. Some rare photos from the team's trip are on the SWR Digit site, "SC 07 Bad Neuenahr". I couldn't find anything about players of the other losing team on that first day, Austria – the country used to be at the forefront of organizing women's football in the 1920s and '30s, and started the Damenliga Ost in 1972/73, but the team was no match for Mexico in 1970. Quarter-finals first results: like the rest of the tournament, one game in the north (Genoa) and one in the south (Bari), with the winners' semi-finals also to be held in that half of the country. England 5 - 1 West Germany Briggs 1', 9', Stockley 25'pen, Cross 36', Lopez 61' / Schmitz 49' Mexico 9 - 0 Austria Rubio 1', 31', Vargas 4', 18', 47', 57', Huerta 8', Hernández 49', 61' The dates of these first matches are a little unclear (in an echo of a famous English game 50 years earlier). RSSSF says Mon 6 July 1970, the Italian newspaper says 7 July, and some of the German sources say 8 July. It's a pleasant surprise to find that that paper, Corriere dello Sport, has women's football coverage every day for the first week of the 1970 championship: Serie A Femminile games on 6 July, an Italian team report on 7 July (p7), and more from the national league on 8 July (p4), but no further info on England and Mexico's wins. BPB puts the attendance for W Germany v England at 5,000. The West German team in Genoa, July 1970 (SWR Digit - dated as 07.07.1970) For West Germany, their Czechoslovak neighbours' visa trouble gave the team a quick reprieve a few days later...
Match day 2: Reports on the Czech travel trouble, Thu 9 July (p5), and more quarter-finals news on Fri 10 July (p4). Czechoslovakia were taken out of the draw at the last minute. But the most interesting part, Corriere thinks there was another reason: "In late afternoon yesterday, Mr. Molino, representative of the organizing Federation of the tournament, had declared in Bologna that difficulties had arisen for the visas and passports of the Czechoslovakian athletes. Most likely this official version tried to mask the forfeit of a team currently perhaps the strongest in Europe." - (Corriere dello Sport, 9 July) Would the Czechoslovaks have become world champions? Sabina Fleišingerová's history of Czech women's football doesn't mention the World Cup, but says that in 1967 Slavia Prague beat the champions Inter Milan in Italy, and Slavia were undefeated by anyone from 1966-70. Women's tournaments were popular in Czechoslovakia, and the league system seemed as highly developed as in Italy or France (also absent here). The Czechoslovak national team was later at the 1988 women's world championship. Switzerland arrived as a competitor in the Italian World Cup, but their team lost to Italy by a single goal. Swiss women's football was also developing well in the late 1960s, and the present women's national league was formed two months before the World Cup, on 24 April 1970. - "50 years of women's football in Switzerland" (Saro Pepe) Frauen-Fussball (1968) | SRF Archiv youtube.com/watch?v=7qvVSfOP_mY Quarter-finals on 9 July: Salerno Italy 2 - 1 Switzerland Mella 16', Avon 69' / Ripamonti 54' Bologna Denmark 6 - 1 West Germany Evers 8', 35', 69', Christensen 9', 19', E Hansen 24' / Arzdorf 15' The 10 July report has an Italy-France friendly being planned at this time, and calls for the Italian women's federations (two or three) to unify, which finally happened in 1974. Claudia Avon's winning goal was "a minute" before full-time, suggesting a 70-minute game length. The teams' tactics almost certainly weren't the 2-3-5 from much older times, but formations were often listed that way by reporters for convenience, well into the 1980s! Another surprise in the newspaper is, after this World Cup, you could go to Palermo Pop 70 to see live music by Aretha Franklin, Duke Ellington, and Johnny Hallyday(!) and a four-day ticket cost the equivalent of €2.
