The 1999 Women's World Cup final

On the contested nature of legacy in women's football via Michelle Akers, Gao Hong and Briana Scurry

When any major women’s football tournament rolls around lots of the questions before, during and after focus on legacy. Legacy is a complicated concept within sports. It encapsulates the idea that part of the justification for these events, which are often undertaken at great expense, is that they change the place in which they are held (or the world itself) for the better For example, China hosting the 2008 Olympics was supposed to be an encouragement for them to improve their human rights record, whilst Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup was supposedly a bridge between Arab culture and the West.¹

Within women’s football, legacy is less about geo-political posturing and more about encouraging women’s sport, in terms of global interest and participation.² This sees the players burdened with an extra responsibility. They are not solely expected to deal with the pressures that come from being an athlete wanting to compete at a high level. They are also required to be representatives of the sport, in terms of playing in a way that justifies its existence as well as being role models, particularly, for young girls. 

The successful USA team at the 1999 World Cup - the ‘99ers’ as they became known - are legacy builders par excellence. But the tournament they had, the success they found, and the legacy they left all show how individual responsibility for the growth of women’s football remains placed on the women who play it, rather than the institutions who run it.

One of the most incredible parts about watching back the 1999 World Cup final is the crowd. 90,185 people came to see the US take on China at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, the culmination of a tournament where average crowds had far exceeded those of 1995. It was a satisfying outcome for the World Cup organising committee who had fought FIFA to hold the matches in bigger grounds, and even been accused of lying about ticket sales.³

Attendance anxiety continues in the women’s game as organisers decide between having smaller stadiums be full vs risking teams playing in front of thousands of empty seats. Australia’s opening match against the Republic of Ireland for this year’s World Cup had to be moved to a bigger ground due to demand whilst the Phillips Stadium in Eindhoven quickly sold out having been selected as the venue for the Women’s Champions League final in 2020. The implication often seems to be that attendances are a naturally occurring phenomenon that cannot be influenced by marketing, with choices of less prestigious venues implicitly devaluing matches. 

The US organising committee backed themselves to host a big tournament, giving the national team the institutional infrastructure to create the legacy. The pressure then passed onto the players, with goalkeeper Briana Scurry saying: “the funny thing about selling it so well was now we had to go out there and win the damn thing”.⁴ Immediately there was a worry about performing in a way that justified the interest.

The US cruised through the group stage with wins over Denmark, Nigeria and North Korea but the quarter-final match against Germany got off to a nervy start when a mix up between Brandi Chastain and Scurry saw Chastain pass the ball into her own net after only five minutes. Despite equalising 11 minutes later, a thunderous strike from Bettina Wiegmann put the 1995 finalists ahead again just before half time. However Chastain could make amends herself in the second half as her goal and another from Joy Fawcett saw the US into the semi-finals. A 2-0 win over Brazil saw them heading to the Rose Bowl for their second World Cup final.

There they would meet China who had comfortably topped their group made up of Sweden, Australia and Ghana. They beat Russia at the quarter-final stage before absolutely destroying the current world champions Norway 5-0 in the semi-finals. It might have been China’s first World Cup final, but they were certainly not a team the US were going to take lightly. In fact, the US had lost both their last two meetings with China 2-1, in a friendly and in the final of the Algarve Cup, and they were the only team to have beaten the US in over a year.

China had won those meetings against the US by counter-attacking so they came into the final more than happy to sit back and see what the US could put together. The US were now being managed by Tony DiCicco but the tactical game plan had not developed a whole lot since 1991. They played with a back four instead of a back three - Chastain had been converted to a fullback by DiCicco - but the focus was still on using long balls to try to quickly switch play and create overloads. The aerial threat of Michelle Akers, scorer of both goals in the 1991 final, in combination with Chastain’s long throw was key to how the US wanted to attack.

Two players in particular were essential in keeping this match deadlocked for as long as it was. Chastain was not the only player to be in a different role, with Michelle Akers moving from the forward position she had occupied for most of her career into defensive midfield. It is almost impossible to think of a player who had such an impact on two World Cup finals, let alone in two different positions. Akers was suffering from Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome and, having also had eight knee surgeries during her career, thought that playing further back would be less of a toll on her body.⁵ Yet there was no one more determinedly physical than Akers herself who single handedly shut down every Chinese attack in a manner familiar to anyone who has watched Lena Oberdorf in recent years. It is no surprise that when Akers was forced to go off with a shoulder injury just before extra time, China suddenly looked much more dangerous. 

