International Association of Athletic Federations rule 147, regarding mixed-gender competition: Generally not OK. Especially not OK in a stadium. Basically, if I’m reading this correctly, this rule is meant to foreclose the possibility that anyone might accidentally think that men and women compete directly against each other. Because then the earth might open up and swallow the stadium whole.
UK-based artist Franko B’s most recent work—a contribution to a recent wave of compelling/challenging sports-related performance art.
I am trying to recall a story about a men’s team winning the World Cup, or any match, in such spectacular fashion that opens with an anecdote about the MVP telling their girlfriend to stay home. I’m happy to read this kind of thing in a feature, a profile of the player—but in what I understood to be a match report? For a World Cup Final?
This match report appeared in the Guardian; I was lured by the headline “Carli Lloyd shreds Japan.” But I couldn’t get past that intro! Otherwise, the author’s work on the tournament was OK; I just can’t understand that intro. It feels like it was cribbed from Gwen Oxenham’s feature story on Lloyd? (For a good match report, see Grant Wahl’s.)
In advance of Tuesday’s match, FIFA.com published an article about Alex Morgan. This English professor feels compelled to explore the quality and character of FIFA.com’s writing.
Morgan looking for a fairytale finish
Headline declares: do not be confused by gender ambiguous name. Alex Morgan is a girl, with girlish aspirations.
Rather than feature an image of Princess Morgan in action, FIFA.com gives us the chance to appreciate her perfect eyebrows.
Alex Morgan is one of the most popular players in USA women’s football.
Alex Morgan is a popular girl.
A talented goalscorer with a style that is very easy on the eye and good looks to match, she is nothing short of a media phenomenon.
Where to start?
Describing Morgan as a “talented goalscorer” suggests she that has talents other than goalscoring—talents related to her popularity (e.g. she can twirl a baton and sing the Star-Spangled Banner; she makes a mean Negroni).
“A style that is very easy on the eye” is the kind of phrasing one associates with a real estate listing, or a QVC pitch. “A layout that is perfect for your entertaining needs.” “A cut that is easy on the figure.” It is, here, terrible writing—a poor use of “that.”
In general, this is a confusing sentence—it moves from her popularity, passes over her skills as a player (entertaining to that one, singular eye) and then lands on her beauty as an explanation for how well she works as an advertisement. A player that is very useful to your corporate sponsor.
There is more to Morgan than meets the eye, however.
That eye, again. Lest you missed FIFA’s obsession with looking at women’s bodies (what is underneath their kits? can they be tighter? more revealing? Are they really MEN?), FIFA.com reminds you that there is more to women than what you see with your eye.
A successful children’s writer, she has just published Hat Trick, the fourth book in her series The Kicks.
Women are women because, of course, they give birth to and then look after children. This is Alex Morgan’s ultimate purpose — this whole World Cup thing is a youthful enterprise. You can feel FIFA.com’s relief here: Princess Morgan’s physical skills, talent and competitive drive are ultimately oriented not toward destroying her opponents. It’s fodder for her children’s book series—which is not a business enterprise. It is an affirmation that Alex Morgan is, really, a girl. Interested in girls. But, you know, like, more like a mom rather than…well, never mind.
FIFA.com only markets itself, so there is no link to these books. So if you want to check them out, here you go.
The saga follows the adventures of Devin, a 13-year-old girl who moves from Connecticut to California and discovers in football a way to make friends and experience new adventures.
Rather wonderfully, FIFA.com misses the gender play of a woman writer named Alex centering a children’s book on a girl named Devin. It reminds me of the character Jo March, who slouches through Little Women declaring she wants to be a writer. She writes poems, plays and publishes a little newspaper. Little Women turned lots of girls into women writers—one would pretend to be Jo March, and write as Jo March. You become an author, in other words, by pretending to be the author you most admire. In Little Women, that act of imagination involves some cross-gender identification, because there were so few examples of successful women writers. There’s some slippage, in other words, between wanting to be a writer and not wanting to be a girl, and wanting to be a boy. It is not unlike the situation for girl athletes. There is a boyishness to the whole situation, and it is more generous to embrace that than to try to shut it down in some sort of homophobic panic.
