My view

WUSA proved not ready for prime time

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By Mike Woitalla, Soccer America

MY INITIAL REACTION, when I heard that a women's pro soccer league would launch in the United States in 2001, was: How can a women's league expect to make it when a men's league has yet to prove itself profitable?

The WUSA would come up against every challenge that MLS faced, and then some.

Can legions of participants be transformed into fans? Are the stadiums suitable for creating a comfortable, exciting atmosphere? Will fans develop an allegiance to clubs that have arrived out of thin air?

Can pro soccer compete in an environment that already offers its populace an unprecedented number of ways to spend its sports and entertainment dollars?

And, although this was asked constantly about MLS but largely ignored in WUSA's case, will the quality of the product be high enough to entertain the American sports fan?

When MLS launched in 1996, then-Deputy Commissioner Sunil Gulati stocked the league with a corps of foreign players who included the most popular stars from four nations with large U.S. immigrant populations: Jorge Campos (Mexico), Marco Etcheverry (Bolivia), Carlos Valderrama (Colombia) and Mauricio Cienfuegos (El Salvador).

The Latino community gave the league a significant boost. The WUSA would not have the support from this enthusiastic faction of soccer fans. The WUSA lured the world's best women's players to American shores, but they had no marquee value.

It banked on the allure of U.S. national team heroes Mia, Brandi, Julie, and Co. But their incredible rise to popularity belied the immaturity of female soccer in the United States.

The women's college soccer boom didn't take off until the 1990s. It was only at the first women's Olympic soccer tournament in 1996 and the 1999 Women's World Cup that the women's game infiltrated mainstream consciousness. To believe that within a decade the country was ready for a women's pro league always seemed terribly over-optimistic.

The men's game in the United States, with a much longer history, has had to overcome many setbacks and obstacles. And so it is for the women.

Mike Woitalla is executive editor at Soccer America magazine.