Eight World Cups by George Vecsey

Author:George Vecsey [Vecsey, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780805098495
Publisher: Times Books
Published: 2014-05-13T07:00:00+00:00

12

AMERICANS WIN WORLD CUP—AGAIN

UNITED STATES, 1999

The world was back in the Rose Bowl. But instead of Dunga and Baggio taking the final penalty shots, it was Sun Wen and Brandi Chastain.

Those charismatic Olympic champions of 1996 were mostly back in 1999, with a sense of teamwork that came from within. That team had leaders everywhere, including Joy Fawcett, the great defender who was now the mother of two young daughters.

“It’s like a second family,” Kristine Lilly said a few weeks before the tournament. “Female sports are different. You do a lot better when you care about each other. We are nurturing people, caring people. I’m glad to have my friends out there. It goes a little bit deeper than just sports. We all want to see each other happy.”

This is the kind of team, the kind of family, it was: after a dispute with her parents, Shannon MacMillan had left home during college; between semesters, MacMillan lived with Joy Fawcett and her husband, Walter, helping care for the children.

Coach Tony DiCicco understood that leadership on this team came from the strong personalities of the players, from their sense of unity. He acknowledged that his coaching techniques changed the more he was around the women. Female athletes cannot be coached the same way as male athletes. Women internalize criticism, he said, and often need to fix things on their own, which these players did.

He worked with a soccer-savvy sports psychologist, Colleen Hacker, particularly when a former player filed a harassment suit against Anson Dorrance, the previous coach who was still producing championships at North Carolina. The tangled loyalties could have split the team, but everybody agreed to work together. (The case was ultimately settled.)

DiCicco did make one big change, welcoming back Brandi Chastain, an extroverted veteran from the 1991 champions who had been given an unrequested sabbatical by Dorrance. Perhaps Chastain needed a break; or perhaps the coach felt he could not mold her into his image of the team. Chastain was talented and irrepressible, traits that tend to make coaches nervous.

After her time away from the national team, Chastain was in the best shape of her life. She was proud of her physique—and was known to display it, as a tribute to her hard work. Her nickname among the players was Hollywood. When Julie Foudy filled out a team questionnaire that requested her favorite actress, she wrote: Brandi Chastain.

The women competed for playing time, and for space during scrimmages. Mia Hamm was as tenacious in practice as she was in games, but she came into the 1999 World Cup in a scoring slump, and her confidence was down. Michelle Akers suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and needed constant medical attention but was still a force.

The third Women’s World Cup was run by Marla Messing, a lawyer in Los Angeles who had worked with Alan Rothenberg and his team in 1994. She followed the same template from the 1984 Olympics and 1994 World Cup. Think big. Think Rose Bowl. By committing to large stadiums, Messing sent a message to the world—female athletes are not second best.

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