I imagine Alex Morgan has these aspirations regarding the potential athleticism of the girls reading her books—that she’s making room for them. This is an extension of her operation as a role model–it is a way of capitalizing on that.
“I never imagined that I’d enjoy doing this so much,” the footballing wordsmith tells FIFA.com. “The opportunity came up in 2012 and I didn’t want to pass it up. I’m very happy with how popular it’s proved with young girls. It’s children’s literature and it’s easy to read.”
The use of “wordsmith” is evidence of a lack of wordsmithing.
Even children can learn about women’s football, Alex Morgan explains patiently to FIFA.com. Even you, FIFA.com can read Hat Trick.
Not content with that, she has also written a book about her experiences at the London 2012 Olympic Games, where she won gold with her country, while a pilot episode of the cartoon version of The Kicks has just aired on TV.
One might, here, consider Morgan’s business acumen. One might invoke Mia Hamm—whose Go for the Goal sat on the New York Times Best Seller’s list for ages. Hamm also published a children’s book, as well as a skills-based DVD. She is an important model for young women athletes looking to capitalize on the very limited possibilities afforded to them, when it comes to making money off the game. One might remind readers that when women try to market themselves, they are pressured to market themselves to children, because the superstructures of sports have a great deal of trouble believing that one might use women’s ferocity, competitiveness and ability to sell goods to adults.
Alex Morgan knows that the lazy eye of FIFA.com is more interested in her marketability than in her skills as a player—and that this is an extension of the larger problem regarding FIFA’s stupid aggression towards all things related to the women’s game.
“If it’s a success, they might show the whole season, which is based on the first of the three books I wrote, called Saving The Team,” said the Portland Thorns forward, clearly excited at the prospect of her stories potentially becoming the female version of the hugely successful Captain Tsubasa series.
Yes, a girl can dream. Even a girl who plays on a football team. I bet Marta had dreams like this. But. Lesbian.
For the time being, however, the intrepid Morgan has other things on her mind than her successful writing career, not least Tuesday’s FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada 2015™ semi-final against Germany in Montreal, a game in which she will be hoping to add to the one goal she has scored in the tournament so far.
Intrepid is a strange word choice. Here it serves to render Morgan into a cartoon character not unlike those that people her books. And by the way, there’s this thing happening — FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada 2015™.
“The two best teams in the world are coming face to face,” said the striker, who turns 26 on Tuesday.
[Happy Birthday Alex Morgan. Milk those bastards for all that they are worth.]
“It’s virtually a final. Germany are a great side. We’ve watched nearly all of their games, and they’re very strong in defence and dangerous in the air and with the ball at their feet.
“We need to watch out for the knockdowns too and for Celia Sasic and Anja Mittag, who are both a big threat up front.”
Thank goodness FIFA.com got some quotes from Princess Morgan, because FIFA.com does not know enough about either team to make any informed observations about the match.
It was seven years ago that Morgan burst on to the international scene at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Chile 2008, which USA won, after beating Germany in the semis. As well as a winner’s medal, the forward also walked away with the adidas Silver Ball and the adidas Bronze Boot, and scored the goal of the tournament in the final.
Here we have FIFA.com plagiarizing from US Soccer: “She burst onto the international scene at the 2008 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup.” You can spot FIFA.com plagiarism by the appearance of movement in a sentence. The sentence falls apart once US Soccer’s writer leaves the pitch. Also, and here I am just being petty, I’m pretty sure “adidas” is supposed to be “Adidas.” [I stand corrected, the one thing FIFA.com does not get wrong is the spelling of its corporate collaborators.)
“A lot has changed since then,” she said, casting her mind back. “I’ve matured as a person, a player and a team-mate, and it’s been a great journey.
“That was my first tournament in front of more than 500 people and I’ve learned to deal with the difference at this level.”
The crowd at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium will be a good deal bigger than that.
Morgan throws some words at FIFA.com. There is no one on the other end of the line.
And with the US border lying so close, Jill Ellis’ side can expect plenty of support in the stands.
I love the image of the US-Canada border just lying around, like someone forgot to pack it into the van.
