Many of you know this site (and, by extension, me) for breaking out any amount of historical statistics, no matter which sport may be at the center of the conversation.
But one statistic I like to bring up is exactly how dominant the U.S. women’s soccer team has been since FIFA competition begain in the late fall of 1991.
For it was at the inaugural FIFA Women’s World Championship for the M&M’s Cup — a game which featured shortened 80-minute games because it was thought that most women were not fit enough to go for a full 90 — that the United States, thanks to a defensive error by Norway and a quick and enterprising forward named Michelle Akers, won the gold medal and a trophy which was retroactively called the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
That was 11,942 days ago.
Since then, the United States team has three more FIFA World Cups and, with today’s 1-0 win over Brazil, five Olympic gold medals.
And the win also means that one of the longest runs of dominance in any sport is set to continue. The U.S. has held one or the other of these two major world-level titles for 10,854 days since that day in 1991. Do the math: that’s 90.89 percent of the time.
A lot of this dominance comes from, as I said a couple of days ago, the culture of the team as first propogated by Anson Dorrance. There was, and is, a heavy dose of generational talent, from Michelle Akers to Mia Hamm to Mallory Swanson, from Mary Harvey to Briana Scurry to Hope Solo to Alyssa Naher, from Carla Overbeck to Carli Lloyd, from Julie Foudy to Abby Wambach to April Henrichs and dozens of other players who have worn the U.S. crest with distinction.
While I have always put culture ahead of coaching as the reason the U.S. women’s soccer team is this successful, coaching does matter. Indeed, it was only about a month ago when the U.S. slogged through a humid evening to post a goalless draw with, of all teams, Costa Rica. The team didn’t look sharp at all hitting the goalkeeper on many offensive opportunities and looking somewhat disorganized in the midfield.
In less than three weeks, head coach Emma Hayes has turned what had looked like a team of lost souls into Olympic champions. And sure, you can point to Hayes’ willingness to give her players a free hand to improvise and play free, but there is a different culture around the team. Let me point you to a social media post by U.S. forward Trinity Rodman, in which ten players showed off what they were wearing while team members, off camera, chimed in unison what the player in front of the camera was wearing.
“Linen skirt and a button-up.” “Little green bag and some stompers.” “Skinny jeans and a fanny pack.”
You could argue that this was meaningless clowning for social media views, but what I saw instead was a team that genuinely enjoyed each other’s company, and players with boundless energy.
It’s this kind of team culture which has been part of the team, frankly, from the very beginning. If you watch documentaries of the U.S. women’s national side, you might be familiar with a clip showing a raucous U.S. team singing out the windows of the team bus on the way back to the hotel from the trophy ceremony after winning the 1991 World Championship.
The U.S. team, it seems to me, is a national-team program which not only has world-beating excellence, but is a team whose players do not take themselves too seriously, and who love to have fun on and off the pitch.
That culture is hard to beat. And the clock now begins again showing how long the US has been dominant in the sport. And it will go at least another 1400 days or so unless the States win the next Women’s World Cup, in which case the dominant days streak would continue into the 2030s.
Pretty amazing if you ask me.