Semi-finals: The matches were scheduled for Fri 10 July with evening kickoffs at 18.30, Italy-Mexico, and at 21.30 England-Denmark, reports the sport Corriere on that day, 10 July (p4). RSSSF lists Italy-Mexico on 11 July instead. Women's football is covered in the weekend's paper on 11 July (p2) and 13 July (p5), but not much on the internationals - the FFIGC women's Serie A is the main focus, with the match of the week of Roma-Juventus, who ended 4th and 5th that year (so, Juve have improved!) - champions were the ACF Milan club 'Gommagomma Meda'. The Corriere has a photo from Italy-Mexico but only a little information about the games. Naples Italy 2-1 Mexico Schiavo 5', 40' / Mundo OG 48' Milan Denmark 2-0 England Evers 46', 70'- (RSSSF) The England semi-finalist team (more info in the 3rd-place game) are different from the Chiltern Valley team who more famously went to the Mexico World Cup in 1971, though there's one surname in common, Rayner. Italy won the 1970 semi-final with a 2-1 victory over Mexico, a mirror of the following year's semi-final in many ways. Elena Schiavo scored these two winning goals for Italy, but her tournament concluded with a penalty miss in the final. An Italian league champion player, she was interviewed about her career by Giovanni Di Salvo in 2021: Elena Schiavo: “Per me il calcio era un modo per reclamare i diritti delle donne” / “For me, football was a way to reclaim women's rights” (Archive) Mexico's star forward Alicia Vargas was also there in the 1970 semi and recalled 'a brawl that started because the Mexicans wanted to keep the souvenir ball. "And we lost the game, but we kept the ball."' Italy's 1970 squad (Image: Corriere della Sera)
3rd/4th-place playoff: Mexico won the bronze medal against England on 13 July. The Mexican team were the sensation of this World Cup, with a national team picked from the Liga América, who became famous at the time. They flew from Mexico more in hope than in expectation. The Guadalajara player Alicia Vargas said, “I had no idea what it was like to play a World Cup. I hadn't had a passport and I had never been on a plane.” The Mexican team's football kits were delivered to them minutes before they boarded the flight, and the kits were sponsored by the male international striker Enrique Borja. But in a way, Mexico were the best-prepared team: “The coach, José Morales, located a seminary near the hotel, asked permission from the priest, Father Rocco, and there, in his garden, we trained at 7 in the morning. When the other teams came down for breakfast, we had already trained, and we were just going to do a bit of technique at the stadium.” - (Alicia Vargas, Luchadoras.mx) Scoring six goals herself against Austria and one against England, Alicia Vargas won the golden boot, as well as her team's 3rd place. Her play earned her the nickname 'La Pelé', though her favourite player was Garrincha. After this 1970 World Cup, the Italian league club Real Torino offered Vargas a contract and the chance to stay in Italy (an offer they reiterated at the 1971 tournament). But Vargas wanted to keep playing in Mexico. Turin Mexico 3 - 2 England Vargas 3', Hernandez 9', Tovar 14' / Davies 23', Stockley 50'pen Info is in the Italian paper on 14 July (p9), along with news of a tour of Roma v Paris women's matches in North America. Alicia Vargas retired from football in 1992 and became a PE teacher - she told more about her amazing life to Luchadoras and in a Youtube interview. "The Secret History of Women’s Soccer in Mexico and Its Unsung Heroine, La Pelé Vargas" - (Joshua H Nadel, Remezcla / Archive)
Women's World Cup Final: Italy v Denmark was on the night of Wednesday 15 July 1970 in Turin, at the Stadio Comunale (now Stadio Olimpico). The Corriere sports newspaper gave the planned start time of 21:00 and 21:30, but kickoff was delayed anyway, because about 50,000 fans arrived at the stadium (with 24,000 tickets already sold), according to Giovanni di Salvo. And then, the match: "The Italian national team, which about six months earlier had won the European Championship, is still led by Giuseppe Cavicchi but the players are not the same as those who had beaten the Danes 3-1. ... "The girls from the North, however, take their revenge this time because they win 2-0 thanks to goals from Hansen in the first half and Seshikova in the second half. "Italy will have a thousand regrets: from the penalty missed by Schiavo on the score of 1-0 for the Danes, to the fact of not having been able to field the best possible formation". - (Gli Eroi del Calcio) Corriere dello Sport had a final preview on 15 July (p4) and match report on 16 July (p4), then an article on Uefa and the future of women's football on 17 July (p6). The full final report from La Gazzetta dello Sport is on Giovanni di Salvo's site: Calcio femminile: la Coppa del Mondo 1970 / Women's football: the 1970 World Cup (Archive) Turin Denmark 2 - 0 Italy E Hansen 18', Sešiková 68' Some short videos from the game can be seen online, a silent colour film (maybe by AP News), and an Italian Luce newsreel report in black-and-white. The final attendance was given variously as 35,000 (Corriere) and 40,000 (Gazzetta/RSSSF), likely to be the historic record for women's football in Italy alongside the 2019 Juve-Fiorentina game (39,000). Denmark's players this year were all from the top club, Boldklubben Femina, begun in 1959 with equipment supplied by Femina magazine. They were a founding club in the women's football union DKFU from 1963 to 1972, they played at Idrætsparken in 1966, and toured Czechoslovakia in 1968. Most noticeably the team in 1970 lost their jerseys in transit, and played their world championship final in the famous kit of AC Milan. A definitive history of BK Femina in these years is by Anne Brus on Tidsskrift (PDF). - (Page from Calcio Femminile Coppa del Mondo 1970, sportsmemories.be / Archive)