With Spain’s historic win, a look at the progress and challenges facing women’s soccer

John Yang:

Five years ago, Spain's national women's soccer team didn't have jerseys designed for women, didn't have high quality training facilities and didn't have enough physical trainers. Their rapid rise to today's World Cup championship and what the team went through to achieve it symbolizes both the sports worldwide progress and the challenges it still faces.

Meg Linehan is a senior writer for The Athletic. She covers the U.S. Women's National Team, and the U.S. Pro Women's Soccer League.

Meg, this is a team coming into the World Cup, we heard stories about the Spanish team, team members were talking to each other. They weren't talking to the coach. This is a team that had never won a knockout round game before in any official tournament. Talk a little bit about what they achieved here what they did today.

Meg Linehan, The Athletic:

Yeah, first time World Cup winners, right. I mean you dethronging the U.S., Germany, all of these massive teams and to go through this tournament in Australia, New Zealand also to survive a for nothing defeat at the hands of Spain in the group stage.

So massive accomplishment for Spain, and they've had success too on the youth level as well. So we're seeing this kind of growth across the game in Spain, but obviously to win the Women's World Cup, a massive accomplishment to win it against a team like England who had just won last summer Euro competition as well, again, just like a major, major win for this program moving forward and something for them to use as just a massive platform of growth moving forward as well.

John Yang:

Talk about what this coming out of the World Cup, what the future current state and the future of women's soccer around the world looks like not just at the national team level, but also sort of going down the ladder.

Meg Linehan:

You know, we've seen this World Cup has shown how investment immediately make the difference in just the not the growth of the game, but just the level of play. Vlatko Andonovski, who essentially lost his job because of the US's performance of this World Cup said multiple times, the rankings don't matter of this World Cup.

We saw just an incredible level of play an incredible level of competition, where debutantes were hanging with major teams. So we've talked for so long about the gap between the U.S. and some of other top programs and the teams coming up and building still and the gap is basically closed at this point.

But what I think is interesting is that this has shown that having a strong domestic league is a key to international success, that having the investment in grassroots levels in the youth levels, especially we've seen a team like Spain, but also England, right, both of these teams reaching the final. They have seen such success at the youth national team levels in Youth World Cup, and we're seeing it pay off at the senior national tournament.

John Yang:

These were also two teams today that have struggled off the field for equity with the men's, men's players in their in their countries. And this is obviously something that the U.S. team has been pushing for a long time. In a way is that a legacy of the U.S. team as they exited early, and they're no longer the dominant player. But have they helped this issue?

Meg Linehan:

Yeah, I think we saw that, you know, Sweden knocks U.S. out and then immediately turns around and says that you have to put some respect on this team for what they have done not just on the field right and the respect that we have for them as players but for everything that they've fought for.

But it's the same thing, you know, this fight I think it's boiled down in very simple kind of online friendly terms of equal pay, but it goes so much more beyond the payment the salaries, even equal prize money for a World Cup. It goes into equal working conditions, it goes into how our bonuses structure, it goes into do you have enough physical trainers, medical staff, are you actually equipped to play at the highest level the way that a men's national team is? We saw this with Canada too.

They don't start really thinking about this until Janine Becky goes to cover the men's world up and sees what their men's national team has comes back to the Canada Women's National Team and says why don't we have these things?

So it is, it's a much bigger fight than just this equal pay fight. But the U.S. women's national team really did I think set the stage in terms of saying yes equal pay obviously has to be on the table, equal prize money. But it is all of these working conditions, travel conditions, hotels, physios, all of these things, hugely, hugely make a difference to our performance as a team and what we can accomplish.

John Yang:

On this question of equity at the end of last week, the FIFA president Gianni Infantino, first of all he called equal pay a slogan that he said that really doesn't matter, according to him. And he also told the women players pick the right battles. You have the power to convince us men what we have to do. What do you make of that?

Meg Linehan:

I mean, it is pure Gianni Infantino. He has said multiple things along these lines of just keep acts as if the doors are open for female footballers in this space. And what we have seen from this World Cup is that so many teams are fighting their federations. So many teams are worried that payments that FIFA has promised for these players are not actually going to reach these pockets.

So there is no just magical opening of a door unlike what he is promising. There are still multiple systemic battles that have to happen in order for this game to be respected. But what we're seeing is that even when teams are fighting their federations they can win a World Cup. Even when teams are fighting their federations they can accomplish things. And even when every single systemic barrier is put into place, the women's game explodes in popularity and investment. So, it's happening with or without him, but hopefully he gets on the right side of thing.

John Yang:

Meg Linehan, senior writer of The Athletic. Thank you very much.

Meg Linehan:

Thank you.