FIFA.com promises a dutiful crowd. We can expect support. Here I am, FIFA.com tells us, showing up for my job. Supporting the women. Because I have to. You can expect that much.
“It’s a World Cup with a little bit of a difference,” explained Morgan. “There have been so many USA fans at the last few games that it’s felt like we’ve been playing at home, even though we’re in Canada. We have a lot of support and our families come to see us more often.”
FYI, people from the United States think of Canada as a kind of attic.
One person close to Morgan’s heart who has not been around, however, is her husband, Sporting Kansas City midfielder Servando Carrasco, who is on duty with his team in MLS.
Don’t worry readers. Alex Morgan is not a lesbian. You can always tell who is a lesbian because there is no mention of partners, often no mention of family at all. Lesbian athletes crawled as babies out of smoldering meteors sent to Earth from planet Badass; they roam the world scoring goals with no sense of purpose beyond the game.
“We’ve hardly seen each other lately,” she explained. “We’re obviously both very busy right now, though the fact that we’re both soccer players means we understand each other better. We understand the commitment involved and we support one another.”
Thank god for that.
Touching her wedding ring, she added: “We have to make a lot of sacrifices for our work and our marriage, though it’s just a question of finding a balance and helping each other to keep pushing on.”
In case you missed it, Madame Morgan is married, and she has clearly studied her heterosexual talking points. Sacrifice, commitment, something, something.
But as she fiddles with her ring, you know her mind is elsewhere. (Note: her US Soccer profile focuses on her relationship with her sisters, and the fierce sense of competition that characterizes her family. In general, US Soccer has gotten better at fighting its sexist and homophobic impulses.)
As busy as they are, Morgan and her husband are determined to see each other on Sunday, when the Final of Canada 2015 takes place.
“We’re taking it one game at a time,” said Morgan, a member of the USA side that finished runners-up to Japan at Germany 2011. “We’ve been playing better and better as the tournament has gone on and obviously our goal is to take that trophy back home again.”
The amount of attention FIFA.com gives to her marital status is actually MORE offensive than the attention FIFA.com gives to her looks. She tries to redirect the conversation back to something related to her actual job.
The last time the Stars and Stripes did that was in 1999.
FIFA.com does not know the difference between a flag and a soccer team.
Sixteen years on, Morgan has the chance to fashion another happy ending for American women’s football.
Morgan. Girl. Style. Fashion. Wedding. Something like that.
This week, 23 Spanish national team players published a letter calling for the removal of their manager Ignacio Quereda, and an end to the national federation’s abusive relationship the women’s game. Billy Haisely published an excellent overview of this story on Deadspin. [I wrote about this problem in 2011, and have re-published that text at the end of this post.]
Spain’s women’s team has been on my mind for a long time. In 2011, a year after the men won their World Cup, the women had never even qualified for either a World Cup or an Olympics. They’d had the same coach since 1988. Some of the best Spanish players refused to play on the squad. And yet there has been no active reporting on the problem.
In 2011, as far as I could tell, the situation of Spain’s women’s team was widely known but discussed only within the very tiny community of fans following international women’s football. How is it that I’m one of the few people to have actually published about this? I’m not a sports journalist. I have zero contacts to that level of the game. I am, quite simply, a fan. My 2011 post was largely speculative. I don’t recall seeing a single story between 2011 and 2014 which took up this question. Quite the opposite. Spain’s qualification was taken as a sign that things were “improving.” (That’s always the narrative in the women’s game, things are “improving.”)
The situation of the Spanish women’s national program really gets my goat—it’s a double insult. First we have the obscenity of the way the RFEF treats the women’s program; then we have the media’s indifference to what is OBVIOUSLY a good news story. I can hardly see straight when I think about it. Maybe, with 23 players coming forward — and with a stream of stories emerging in Spain’s sports media — we’ll see some change.
And then I think…
BRAZIL’S WOMEN’S TEAM DID THIS IN 2007, publishing an open letter in O Globo. NOTHING CHANGED. NOTHING.
There is a problem in how we tend to approach these stories. These are not “just” stories about sexism. They are stories about corruption in the game.
