SAN DIEGO — A growth spurt for women's soccer, both locally via the new San Diego Wave and in England where the recent UEFA Women's Euro 2022 opener drew 68,000 fans, counts as refreshing in a soccer and sports world that can overheat on ego of fans and participants.
"Sportsmanship and Kindness." So read a homemade banner, draped over a railing at Fullerton's Titan Stadium in March for the first match between the Wave and Angel City of Los Angeles, newcomers to the National Women's Soccer League. Girls and women formed a large share of the 7,000 fans on hand for the preseason game.
Wave matches at the University of San Diego serve up intense soccer but a festive atmosphere long on sportsmanship and short on vitriol.
Young girls carrying handmade signs and shouting the first names of Wave players have roamed the stands in warm-ups, better to see Wave star Alex Morgan and popular rookie Naomi Girma. Their cries of "Alex" have drowned out Wave coach Casey Stoney in media interviews.
The matches skew old-fashioned in their simplicity. No constant blaring of advertisements on a stadium sound system. No replay reviews, because in the top women's soccer league, there's no replay system. Games span less than two hours.
In England, where more than 68,000 fans gathered at Old Trafford, home to the famed Manchester United men's club, an unpretentious flavor prevailed for the UEFA Women's Euro 2022 kickoff July 6.
"They just put the players on the pitch and let them tell the story," wrote Owen Slot of The Times newspaper in London.
The Times deemed the massive crowd "less judgmental than for a men's match; a more willing audience, eternally searching for heroes." Their noise was "incredible," Sarina Wiegman, the England coach, said afterward. "Unbelievable."
What was clear, wrote Slot, was how different this crowd is. "Hordes of women and girls, families; that was the clientele, producing an atmosphere so distinct to pretty much every game ever played here," he reported.
The Guardian's Jonathan Liew reached back decades for historical context. "Certainly for those who have been following the thread of women's football for a while, it was easy to lose oneself in the symbolism and import, even to feel a little dazed at the sheer pace of progress," he wrote. "It's 28 years since (legendary men's coach) Sir Alex Ferguson wrote to a female physiotherapist rejecting her request for a work placement on the basis that 'most of the players felt that football was very much a male sport.' The last time this tournament was staged in 2017, Manchester United didn't even have a women's team."
The Euro 2022 crowd, which saw England edge Austria 1-0, drew a thought-provoking observation from Hakan Sjostrand, leader of the Swedish Football Association.
"You meet so many angry people in football," he said. "But when you go to women's football, everyone is happy."
This isn't to affix perpetual halos above the whole sport — NWSL was plagued last year by allegations of abuse by several former coaches — or Wave players, or imply the games are sisterly exhibitions. The drive to win can border on ruthless. In their victorious season opener, the Wave's penchant for fouling would've earned cheers from the notorious "Bad Boy" Detroit Pistons. The home opener saw Morgan rake the ball from a Gotham defender, then legally body her aside and blast her third goal of four that night. "She's a killer," the Wave's Swedish import, forward Sofia Jakobsson, a former opponent to Morgan, would say of the 32-year-old striker's on-field focus and precision.
In the Wave's second road game, rookie Kelsey Turnbow's wayward elbow earned a deserved one-game suspension. Stoney's heated complaints summoned a ref's yellow card at USD, where an ensuing game saw a Seattle defender level Turnbow (with impunity). And, last Saturday night in Los Angeles, before a capacity crowd of 22,000, when the ball bounced to her on the sideline, the feisty Wave coach flipped it behind her, in response to an Angel City player asking for it.
So, there's no shortage of gamesmanship in the NWSL or women's soccer's international competitions. But the unmistakable vibe is, these are still only games. At women's matches abroad, there's no need for the moats and barbed wire fences that surround the pitch at some men's soccer games.
While there's no comparison to the global popularity of the men's game and the NWSL's long-term growth is by no means assured (though the league this week did express a desire to expand by two teams), women's soccer commands a growing audience. The Americans figure to once against garner good TV ratings next year in the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Connecting San Diego to the evolving show, the Wave boast three U.S. national team players in Morgan, Girma and Taylor Kornieck, plus former U.S. coach Jill Ellis (their club president).
"It's a really exciting time for the women's game," said Stoney, a former defender who played 19 years for England and served as first coach of Manchester United women's team, "and it's a privilege to be a part of."
