Different Evolutionary Models - Past, Present, and Future - Certain to Collide at Women's World Cup 2023 With this new edition of his feted 2019 volume, Dr. Andrei Markovits - author of many books and academic papers on world fútbol, published in multiple languages - trains his canny, socio-historical eye on the contrasting cultural forces shaping women's soccer in 2023.  A head start. Where North American women, starting in the 1970s, enjoyed newly rendered systems and cultural spaces left empty by traditionally male-centered team sports, their European sisters were forced to contest what has arguably been the most male-dominated space in European public life. Changing dynamics. These nuanced, divergent evolutions help explain the dominance of the 4-time World Cup champion United States. However, hard-won access to the European player-development apparatus, mainly at the club level, has tipped the balance of power. Crucial support. Markovits also identifies the one cohort vital to the sport's commercial success, on either side of the Atlantic: women themselves, who have rarely (if ever) supported any team game at the professional level in numbers that would allow women's soccer to compete equitably with team sports played exclusively and watched largely by men. No book better explains this fascinating state of play or better preps the global soccer community for a World Cup sure to remake the sport's balance of power.

Under the Lights and in the Dark: Untold Stories of Women's Soccer takes an unprecedented look inside the lives of professional football players around the world – from precarious positions in underfunded teams and leagues, to sold-out stadiums and bright lights. Award-winning filmmaker and journalist Gwendolyn Oxenham tells the stories of the phenoms, underdogs, and nobodies – players willing to follow the game wherever it takes them. Under the Lights and in the Dark takes us inside the world of women's soccer, following players across the globe, from Portland Thorns star Allie Long, who trains in an underground men's league in New York City; to English national Fara Williams, who hid her homelessness from her teammates while playing for the English national team. Oxenham takes us to Voronezh, Russia, where players battle more than just snowy pitches in pursuing their dream of playing pro, and to a refugee camp in Denmark, where Nadia Nadim, now a Danish international star, honed her skills after her family fled from the Taliban. Whether you're a newcomer to the sport or a die-hard fan, this is an inspiring book about stars' beginnings and adventures, struggles and hardship, and, above all, the time-honored romance of the game.

Updated through the 2012 Olympics. On a July afternoon in 1999, the proudest moment for U.S. soccer occurred in Pasadena, California. In the presence of more than 90,000 fans and viewed by another 40 million on television, the U.S. women outlasted China to win the World Cup. Although the United States has lagged far behind other countries in the men's game, it has been at the forefront when it comes to women's soccer. In the second edition of The U.S. Women's Soccer Team: An American Success Story, Clemente A. Lisi examines how the sport has gained popularity over the past few decades. While other books have been written about the team during a specific year, such as those focused solely on the World Cup win on U.S. soil, Lisi looks beyond this event, detailing the program's infancy and how it steadily became a model for women's teams around the globe. Beginning with the start of the U.S. program in 1985, Lisi recounts the development of the women's team, highlighted by their two first place finishes in the Women's World Cups (1991 and 1999) and four Olympic women's gold medals (1996, 2004, 2008, and 2012). In addition to chronicling the history of the team as a whole, this book offers mini profiles and photographs of some of the best players over the years, including Julie Foudy, Amy Rodriguez, Hope Solo, and Mia Hamm.

Describes the origins and training of the United States Women's National Soccer Team, and introduces its members

2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Title In Soccer in American Culture: The Beautiful Game’s Struggle for Status, G. Edward White seeks to answer two questions. The first is why the sport of soccer failed to take root in the United States when it spread from England around much of the rest of the world in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The second is why the sport has had a significant renaissance in America since the last decade of the twentieth century, to the point where it is now the 4th largest participatory sport in the United States and is thriving, in both men’s and women’s versions, at the high school, college, and professional levels. White considers the early history of “Association football” (soccer) in England, the persistent struggles by the sport to establish itself in America for much of the twentieth century, the role of public high schools and colleges in marginalizing the sport, the part played by FIFA, the international organization charged with developing soccer around the globe, in encumbering the development of the sport in the United States, and the unusual history of women’s soccer in America, which evolved in the twentieth century from a virtually nonexistent sport to a major factor in the emergence of men’s—as well as women's—soccer in the U.S. in the twentieth century. Incorporating insights from sociology and economics, White explores the multiple factors that have resulted in the sport of soccer struggling to achieve major status in America and why it currently has nothing like the cultural impact of other popular American sports—baseball and American football— which can be seen by the comparative lack of attention paid to it in sports media, its low television ratings, and virtually nonexistent radio broadcast coverage.

It is undeniable that Association football is a global game with huge popularity. Yet what is known as 'women's football' receives far less support, financial assistance, media coverage and academic attention than the men's game. Consequently the story of women's football remains largely untold and its potential as a sports-related discussion is yet to be fulfilled. Women, Football and Europe is a collection of essays that contributes new knowledge on women's football. Volume 1 deals with historical aspects of the game, equality issues, and the experiences of those involved, while volume 2 looks at individual topics such as the 2005 UEFA Women's Championships, the pressures and constraints on female coaches, and the key issues affecting the development of the women's game in England and Europe.

The globalizing influence of professional sports Professional sports today have truly become a global force, a common language that anyone, regardless of their nationality, can understand. Yet sports also remain distinctly local, with regional teams and the fiercely loyal local fans that follow them. This book examines the twenty-first-century phenomenon of global sports, in which professional teams and their players have become agents of globalization while at the same time fostering deep-seated and antagonistic local allegiances and spawning new forms of cultural conflict and prejudice. Andrei Markovits and Lars Rensmann take readers into the exciting global sports scene, showing how soccer, football, baseball, basketball, and hockey have given rise to a collective identity among millions of predominantly male fans in the United States, Europe, and around the rest of the world. They trace how these global—and globalizing—sports emerged from local pastimes in America, Britain, and Canada over the course of the twentieth century, and how regionalism continues to exert its divisive influence in new and potentially explosive ways. Markovits and Rensmann explore the complex interplay between the global and the local in sports today, demonstrating how sports have opened new avenues for dialogue and shared interest internationally even as they reinforce old antagonisms and create new ones. Gaming the World reveals the pervasive influence of sports on our daily lives, making all of us citizens of an increasingly cosmopolitan world while affirming our local, regional, and national identities.