Via Power Plays, a look at the 1971 women’s football world championship tournament:

Last week I highlighted Brazil’s ban on women’s football, this week I’m highlighting the 1971 women’s world championship in Mexico, because it’s a piece of women’s football history that I think is imperative for everyone to know about.

Thankfully, we have Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America, by Dr. Brenda Elsey and Dr. Joshua Nadel to teach us.

This dive is based almost entirely off of their book. They are, quite literally, the experts.

A couple of things to note:

The first women’s football world championship was in Italy in 1970. The Mexican women’s team did travel to that tournament, and finished third. About 30,000 people attended those games.

FIFA had absolutely nothing to do with this. In fact, they actively tried to squelch it. They didn’t sponsor a women’s international tournament until 1988.

Spoiler alert: Denmark won the 1970 and 1971 tournaments.

Okay, now let’s talk about women’s football in Mexico.

The sport became popular in Mexico in the late 1960s, and by the end of 1970, women’s football was a regular part of the sporting scene, in both the media and on the field. Liga America in Mexico City had over 40 teams alone.

In 1970, after Mexico’s good showing in Turin, the Italian delegation visited Mexico and realized they had the facilities and the infrastructure to host the 1971 world championship. (It helped that Mexico hosted the 1968 Olympics and the 1970 men’s World Cup.)

So, the Federation of International and European Women’s Football (FIEFF) appointed Mexico as the host for the second women’s world championship.

FIFA was not happy about this!

At a FIFA executive committee meeting in January of 1971, FIFA acknowledged that women’s football was a growing sport, and that they needed to keep an eye on it. However, FIFA still said they could not organize a Women’s World Cup, because it needed “this type of football” to be “controlled by national associations.”

That led the Powers That Be to take *active* steps to try and prevent Mexico from holding the 1971 world championship.

As Futbolera notes, FIFA sent a directive of the Mexican Football Federation (FMF) and banned them from holding the tournament. Essentially, they were starting to see that women’s football might make money. They didn’t want to do anything themselves to invest in the sport, but didn’t want anyone else to profit off of it, either.

But FIFA failed to stop the women. Women’s leagues from across Mexico met and formed the Mexican Federation of Women’s Football (FMFF) to organize the second women’s world championship, and announced that games would be played that fall in Estadio Azteca and Estadio Jalisco, two stadiums outside the jurisdiction of the MFF.

Women’s football continued to grow in popularity as the tournament drew closer, and people were taking notice. The media coverage leading up to the event was, well, colorful. The sex appeal of the players was a focus of local coverage …

… and it was a focus of international coverage as well. Here’s an article from a wire service, which was published in the New York Times on June 27, 1971: “Soccer Goes Sexy South Of Border.”

“Women who play soccer are not muscular monstrosities, but generally pretty girls,” the article reassures.

(I’ve put this clip in Power Plays before, but it’s worth reading again. Trust me.)

COOL.

Finally, it was time for the tournament itself, which was played from August 15-September 5.

The championship involved six teams — Argentina, Denmark, England, France, Italy, and Mexico. The six teams were divided into two three-team pods for group play, and all matches were played in either Mexico City or Guadalajara.

The event had big-named sponsors, such as Martini & Rossi, and I was surprised to read in Futbolera that there was a good amount of press coverage for the entire event. Yes, some of it was patronizing and degrading. But it sounds like there was also a lot of legit coverage, too.

Believe it or not, good press and corporate sponsors and elite talent is a powerful mixture! The crowds trounced those in Turin. About 110,000 people attended the final at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, where Denmark beat Mexico, 3-0.

It wasn’t just the final that was popular, either. There were good crowds throughout the tournament.

Overall, the event was a huge success. So, you might be wondering, why then is the tournament still considered “unofficial” in many record books? Why was it 13 years before the next global football competition women was launched in Italy, 17 years until the 1988 FIFA Women’s Invitational Tournament, and 20 years until the first official FIFA Women’s World Cup?

Well, the answer is part of the question, friends. It can be summed up as, “Because men.”

Read that again: “When the FMF took over official control of the women’s game in 1971, under instructions from FIFA, it gave women’s football no resources.”

It’s beyond infuriating that 110,000 people paying to watch women’s football in person convinced governing bodies to take over the sport and then squelch its potential. Just like it’s impossible to read about Brazil’s 40-year women’s football ban without wondering how far along the sport would have been without it, reading about the 1971 World Cup just makes me think about all the momentum that was squashed.

Whenever I am asked to sum up what I want people to get from Power Plays, it always comes back to this: The marginalization of women in sports did not happen by accident; it wasn’t simply due to “market forces” or a lack of fan interest. It was (and still in many ways is) a series of active choices made by those in positions of power to keep women’s sports small and insignificant. Therefore, reversing that trend takes intentionality, too.

We’ll talk more about this tomorrow, and, well, essentially every day after that as well.