Rivals: Legendary Matchups That Made Sports History

16. Dare to Dream: U.S. Women’s Soccer versus the World

sixteen Dare to Dream U.S. Women’s Soccer versus the World L I N D S E Y J . M E Â N The U.S. women’s soccer team is a winner on the world’s stage, earning them a consistent number one ranking. Yet, with the notable exception of the China-U.S. rivalry, women’s soccer and its international team rivalries have been overlooked by the media and, consequently, remain unfamiliar to the wider U.S. audience. In this chapter I discuss the virtual invisibility of U.S. women’s soccer and its key rivalries as a significant topic in mediated sport, arguing that this oversight arises from a number of interconnected reasons linked to the ideological significance of sport, of soccer, and women’s sport in America. In the United States, both soccer and women’s sport have a problematic social, cultural, and ideological existence. Soccer itself sits in rivalry and contrast to American sports and the way sport is “done,” while women’s sporting presence remains a challenge to sport as a male domain. Consequently, the United States has provided a relatively unique sociopolitical setting for soccer as women’s sport, yet one that is ultimately dilemmatic. U.S. women’s soccer has been a major international success but a domestic failure, its successes inconsistently celebrated and largely ignored by the sporting media and, hence, traditional sport audiences . This contradictory positioning can be usefully understood if soccer and women’s soccer are examined within the system of ideological rivalries that comprise sport and its inextricable links with nation, masculinity , and the media. My intention, therefore, is to outline some of the broader commercial and ideological rivalries that have contributed to both the success and failure of women’s soccer in the United States before focusing on how these have shaped the circumstances and mediated constructions of the American team’s international rivalries. 1WIGGINS_pages:Layout 1 2/11/10 3:26 PM Page 359 Outside the United States soccer is commonly known as football, and the U.S. game known as football is relegated to being referred to as Americanfootball, linguistically marked as the outsider. In further contrast, across the globe soccer comprises the essence of hegemonic masculinity and embodies the nation as the national sport. Given the global popularity of soccer alongside concerted efforts to popularize it as a men’s game in the United States, America’s continued resistance to soccer as a top sport remains complex and multifaceted. However, a brief consideration of the significanceof sportashighlymediated and crucial forconstructingnation and masculinity offers some insights into this resistance, providing an underlying account of the socio-ideological, commercial, and economic rivalry between both U.S. and non-U.S. sports and men’s and women’s sports. Exploring these different levels of ideological and commercial rivalry contributes to a wider account of how and why the U.S. women’s team found the actual and ideological space to develop to a high standard and international acclaim, yet still failed to win the media exposure it needed to succeed in the domestic sphere. Sport as Ideology Sport plays a major ideological role in the construction of nation, key identities, and social categories as a major site for the demarcation of gender and the construction of masculinity.1 This power, together with its intertextual embeddedness with other key discourses (such as politics ),2 means sport comprises a powerful foundational discourse crucial for constructing understandings of the world.3 But sport is also increasingly significant given its predominance as a media site in an increasingly mediated world. Indeed, the mediated context of sport and its commodification for consumption (termed mediatization) has rendered it even more ideologically and commercially powerful given the global economic imperatives that dominate U.S. sports media and its power to influence identities and meanings, reflected in the increasing business links between sport, media, entertainment, and merchandising corporations , such as Disney.4 Consequently, these ideological and commercial imperatives are inextricably linked to ways in which the United States “does” sport (i.e., the ways in which sport is practiced, produced, and reproduced) and why soccer sits as an ideological and commercial rival. 360 LINDSEY J. MEÂN 1WIGGINS_pages:Layout 1 2/11/10 3:26 PM Page 360 American Sport: Soccer Is Not U.S. In the United States, soccer is somewhat of an anathema for a number of reasons.Socceris,ultimately,agamewhichcontradictsthe...