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      With Women’s World Cup’s Expansion Come the Soccer Games of a Lifetime

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      Vietnam, one of eight nations playing in their first Women’s World Cup, will face the U.S. this week. Its presence highlights the growth of women’s soccer, but also the challenges that remain.When Vietnam fielded its first women’s national soccer team in 1997, its players wore oversized jerseys made for men. At times, the team had to travel an hour and a half from Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, to reach an available training site. Some players pushed carts on the street and sold bread to sustain their nascent playing careers.In the years after the Vietnam War — called the American War here — ended in 1975, economic reform took precedence over sports. The Vietnam Football Federation, which governs soccer in the unified country, was not established until 1989. In its early days, soccer was widely considered a game for men, too hard and demanding for women to play. With little money available, the sport hardly seemed a desirable career choice for girls. But that did not matter in most cases: Many parents were reluctant to let their daughters play.“Society didn’t accept the existence of such a team,” said Mai Duc Chung, 74, Vietnam’s women’s national coach then and now.A quarter of a century later, Vietnam is one of the dominant teams in Southeast Asia. This month, it will play for the first time in the Women’s World Cup, starting with a game against the United States, the two-time defending champion, on Friday night (Eastern time) in Auckland, New Zealand.Mai Duc Chung has coached the Vietnam women’s team for more than two decades.Vietnam’s arrival is the culmination of its nearly decade-long plan to develop women’s soccer, in part through expansion of the World Cup field from 16 to 24 and now to 32 teams, making this year’s tournament the largest in history. That growth is giving opportunities to nontraditional powers: Eight nations in this year’s tournament, fully a quarter of the field, are participating for the first time.This will be the biggest soccer moment for Vietnam and the other first-timers, a group that includes teams as diverse as Haiti, Ireland, Morocco and the Philippines. It will mean increased visibility and funding, enhanced professionalization of the sport and additional financial rewards. FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, has promised at least $30,000 in prize money to each player participating in this year’s tournament.But that same growth will bring inexperience and the prospect of severe competitive imbalance when the newcomers face off against the world’s best teams. It was with great fulfillment that Vietnam qualified ahead of its fiercest rival, Thailand. But gratification comes with burdensome pressure to avoid embarrassing performances, like losing by 13-0 to the United States, as Thailand did in the last Women’s World Cup in 2019.Vietnam’s players are paid about $850 a month to represent the women’s national team.FIFA’s improved bonus structure for World Cup players will mean a $30,000 payday for each one.“We witnessed the fiasco, and it’s a lesson learned for Vietnam,” said Huynh Nhu, the team’s star forward. She spoke through an interpreter, as did others interviewed for this article. “Thailand suffered such a big loss, they just kind of fell backward, and their fighting spirit is no longer there. No matter what happens against the United States and other powers, we will keep fighting.”Participating in the Women’s World Cup represents great national pride and international sporting achievement for Vietnam, a country that has won only one Olympic gold medal (in air-pistol shooting, at the 2016 Rio Olympics) and has never qualified for the men’s World Cup, and where men’s soccer is better known for regular episodes of corruption and match fixing.But similar pride and similar hardships overcome are echoed across the other debutantes in this year’s field. Ireland’s captain, Katie McCabe, grew up playing on boys’ teams, encouraged by an older brother and parents who now watch her play for the London club Arsenal. Haiti’s players navigated a national system in which federation officials have been accused of coercing young players into sex, and Morocco’s overcame profound traditional biases and frequent family objections to become the first team from a majority Arab country to qualify.