Oh the times, they are a changing: the times when the U.S. Women’s National Team was untouchable. Nobody could lay a finger on our beloved liberators of football for the fairer sex. Nobody except for the occasional kick you where it hurts China Squad.

I can remember walking down the street in a Mexican town in 1997 with some of the locals and seeing two girls in skirts kicking a ball. One of my friends said that he had never seen that before.

Wow, for that to be said in Mexico in 1997, when women’s soccer was picking up real steam for the U.S. in 1987, no wonder no team this side of the Atlantic could stand a chance versus us and our only arch rivals Canada, who will ultimately always be second best. But what of this Mexico? They do not suffer under the football stereotype of second best verse the U.S. Can they be better then the Red, White and Blue?

Well, from this year’s semifinal Gold Cup match, obviously the tides are turning. Yes the U.S. was victorious 2-0, but there were glimpses of Mexican dribbling and industry. Something that the U.S. will ultimately have problems with since we do not uphold individual genius as much in the U.S. Women’s game. 

I’ll tell you that the Mexican’s do uphold these features, and their inventiveness on the pitch will see the U.S. gasping for air. The U.S. Women are not playing particularly better football then the Canadians right now and the Mexicans 4 years from now. This industry, work rate, fitter then you type of play is about to outlive its shelf live. Our fitness was our trump in the years past; no one could keep up with these American engineered athletes that would be there to contest everything.

Now what happens when your opponents’ infrastructure has evolved to produce the same athlete? Well, to be the most fit will be common; it will be the most inventive, and the most skillful, that will be on the winning end.

If you say the U.S. Women’s team has that, well you could be right, but answer me this. What is the difference between the Midfield players and the Defenders other then their position? If we want to talk intricacies, then there maybe a few, but overall they are pretty much, hard working, harsh moving athletic players. The dribbler’s gene is not found in any of them. Our forwards are industrious and willing to put a dagger in the hearts of their enemy, but other then a good cut or two, inventive, non-predictable soccer is not there, just like the Men’s team to a greater extent.

Do you know who will have this inventive, non-predictable nature in play, the countries that currently display it in their more evolved Men’s branches? So look for Mexico to continue to grow rapidly along with Brazil and the rest following suit.

Where does this place the U.S. Women? Obviously, right in line with the Men, 20th or so in the World! Maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but no one can say that the current crop of girls are any better then what we were fielding in 96 when we won Gold in Athens (Athens, Georgia, Olympics 96) and the famous sports bra was shown around the world.

What this means for Women’s Soccer in general is that we must prepare to see sports bras from many different nations tearing off their jerseys.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Soccer World, USA, Kamal de Gregory (Soccer Luminary). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.