It was a former international player who explained this to me. What keeps anyone in a position for an insane amount of time in football, in spite of mountains of evidence of their stupidity and incompetence?
Corruption, and nepotism. The women’s game is hobbled by the same cheats who hobble the men’s game, and we need to get just as angry about it. We need to organize against it. We need to stand in solidarity with our Brazilian and our Spanish sisters.
It is corrupt to leave an abusive, incompetent manager in his position for decades. It is corrupt to fire the people who try to change things. And the media is complicit in that corruption when it does not treat that story with the same level of seriousness with which it treats transfer rumors.
I have so much respect for these 23 players from Spain: in coming forward in such an environment some of them have no doubt said goodbye to international competition forever. That is a horrible thing. But those same women know that they’ve also been shackled by their own desire to play for the team—the level of incompetence, the abuse, its multi-generational duration—it is not tolerable.
Young players in past have imagined that through hard work and forbearance, by cooperating with the existing structures, by showing their countrymen that the team has the talent to break into the highest levels of play—that somehow they will change their federation’s attitude. Time and time again we see that this is not true. No one with any awareness can believe that hard work itself is the answer for women players. It is not the case that women athletes can, through their ability, overcome the corruption, sexism and homophobia of their federations.
Brazil’s national women’s football program is governed by corrupt bureaucrats who see women as sub-human, and the women’s game as just another site through which they can practice their grift. Marta and her teammates have been trying to change that for at least eight years.
Women athletes in these programs are deeply alienated from the federation’s administrative structures. Women athletes in these programs see no future for themselves—not on the pitch, not as coaches, not in any of the structures that govern the game. If they are lucky, they leave their country. Or just make peace with it, stick with a grassroots sports scene, and do something else with their lives.
Many women’s teams have every right to just flat out strike. FIFA’s structures force women’s programs into a deeper part of its sewer—where men are coerced into complicity with FIFA’s corruption through the promise of fame and financial fortune, women are coerced into silence with the threat of being removed from the game altogether.
The more people who stand with these athletes, right now, the better.
From “Why Spain is Absence from the World Cup” (FoxSoccer.com/2011)
Catalan women play like Catalan men. I make this banal observation from the stands of the third annual seven-aside women’s tournament in San Celoni, a short train ride from Barcelona.
Like everyone else outside Germany, people in Spain are only dimly aware of the Women’s World Cup.
Even the women attending this tournament didn’t have plans to watch the opening match. At least half this crowd will head from the pitch to Barcelona Pride. (The World Cup opener is also coordinated with Berlin’s Gay and Lesbian Pride festival).
That people here would be indifferent makes sense: Spain’s national women’s team didn’t come close to qualifying. They have never qualified for either the Olympics or the World Cup.This should give us pause. Not only are the men champions of everything, the top Spanish female athletes play in professional and semi-professional leagues alongside national team players who will be playing in the World Cup. They more than hold their on at the international level. Something is clearly wrong.
As I watch the San Celoni tournament, I’m constantly on my feet. The skill level at this recreational event on the edge of the Pyrenees is shocking in and of itself, but it also raised many questions for all that it implies about the quality of Spanish women players. Why aren’t they in Germany right now? The mostly Catalan players in this tournament are completely unafraid to hold the ball, and show tremendous trust in each other. They pass the ball back into tight spots, to defenders who then coax it through a wall of attack.
Some have a zen-like calm, as if it never occurs to them they might lose possession. That has its own unnerving effect on opponents. You can break a team with that kind of self-confidence. It’s seven-a-side, so it’s a brutally fast game. The play is fluid – there is none of the blind, reactive play that comes from not having a plan. They know each other, pass and run into space and keep moving. And some of these women can score from any place on the pitch. (The level of the best players was described by the tournament organizers as a couple of steps down from Spain’s top division.)
There is no missing Barcelona’s influence. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the men’s club is, as they like to proclaim, mes que un club: they are the most perfect expression of the region’s style and ethos. This is clearly just the way everybody in the region plays, and Barça’s just figured out the perfect harvesting system.
Women and men do not play on separate planets. Most of us actually grow up playing with boys and a lot of us continue to play with men. All of the women’s teams in the World Cup will have trained against men’s teams.
