They are their sport’s greatest generation, women who have helped transform the way women’s sports in general are viewed in their country. Now their time is coming to an end, so it seems fitting they are to get the spotlight before the rest of the 2004 Olympics begin.
The U.S. women’s soccer team plays what amounts to an unofficial Olympic opener, meeting Greece on Wednesday night on the island of Crete. It is an odd confrontation and a likely mismatch: a Greek women’s team that gets no support from its national federation against the best-funded women’s soccer team in the world.
The 18-player Greek roster includes eight Greek-Americans, all born in the United States, who meet the loose standard of Olympic citizenship–having at least a Greek bloodline, or maybe just being able to say “Yasas,” the all-purpose greeting Greeks use.
The U.S. roster has five players who trace their soccer lineage to the original DNA of international tournament competition, the inaugural Women’s World Cup in 1991. To their younger teammates, Brandi Chastain, Joy Fawcett, Julie Foudy, Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly are known simply as the “91ers.”
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They dominated the sport in the ’90s, winning two of the three World Cups (1991 and 1999) and the inaugural Olympic tournament for women (1996). Since then the world has caught up, and the U.S. women lost to Norway in the 2000 Olympic finals and to Germany in the 2003 World Cup semis.
Foudy, 33, Hamm, 32, and Fawcett, 36, have said the Olympics will be their last international tournament. Chastain, 36, and Lilly, 33, cannot be far behind.
“The standard they set, we want to keep up, because they epitomize women’s soccer and women’s sports in general,” said Cat Reddick, 22. “If we win, they will leave the [sports] world as among the greatest.”
Reddick, a defender, was the revelation of the 2003 World Cup, becoming a starter when Chastain was injured in the opening match. She already is a veteran.
“We as younger players want to get on the map,” said Abby Wambach, 24, the U.S. soccer athlete of the year in 2003. “Thinking about the 91ers, we need to give them something to smile about at the end of their careers. We don’t want them to have three potential failures–in their minds–in their final three world tournaments.”
The United States cannot fail to advance from a first-round group including Greece, Brazil and Australia. The top three teams in that group move into the quarterfinals.
Reigning world champion Germany and runner-up Sweden join the U.S. team as leading contenders for the gold. An ever-dangerous Brazil team could be the spoiler.
Were the U.S. to lose, coach April Heinrichs might join some of her veteran women in retirement. Heinrichs will be widely criticized if the older players’ diminished speed is a factor, as it was in the 2003 World Cup.
The Olympic roster includes four players who were not on the 2003 World Cup team. Two forwards, Lindsay Tarpley, 22, and Heather O’Reilly, 19, are expected to bring speed and scoring punch to the game when they come off the bench.
“Lindsay has incredible instincts,” Hamm said. “She goes out there and turns on people rather easily.
“Heather has skill that is absolutely frightening to a defender. She’s one of the fastest players I’ve ever seen on a soccer field. Whether she starts or comes off the bench, that’s a weapon that is hard to contain.”
Hamm, as always, will be the focus of attention. In both the last two World Cups, she started brilliantly but seemed to lose her edge when the coach–Tony DiCicco in 2000, Heinrichs last year–rested Hamm in the final match of group play.
Reticent as usual to discuss her feelings, Hamm did admit it is “in your head” that this will be the last tournament in which the 91ers play together.
“At the same time, I don’t want the younger players to feel they have to do it for us,” Hamm said.
Wambach, whose 14 goals this season are double the total of any other U.S. player, wants to think in those terms.
“It isn’t pressure, but an added sense of responsibility,” she said. “We are using what those women have taught us from all their years on the national team.”
Hamm, married to Cubs shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, has been the face of the game all those years. The youngest player on the 1991 World Cup champions, she has become both venerable as an athlete and venerated by the hundreds of thousands of young girls she inspired to be athletes.
“Mia has, on her shoulders alone, carried the burden of promoting women’s soccer in [our] country and has done a fantastic job,” Foudy said. “For us as young girls many years ago, we never had those role models.”
Their play has moved into the last act.
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Updated Olympics coverage at chicagotribune.com.
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