Word: cups
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...transforms a 116-yd. by 72-yd. field into a postage stamp. At their own end, the Americans completely snuffed out the Chinese offense, allowing scoring star Sun Wen precious little room to maneuver. At midfield, Michelle Akers, a 33-year-old orthopedic disaster, made her last World Cup game a memorable one. On defense, she owned the air, hurling herself at anything round that moved--a recklessness that would force her out of the game near the end of regulation time, when she crashed into goalie Briana Scurry. "Akers is one of the greatest women athletes in history," said...
...Nike president Thomas Clarke. After all, this is a veteran group whose members have known one another and played together for a decade in some cases. They won the Olympic gold medal in 1996, and some, including Akers, were around in 1991, when the team won the inaugural World Cup, held in China, where the event apparently was kept a state secret. Indeed, the team barely played the next year because U.S. Soccer couldn't afford to pay anyone...
Since then, the team and the federation have been steadily raising their profile. "We came up with a marketing plan that really tapped into the grass roots," says Alan Rothenberg, chairman of the Women's World Cup board and past president of U.S. Soccer. "We might have 2,000 to 3,000 people at those early barnstorming games," he says, in Hershey, Pa., and in New York's Long Island. Wherever the team went in those days, the hero that girls sought out was Hamm, now 27, whose speed and finesse still give defenders the shakes. As the team...
...Akers, who preceded Hamm to stardom, this Cup was a test of willpower. Dogged by chronic fatigue syndrome and damaged knees, she has pursued this Cup as relentlessly as she has tracked down opposing midfielders. With the Olympics coming up next summer, Akers has said she will listen to what her body is telling her about whether to play. That would be a first for someone whose body has been screaming at her for years...
Originally, Messing figured Women's World Cup could sell a total of about 312,000 tickets for the 17 doubleheaders (the semis were staged in conjunction with an MLS game). Instead the figure will be more like 650,000. While professional women soccer players are no match for the men in skill levels, their game is great entertainment because unlike the final, most games are freewheeling shoot-outs. It was all scintillating soccer, blissfully devoid of drunks and hooligans--just hundreds of thousands of soccer-loving Americans out for good, clean...