For all the talk about how the two games are different, the players themselves are characterized more by what they share than what they don’t. Look at the US: Who squeaks through qualifying matches? Who gives up a goal early and has to claw their way to a win, grabbing victory in the last seconds of the match? Who, at their best, earns respect around the world for their stamina and determination? Brazil’s women play with rhythm, a fluid give-and-go game marked by sudden bursts of speed and lots of improvisation. It makes them very hard to predict. They force teams to devote many players to the exclusive work of containing a few. They are hard to beat without engaging the dreaded Catanaccio.
Then we get one of those horrible 1-0 victories that makes you want to kill yourself and throw away the television, just as happens in the men’s game. That was the 2007 World Cup championship match between Germany and Brazil. (Sound familiar?) The women I watched in this tournament play an even more refined version of that “Latin” game. Just like their brothers. So why aren’t the women champions of everything?
How on earth is it that a country that produces intensely talented players, players who hold their own in the best leagues in the world – How is it this team has not even qualified – ever – for the two most important tournaments in the game?
There is rarely a simple answer to this kind of question. This is one of those rare cases when there is. They have had the same manager for nearly thirty years. Ignacio Quereda. This must be one of the most devastating statements regarding a national association’s indifference regarding its women’s team. After three decades, such a spectacular record of failure can’t be laid at his feet alone. This shame belongs to every person at the Real Federación Española de Fútbol. These people should be put in fútbol jail.
Not surprisingly, players have a lot to say about this situation – they must, because women players hoping for a cap almost never speak out. In a May interview with Nell Enriquez for Equalizer Soccer, the much lauded striker Laura del Rio did just that. She explained her absence from the Spain squad in very stark terms.
NE: Let’s talk a bit about the Spaniard Women’s National Team. You started in 39 caps and scored 40 goals while with them. What happened during that time?
Del Rio: Yes, that’s correct. Being part of the team was a dream come true. Unfortunately things didn’t work out with Ignacio Quereda, the manager of the team. He’s been with the team for over 28 years. We don’t see eye to eye on many things. I’m not the only one who is no longer part of the team due to this. There are many.
NE: Is there any way that you would go back?
Del Rio: Yes, for Quereda to leave the team.
I am not sure I’ve seen a more direct statement in the women’s game. And there is the answer to our question.
FIFA’s video explaining its commitment to quality playing surface for men. Enjoy.
Why meet the standard for a World Cup?
A match staged against/across the Mexico-U.S. border wall by the artist collective Homeless, in 2010, in collaboration with MexiCali Biennial.
Boxing is as much about not being hit as it is about hitting. Minus its defensive art, a fight is not boxing but a beating. Unless you are a psychopath, beatings are not fun to watch. Not even in the movies.
Boxing is what Mayweather does in the ring; beating is what he does out of it.
What is the different spectacle that an audience longs for when it yawns over the grind of boxing’s defensive arts? It longs for the beating to beat the boxing.
Neither Mayweather nor Pacquiao are friends to women. The spectator who longs to watch Mayweather take a beating in the name of the women he has hurt is not a friend to women either.
Hope Solo’s sex life makes more news than the struggle of the world’s best athletes for basic gender equity. I open this post with those four words, “Hope Solo’s sex life,” because public fascination with her, as a woman — meaning, as a sex object (google searches of her name are usually in the pursuit of “nude pics”) — means that this post might get more traffic than would a post that leads with its true subject, a gender discrimination law suit.
Of course, if you’ve landed here looking for nude pics, by now I’ve already lost you. Instead of nude pictures of Hope Solo, I’ve given you a blurry screen grab of Brazil’s women’s national team, circa 2007.
In 2007, the year they knocked the US women’s team out of the World Cup in one of the most shocking upsets ever, Marta Viera da Silva and her insanely gifted teammates begged the world for help: their national federation had all but abandoned the team. The team had to fight to get access to the money they won in previous tournaments, their training schedule was irregular, and their support team at tournaments was inadequate. Their intervention made no news outside of light reporting of the incident by Brazilian media. Nothing changed. If anything, things have gotten worse. In 2011, Brazil’s federation (CBF) didn’t bother to order the team uniforms. They were sent to the World Cup in Germany wearing shirts for the men’s team.
