“We are just as good“ - American Girls Love Soccer
The World Cup victory of the US women’s team in 1999 triggered a virtual soccer boom among children. Today girls play soccer in the US—in the media, however, the sport has made a disappearance act.
For a long nine and a half minutes the little girl in the soccer tricot does nothing else but keeping a ball up in the air with both her feet. Always alternating—right, left, right, left—her eyes firmly focused on the ball which does not even touch the ground. More than 6000 times, is Renae Blevins’ record. Her proud dad—“soccer dad 1”—has taped the exercises of his daughter and posted the video on UTube. “Marta is her heroine” he writes “and nobody is happier than her, that there’s a women’s professional league.”
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Great Success—Minor Impact: Women’s Soccer in Canada
By Jörg Michel
So they’ll take the field after all. The strike was canceled. Team captain Christine Sinclair and her 24 teammates will slip on the tricot with the red maple leaf in June and prove to soccer fans all over the world, that good soccer can also be found in the land of eternal winter. For the Canadian women the opening match of the World Cup against Germany is—for the time being—the highlight of an unprecedented boom in women’s soccer.
Just a few weeks ago it was quite doubtful, that Sinclair & Co. would ever step on the turf of the Olympic stadium in Berlin. Because of quarrels with the national federation, the soccer players had threatened to boycott all national games and for quite some time it was not clear, whether the team would even line up for the World Cup. Only after tenacious negotiations, did the Canadian women abandon their threat. They had been at the end of their tethers, reported the record-holding national player Sinclair. "All we really want is that the younger players will have it better one day than we do."
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Facts on Women in the United States
Since when is Women’s Soccer Officially Allowed?
Soccer reached the American continent only relatively late. That women were not officially permitted to play soccer in the USA, is not a known fact. Only in the late seventies the first teams were established on a college level, the first national college tournament was held in 1981 at the Colorado College. In the nineties, soccer started to boom. 1996 women’s soccer became an Olympic sport; the USA won the first Gold Medal.
How many Active Players are Organized in Federations?
At high schools alone, more than 337,000 girls are playing soccer; more than 10,500 schools offer soccer for girls. Currently, there are about 700 women’s teams at US colleges and universities. As per estimates, a total of about 18 million Americans of both genders play organized soccer, almost half of them girls and women.
What is the Top Number of Spectators in US Women’s Soccer ever Recorded?
90,115 spectators in 1999 at the final game of the Soccer World Cup: USA against China
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Canada Women Soccer Facts
The Canada women's national soccer team is overseen by the Canadian Soccer Association. It is ranked 9th in the world. The team reached international prominence finishing in 4th place at the FIFA Women's World Cup 2003, losing to their archrival American team in the bronze medal match.
In 2008, Canada qualified for its first ever Olympic women's football tournament, and finished second in their group with a 1-1-1 record. This was good enough to qualify them for the knockout stage, where they lost to the number one team in the world, the United States in the quarterfinals
World Cup record
• China 1991 - Did not qualify
• Sweden 1995 - 10th Place
• USA 1999 - 12th Place
• USA 2003 - 4th Place
• China 2007 - 9th Place
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_women%27s_national_soccer_team
http://www.canadasoccer.com/tourney/FIFA_WWC/national.asp
• Women’s National Team, Women’s U-20 Team, and Women’s U-17 Team. (High Level teams)
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