Both Fifa and the UK’s Football Association have had an awful lot to be ashamed of over the years, but hardly anything as bad as the breathtakingly spiteful, sexist and dishonest way they treated women’s football in the last century, particularly after the spectacular success of the 1971 Women’s World Cup in Mexico, an independent event defiantly held outside Fifa’s pompous auspices and discussed now in this riveting documentary.
An independent women’s football association had held its inaugural Women’s World Cup in Italy in 1970 with sponsorship from Martini vermouth. Then, a year later, they staged their ambitious Copa 71 in Mexico with fixtures in two national venues which Fifa couldn’t control: the Jalisco stadium in Guadalajara and, in Mexico City, the Azteca stadium. The capacity crowds and the euphoric atmosphere were staggering. So conditioned are we to the sexist view of football that the extraordinary archive footage of the crowds for Copa 71 feels like some alt-reality hallucination. But afterwards the FA and Fifa dedicated themselves, almost like the Men in Black waving their amnesia devices in everyone’s face, to denying its success, forgetting it ever happened, clamping down on the venues and facilities and punishing the women for their success.
The documentary shows us that throughout the 20th century, the authorities had an almost pathological suspicion of women’s football, despite or because of the evidence that it could attract large crowds; they promoted the fatuous theories that football was bad for women’s health and (in spite of the evidence) that it was bad box office. There is an element of reactionary class prejudice to go with the misogyny in their attitudes: large crowds supporting women triggered an almost atavistic horror in the blazer-wearing chaps. This film speaks to the international players in all the teams from Copa 71 now and it’s a joy to listen to their memories – particularly Britain’s engaging and funny Carol Wilson who, like so many, was badly treated afterwards by the mediocre menfolk.
Copa 71 is a revolutionary political parable that goes beyond football. A different world is possible; not only that, a different world was not just possible but did in fact exist. But the narrative was erased. Well, it’s been restored by this bracing and thoroughly absorbing film.
• Copa 71 is in UK and Irish cinemas from 8 March.
