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The Goal-Goal Girls!
Posted: Tuesday July 06, 1999 11:36 AM
Admit it. You were thinking, Joe Torre in heels. You figured when a U.S. women's team finally broke through, one that made even the truck drivers care, it would be a bunch of women with Bronko Nagurski shoulders and five o'clock shadows. Well, the revolution is here, and it has bright-red toenails. And it shops. And it carries diaper bags. The U.S. women's soccer team is towing the country around by the heart in this Women's World Cup, and just look at the players. They've got ponytails! They've got kids! They've got (gulp) curves! Captain Carla Overbeck crawls across a magazine page in a leopard-skin dress. Midfielder Julie Foudy calls the team "booters with hooters." Lethal scorer Mia Hamm makes PEOPLE's 50 Most Beautiful. Midfielder Brandi Chastain shows up in the pages of Gear wearing only a soccer ball, which gets her on Letterman, who sends Late Night shirts to the whole team, which snaps a picture of the players apparently wearing only the shirts and cleats, which causes Letterman to refer to them forevermore as "Babe City." "Hey, I ran my ass off for this body," says Chastain. "I'm proud of it." This team is a wonderful combination of Amazonian ambush and after-prom party. "We're women who like to knock people's heads off and then put on a skirt and go dance," says Chastain. In fact, they're one of the first American women's teams with their own groupies. Very dumb groupies, but groupies nonetheless. The other night, for instance, one came up to defender Kate Sobrero in a bar and said, "You're on the U.S. soccer team, right?" "Right," said Sobrero. "Sooo," he said, pawing the floor with his boot, "uhh, well, are you a lesbian?" Just to mess with him, Sobrero said, "I'm not, but my girlfriend is." Whoever they are, they're absolutely impossible not to watch. They were 3-0 through Sunday, and every win was decisive. Every game is a happening, a Thrillith Fair packed with girls and moms. The U.S. women play technically perfect and emotionally riveting soccer. Not only that, but they try to score, as opposed to most men's teams, who try to get up 1-nil and then pack 11 guys in their own box for 85 minutes. Nobody except the Pope put more fannies in the seats at Giants Stadium than the women's team did two weeks ago. They sold out Soldier Field last Thursday, and had more than 50,000 at Foxboro Stadium on Sunday. Are the boneheads who planned NBC's Olympic broadcast from Atlanta listening? Look at what our American men's international teams have done lately. Ryder Cup: humiliated. Presidents Cup: humiliated. USA Hockey: dead humiliated. World Cup: dead last. The women's soccer team is a machine. It's a juggernaut. But most important, it's a floating slumber party. Before games lately, they've been gathering in the hotel hallway for their crucial pregame preparation: putting a dance CD on the boom box, singing at the top of their lungs and painting each other's nails. You figure the Knicks do that? Hamm calls her teammates "a buncha goofballs," but every one of them has a college degree or is a full-time student. In Japan the minute a player gets married, she quits the game; not the U.S. women. Even when these women give birth, they only pause at 10 centimeters. Overbeck lifted weights on the day she delivered her only child. Mother of two Joy Fawcett, probably the best defender in the world, used to breast-feed in the back of huddles during breaks in practice. Actually, they're not only fully functioning females, they're fully functioning human beings, too. This off-season, a kid knocked on the door of legendary American midfielder Michelle Akers's home outside Orlando and said, "Can you come out and kick the ball with us?" Now, if this were the door of most American male professional athletes, the kid would've been: 1) escorted away by security, 2) rolled away by paramedics or 3) simply trying to make contact with her biological father. What did Akers do? She went out and kicked with her, but only after bringing out an armful of pictures, books and pins. Ain't it great? Ten-year-old girls all over the country are taking down their Backstreet Boys posters and putting up the Goal-Goal Girls. That ad is right, of course. Clinton would be crazy not to come to the World Cup final on July 10 in Pasadena. Who else would you want presiding over Babe City?
Issue date: July 5, 1999
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