If Akers was the US’ brick wall, Gao Hong was China’s. The 5’8” goalkeeper commanded her penalty area with significant confidence, a player who Chastain said had previously “psyched her out”. Hong’s ability to pluck the ball out of the air calmly was a considerable issue for the US’ long ball approach and complicates the narrative about women goalkeepers. Women’s goalkeepers have long been ridiculed for errors, despite having only recently begun to have specialist coaching, with the position regularly one of the key pieces of evidence that women are supposedly not suited to playing football. Hong’s performance in this World Cup final is a total rebuttal of that even though she had developed as a goalkeeper at a time when she would have received little to no specialist support.

Hong was not the goalkeeper who made headlines though - that was Briana Scurry. With the game tied at 0-0 after extra time, it went to penalties. The opportunity for a goalkeeper to be a hero in these situations is immense and when Scurry saved China’s third penalty from Liu Ying, her name was set to go down in history. Yet Scurry was way off her line for all of the penalties that were taken, clearly helping her close down the angles, something that she even admitted after the match. The quotes are one of the most fantastic admissions of purposefully breaking the rules that you will come across in sport.

“Everybody does it. It’s only cheating if you get caught.

I came out [early] to see what she was going to give you. If she calls the kick back, fine. But she didn’t so I was going to stay with it.”

All three of Akers, Hong and Scurry’s roles in this match have been flattened in the intervening years. Could a desire to wrap the legacy from the 1999 World Cup in a bow have muted  some of the most interesting elements of the final? It would be excessive to say that Scurry’s penalty shoot-out performance tarnished the win but it feels striking how perhaps it was seen as less important because the purpose of the tournament was almost more about inspiring Americans around football. It feels notable that in Caitlin Murray’s book ‘The National Team’ which I have referenced throughout this series and charts the rise of the US team, it is not mentioned at all.

For Akers, it is not that she did not receive recognition. In fact, she was jointly named with Sun Wen as FIFA’s Women’s Players of the Century. She retired just before the 2000 Olympics as a result of her injuries meaning she missed the upward curve that the US were on. It is not unusual for the performances of players like Akers or Hong to be obscured by the game-winning moments of Scurry or Chastain. But in the context of how women’s football is covered, it feels like another instance where whatever actually happened during the match is the last element considered.

And what of the legacy overall? Despite the way the 1999 World Cup is viewed as a watershed moment, what happened after is slightly more complicated than that. In hindsight, Julie Foudy reflected “I think the disappointing thing is that I don’t think it has had [a big enough effect] - or maybe it has taken too long for the effect to be fully felt.”⁶ The US federation had no strategy as to how to develop the women’s game, and the players were left to sort out their own Champions tour as a way to try and make money.⁷ The institutional support that had seen big stadiums filled disappeared very quickly, leaving individuals to pick up the slack. 

These institutional failings have in some cases empowered individuals. The success of the ‘99ers’ helped set in motion a decades long fight for better pay and conditions for the US Women’s National Team. As well as that, some players feel a calling to campaign. Arsenal and England’s Lotte Wubben-Moy spearheaded the Lionesses’ open letter to the government requesting that young girls have access to football as part of PE lessons at school. She also had community work included in her most recent contract with Arsenal. It is a positive outcome that lack of institutional support has emboldened players to speak out themselves.

But it should not be the case that women’s footballers are still forced to play and then campaign in service to a demand that women’s football improve opportunities or conditions for girls. Even the framing of legacy in the context of Women’s World Cups is a limiting factor, implying that women’s football is only of interest to girls. The TV audience for the 1999 World Cup was overwhelmingly male, and whilst it is obviously good to bring new or underrepresented audiences to the sport, there is no need to solely focus on them.⁸

The passing of responsibility to the players also acquits federations and football institutions of doing their job. It becomes an extra burden for full-time athletes who are expected to also be cheerleaders and role models regardless of preference. And it limits impact because no athlete is going to have the resources to bring about change in the way actual governance organisations can. 

The 1999 World Cup was a fantastic moment for American sport, and women’s sport more broadly. The final is a genuinely engrossing contest which was undeniably inspirational. But in it, we see the seeds of the baton passing from institution to individual that still takes place today. 

1. Boykoff, J (2016) Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics

2. As we saw with China hosting the 1991 World Cup though, it has occasionally been used in service for sporting events which do allow for geopolitical posturing

3. Murray, C (2019) The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer

4. Murray, C (2019) ibid.

5. Theivam, K and J. Kassouf (2019) The Making of the Women’s World Cup: Defining stories from a sport’s coming of age

6. Theivam, K and J. Kassouf (2019) ibid.

7. Murray, C (2019) ibid.

8. Murray, C (2019) ibid.