The Antinational Game? An Exploration of Women’s Soccer in Latin America

A summary of the article:

“Women’s football,” wrote FIFA president Sepp Blatter 2007, “has been part and parcel of the sports arena for over thirty years … [but] has come on in leaps and bounds since FIFA staged the first women’s world championship in … 1991.” There is more than a little truth to this statement. Women’s soccer has grown astronomically since Blatter publicly declared in 1995 that the future of soccer was “feminine.” As of 2011, 29 million girls and women played soccer around the world, compared with 20 million a decade earlier (FIFA Health and Fitness 5; and Fahmy). Blatter’s comments, however, elide an inconvenient truth: women have been playing organized soccer for much more than 30 years. Almost since the creation of modern soccer in the mid-1800s, women and girls took to the game. The first women’s world championship, much as FIFA still refuses to acknowledge it, occurred not in 1991 but in 1970. And significantly, Blatter ignored the obstacles that women and girls have had to overcome and continue to struggle against in order to play the game that they love.

Author: Joshua Nadel

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