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The U.S. women not playing in the World Cup final is actually a good thing.
No, really. Hear me out.
The USWNT, and the executives at Fox Sports, will disagree there’s anything positive about the four-time champions not being around for the last two weeks of the tournament. For the growth of the game, to incentivize still-developing programs to keep investing in their teams, however, the early exits of the USWNT and other powerhouses is a boon.
“If you look at the past, it was like every competition, the last teams were the same teams. Now we have an opportunity to see two teams in the final who never were (before),” Marta, who has seen the game’s transformation up close in six World Cups with Brazil, said earlier this week.
“Soccer,” she added, “has become so competitive.”
WORLD CUP CENTRAL: 2023 Women’s World Cup Live Scores, Schedules, Standings, Bracket and More
For much of the game’s infancy – and, make no mistake, with the first World Cup not played until 1991, infancy still applies – the USWNT has been soccer’s equivalent of an eclipse blocking out the sun.
The Americans won four of the first eight World Cup titles, and four of the first five Olympic gold medals. Until the Rio Games in 2016, they’d reached the semifinals at every World Cup and Olympics. Heck, they’d won a medal at every World Cup or Olympics.
Even in those few instances when the USWNT wasn’t winning, the competition wasn’t exactly wide open. Sunday’s showdown between England and Spain is the first time in 20 years that both World Cup finalists would be a first-time champion.
Twenty years! Alyssa Thompson wasn’t even alive yet back then.
Only three other countries have won World Cup titles, and another four made it to the finals in the first eight tournaments. Spain and Australia this year became the 12th and 13th different countries to reach the semifinals.
Seven other countries have won medals at the Olympic tournament, which began in 1996, and – you guessed it – they’re all on that short list of clubs that have made deep World Cup runs. Norway, Germany and Japan, the only teams besides the USWNT to win the World Cup title; Brazil, China and Sweden, three of the other four countries to make it to the final; and Canada, a semifinalist at the 2003 World Cup.
When you consider the Olympic tournament is only 12 teams, and the World Cup was 16 teams from 1999 to 2011 and 24 in 2015 and 2019, you see just how exclusive the club was.
But this tournament, the first with 32 teams, has been a rollicking display of egalitarianism.
The USWNT was out after the round of 16, its earliest exit ever at a World Cup or an Olympics, and it could have been earlier if not for a late shot by Portugal ricocheting off the post. Germany failed to make it out of the group stage for the first time ever. Brazil went out in the group stage for the first time since 1995. Canada was the first Olympic champion not to make the knockout rounds.
This gave hope to teams that, before, really wouldn’t have had much.
Jamaica and South Africa, each making their second World Cup appearances, reached the round of 16. Africa sent three teams to the knockout rounds for the first time, including World Cup debutante Morocco. Colombia joined Brazil as the only South American teams to make a World Cup quarterfinal.
Even before the knockout rounds, four of the eight teams making their World Cup debut won a game. Six got their first goals.
“This has a very special meaning,” Colombia coach Nelson Abadia said after his squad beat Jamaica to reach the quarterfinals. “When we qualified for the World Cup, the first thing I said to my team was, ‘We’re not just here to spend time, we want to make history’.”
A wide-open tournament, a tournament where other teams can take a turn in the spotlight the USWNT usually commands, gives everybody else the belief they can make history, too.
It’s one thing to aspire to greatness, and invest accordingly, and quite another to know it’s within your reach. Countries that might have been reluctant to increase their spending or devote resources to a domestic professional league, feeling the World Cup or Olympics was going to end the same way, anyway, might reconsider when they know the USWNT is no longer keeping the keys to the trophy case.
“It’s just the beginning of something,” Australia coach Tony Gustavsson said. “We’re right now maximizing the resources we have. … The return of investment on the money we have right now is unique and very good, but let’s invest more and be genuine contenders for medals and tournaments.”
The USWNT goes into every tournament believing it can win it, and its early exit at the World Cup won’t change that. But its absence these last two weeks has allowed other teams to envision the same thing, and the game will be better for it.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
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