That a team would do something like unfurl a protest banner at an award ceremony is a big deal. Logistically it is harder to do this than it is to raise one’s fist from a podium.
But of course, when Tommie Smith and John Carlos did just that, the world’s eyes were upon them. They were at the center of the sport spectacle. Women athletes are eternally on its margins. We have only peripheral vision when it comes to their gestures of protests. A fuzzy screen-grab.
Sixty national team players from around the world are now participating in the gender discrimination complaint filed against FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association. That is twenty more players than when this complaint was filed a month ago. The jump in the numbers of women willing to identify themselves as in conflict with the World Cup’s governing bodies was provoked by the threats of retaliation circulating through national teams—players from Mexico, Costa Rica and France were told they’d either be dropped from the squad if they didn’t withdraw their names—or their national football association was told they’d lose any bid to host the women’s world cup. Instead of bullying these players into backing down, these actions galvanized them.
Women athletes care about the sport, but the sport’s governing bodies do not give a shit about them.
And mainstream sports media doesn’t give a shit about that. I’ve been blogging about this stuff for seven years: the only thing that has improved is player-activation as resistant subjects.
Mainstream sports media only pays any real attention to the US Women’s National Team when they are in competition, and only after they’ve made it to the semi-finals. The day in, day out grind of women’s sports is not news worthy. There is not a news/sports editor in the US who will tell you that women’s sports is, in and of itself, newsworthy. Those outlets will instead vomit bullshit stories about transfers and free agents and the post-game interview in which male players and managers explore a verbal universe of infinitely expanding empty space. Every day, hours and hours of bullshit about men doing nothing in particular.
The public conjured by mainstream sports media cares more about that empty space than it does about anything women athletes accomplish.
How else to explain the fact that Canada was the only country to bid for the 2015 tournament? Even though the women’s championship tournaments have been successful, as mass sporting events. And they are much less dogged by controversy—they do not require displacement or military occupation of whole communities, for example.
FIFA accepted a bid that gave up grass for the women’s matches—in Canada, of all places—while accepting another bid built around the elaborate, delusional promise of grass in Qatar!
As FIFA downgrades the Women’s World Cup, women lose the incentive to play it. When FIFA failed to solicit a decent bid for the Women’s World Cup, it ought to have stopped the process and started over again—by proactively developing World Cup bids, in partnership with potential host countries.
Downgrading the Women’s World Cup makes playing the World Cup less desirable. And as FIFA’s indifference to the women’s game becomes more and more obvious to players, they must ask themselves why they bother.
In the VAST majority of cases, women actually give up resources in order to compete on their national squads—many don’t receive much more training than they would otherwise. They get better training from their European and US clubs, and those clubs have rightly earned their loyalty. Most national team players don’t receive a living wage through their participation in this level of competition, almost none receive commercial endorsements. Most have other jobs, and many are the primary caretakers for their families. Participation at the international level turns their lives upside down.
These athletes deserve to play on grass.
A player like Megan Rapinoe comes out as gay to the media and it makes news for a few days. The NFL throws Hope Solo under the domestic violence bus, hoping to distract media from the real story (violence is endemic to its culture—the league takes no responsibility for the damage it does to players and to the people who love them)—and it works. Hope Solo’s private life makes more news than does the fact that Abby Wambach—a player no one associates with the word “political”—volunteered herself as the lead complainant in this case.
Abby Wambach should be on the cover of Sports Illustrated for this. This is a tremendous assertion of her power as an athlete—and her determination to make a difference in the game.
Should players walk out, as a fan I would frankly be over the moon with gratitude. They really should strike. What is there to lose?
Let’s show the men how its done—because as far as I’m concerned men players have been absolute chickenshit when it comes to standing up to the OUTRAGEOUS corruption in their game!
We fans of the women’s game need to stand with Abby Wambach and with her colleagues. We need to stage our own boycott of the tournament, petition sponsors to withdraw their support and plan our own protests from the stands!
The Sport Spectacle 