FIFA legend Carla Overbeck on why the 2023 Women’s World Cup will revolutionise football in Australia – صحيفة الصوت

There are few footballers throughout history who have not only played in a World Cup on home soil, but won it there, too.

Carla Overbeck is one of them.

The FIFA legend was part of the famous USA team of the 1990s that won the first official Women’s World Cup in 1991 before captaining the side who lifted the trophy as hosts in 1999.

That was the tournament — and the team — that changed everything for women’s football in the United States.

Despite having an operating budget of just $30 million, the event attracted almost 1.2 million people across the month, with an average of 37,000 fans at each game. Television ratings soared, as did media coverage once the tournament was underway.

The final — held in Overbeck’s hometown of Pasadena, California — still holds the record for the highest-ever attendance at a Women’s World Cup final when 90,185 people watched the USA defeat China on penalties.

It was the watershed moment for women’s football in the US, and a moment that both Australia and New Zealand can look forward to when, exactly one year from now, they co-host the 2023 edition.

“They didn’t think we could do it,” Overbeck remembered at an event in Sydney this week to mark the occasion.

“Most reporters were nay-sayers. They didn’t believe we could fill a giant stadium, that we could fill the Rose Bowl.

“It was just so rewarding to let them know that we had a pretty good product, the world brought their best teams, and it was going to be a great show for the people to watch.”

And so it was. Indeed, the interest and investment generated after 1999 arguably laid the foundations for the USA to become the next big superpower in women’s football, usurping China who had dominated in the 1980s.

The first boost was at the domestic league level. The ’99 World Cup led to the establishment of the world’s first professionally paid women’s football competition, the Women’s United Soccer Association, which featured legendary players such as FIFA Player of the Century Sun Wen, former Matildas captain Cheryl Salisbury, Brazilian icon Sissi and Asia’s first and only World Cup winning captain Homare Sawa of Japan.

Although that league folded a few seasons later, it laid the foundations for the National Women’s Soccer League, now a decade old and widely regarded as one of the best competitions in the world, where almost all the current US women’s national team players ply their trade.

That league also kick-started conversations around paying women athletes for their work, something that inspired the current generation players in their fight for equal pay — including World Cup prize money — which they secured from their federation earlier this year.

“That was a big fight that we had to fight,” Overbeck said.

“Our federation, I think, grew a lot with us. It was a bumpy road, for sure, but I think they realised the importance of women and supporting them.

“The game has grown so much. And it’s really important that women and young girls know that there’s an opportunity for them.”