Not long after assuming his position as president of the Spanish soccer federation, Luis Rubiales called a meeting with the organization’s head of women’s soccer, Rafael Del Amo. Like his boss, Del Amo is new to his role, but Rubiales wants to gauge his first impression. He wants to know what the Spanish women’s team needs to succeed.
The answer he received was instructive. There is no effort to sugarcoat it for the new boss. The players, at that stage, didn’t have jerseys designed to be worn by women, let alone things like elite training facilities or a fully professional domestic league. Spain, Del Amo told Rubiales, needed “everything.”
That conversation took place in May 2018. It only took five years for Spain’s horizon to change completely. Fitted jerseys arrive in 2019. Professional domestic league arrives in 2021. On Sunday, for the first time, Spain will take the field in a Women’s World Cup final, separated from the sport’s ultimate glory by another debutant in greatest stage in women’s soccer, England.
At a glance, this is perhaps a slightly underwhelming recognition of a World Cup that has served as a showcase for the breadth of talent now flourishing across the women’s game. The past four weeks have been illuminated, at different times, by Nigeria and Jamaica, Morocco and South Africa, Colombia and Australia.
That the last two teams standing should be rich European countries – and traditional soccer powers – is, however, a perfectly fitting indication of the sport’s rising reality.
The axis of women’s soccer has inevitably tilted towards western Europe for some time. As Jessica Berman, the commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League, put it in Sydney on Friday, “The game has leveled up.” The presence of Spain and England in a World Cup final is the culmination of that. It’s hard not to read it as a kind of watershed, the moment one era transitions into another.
The journeys of the finalists at this point are not exactly matched. The roots of England’s transformation run deeper, going back to the launch of the Women’s Super League in 2011 and taking in the establishment of the second division (2014), the transition to a winter season (2012) and full professionalization ( 2018).
That triggered a rush of money into the game: from sponsors, broadcasters and, above all, the megaliths of the men’s Premier League. That investment is a drop compared to the sums offered in the men’s game but a torrent compared to women’s programs elsewhere.
The Women’s Super League secured a headline sponsor in 2019, following England’s run to the semifinals of the World Cup, a deal that has since doubled in value. Two years after that, the WSL made a television deal worth more than $30 million. That money helped establish and finance youth academies, improve coaching and facilities, and attract imports that have made the WSL the strongest domestic competition in the world.
Spain’s rise, by some measures, has been more rapid. La Liga Femenino turned professional three years after England, and the national team had never won a World Cup game, let alone reached the final, until 2019. But its team had the air of an upcoming force for almost a decade.
The country’s under-17 team reached the age group World Cup final in 2014; since then, Spain’s record at the youth level has been unmatched. It won the previous two editions of the under-17 World Cup and reached the final of the under-20 competition in both 2018 and 2022, winning the latter.
Most of Coach Jorge Vilda’s team in Australia and New Zealand took part in one, or more, of those campaigns: Salma Paralluelo, the brilliant forward who ranks as the breakout star of this tournament, scored two times in the final of the under-20 World Cup last year.
It is difficult to track that success, the emergence of the country’s golden generation, in the work of Spain’s national soccer authority, given Del Amo’s assessment of what has been lacking recently in 2018. Instead, it is more closely tracked with the growth of Barcelona to the dominant club team in Europe.
Barcelona turned professional in 2015, giving young female players full-time access to the expertise of its prolific youth academy for the first time. In 2019, after losing its first Champions League final to the mighty French team Lyon, it ensured its players could compete physically, as well as technically, with any opponent they faced. Since then it has won two of the previous three editions of the Champions League.
It is not a coincidence that Barcelona should have given the backbone not only of Vilda’s team, but of all the Spanish teams that have succeeded at the youth level. Like England, Spain’s success shows not only how important a good club game is to the health of a national team, but also what great strides can be made in the short term in women’s soccer with even a small investment and purpose.
Even more striking, however, is how uneven the gains have been. It has been just over a year since most of the Spanish team withdrew from international contention over a raft of deep and long-standing complaints about their treatment by the federation. Their list of grievances included the style and ability of Vilda, the coach; the lack of support staff given the international role; and the conditions under which they are expected to work while representing their country.
At the same time, budgets in La Liga Femenino continue to vary: Although Barcelona has invested heavily in its women’s team – even, by men’s standards, is a drop in ocean – few of its rivals are prepared to do the same. Real Madrid formed its first women’s team only in 2020.
Meanwhile, a major review into the state of women’s soccer in England — led by former player Karen Carney and published this summer — found that a “significant increase in investment” is needed across the game if it is to “fulfill its potential.”
“Despite the positivity and recent successes, the women’s game still finds itself in a nascent stage and a financially vulnerable position,” Carney wrote.
The report identified a range of issues which, if not addressed, threaten the development of women’s soccer in England. There was, Carney wrote, an urgent need to “pave the talent pathway” for the young players who would eventually replace and replace the current England team, and to introduce “minimum standards,” particularly away from several teams at the top of the WSL
England’s squad still contains players who remember the days, in the early stages of their careers, when they have to work a second job to supplement the meager income they earn from soccer.
Their opponents on Sunday are still dealing with the effects of their own fight to be considered as their own federation’s elite athletes. They may not need “everything,” like they did five years ago, but that doesn’t mean those battles are necessarily won. Both England and Spain have proven how quick success can be, in women’s soccer, by simply doing the bare minimum. However, that should not disguise how much there is to do.