“No matter what happens against the United States and other powers, we will keep fighting,” one Vietnam player said.Vietnam’s team has come as far as any of them. Once shunned, or simply ignored, the Vietnamese women are now national names. They were welcomed by their country’s prime minister after earning their World Cup place in a qualifying tournament in India last year and were given a parade on a double-decker bus through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. Their World Cup matches will be broadcast live to their fellow citizens on various platforms.More than any Vietnamese player, Huynh Nhu, 31, represents possibility and inequality that coexist in her country and, effectively, for women’s soccer worldwide. She is the first female player from Vietnam to play for a club team in Europe, having scored seven goals in the recently completed season for Lank F.C. Vilaverdense in Portugal’s top division. After the World Cup, Huynh Nhu is expected to extend her contract with the club, which has reportedly offered to double her salary to 3,000 euros (about $3,200 per month).That is a stark contrast to the average salary of $200 to $300 per month in the semiprofessional women’s league in Vietnam. On an annualized basis, those salaries remain below the country’s per capita G.D.P. of $3,756.50 a year, according to the World Bank. Players often take second jobs to supplement their incomes. Before moving to Portugal last season, for example, Huynh Nhu operated a business selling coconuts in her rural hometown in the Mekong Delta.She said that she now had corporate affiliations with Visa, Coca-Cola and LG electronics. And she is the face of the unprecedented news coverage and sponsorship attention currently being lavished on the Vietnamese women’s national team. While away from their clubs and training and participating in international competitions, members of the national team can earn about $850 a month, according to Mai, the national coach. (Journalists said money was deducted for meals and housing.)Mai with a photo of the first Vietnam women’s national team in 1997.Players have also been awarded bonuses by the Vietnamese Football Federation and sponsors for recent triumphs. Not all bonuses are known, and it remains unclear exactly how much of the bonus pool is divided among the players and the coaches. But the publicized pool is equivalent to $8,000 apiece for winning the Southeast Asian Games in May for an eighth time and, according to journalists, $15,000 or more for qualifying for the World Cup. Bonuses are not always financial, either; they can also include motorbikes and cars.Those figures are “very modest” compared with what top male soccer players can make in salary and endorsements in Vietnam, said Cao Huy Tho, an executive, former sports editor and longtime advocate for gender equity at Tuoi Tre, a leading newspaper in Vietnam. But “it’s very meaningful, life-changing for the women, because most of them come from very poor backgrounds.”Huynh Nhu’s family, for instance, is building a three-story home, which includes a shrine to her career and appears to be the tallest in the area, in her hometown, Tra Vinh.Women in Vietnam’s national league who do not play on the national team endure a far more modest existence. League attendance is extremely low, roughly 100 to 300 people per match, journalists said, leaving many businesses reluctant to sponsor teams.The parents of Huynh Nhu, Vietnam’s top forward, keep a display of memorabilia from her career in a room in their home.When a team representing Son La Province in northwest Vietnam struggled to maintain sponsorships in recent years, its players’ monthly salaries plummeted to as low as $130 or even $70 — much less than could be earned doing factory work. Some players left for better-paying jobs, and Son La is no longer in the league. Last year, as the club faced disbanding, its coach, Luong Van Chuyen, lamented to an online newspaper that he had only four players available. The others, Luong said, “quit to return home to get married and to become workers.”The issue of disparate treatment of female soccer players reached the highest levels of government after Vietnam qualified for the Women’s World Cup. In greeting the returning players, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh called them “diamond girls” but also noted that they still faced prejudice in playing what many still consider a man’s game, as well as hardships resulting from precarious incomes and lack of security in retirement.“We need to pay more attention to women’s football,” Pham said, calling on soccer officials, government agencies and sponsors to help develop a sustainable model for the sport. It is unclear what steps, if any, have been taken to pursue that goal.Soccer was introduced to Vietnam in 1896 during the French colonial period. The country claims to have fielded Asia’s first women’s team, which played briefly against men in the early 1930s. After the Vietnam War, though, an unofficial prohibition of women’s soccer existed into the early 1990s, according to Cao, the journalist who began covering the sport later that decade.Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy, commonly known as Bich Thuy, 29.Huynh Nhu, 32, the captain of the team. Her new goal is to score in a World Cup.To circumvent the ban, Cao said, a sympathetic pharmacy executive in Ho Chi Minh City transported female players to matches against men’s teams by hiding them in cargo trucks covered with tarpaulins. When a women’s national team was officially formed in 1997, Nguyen Thi Kim Hong was one of the players who sold bread to maintain their careers.“It was our passion only; money was never the purpose for the first generation,” said Nguyen, now 51 and the goalkeeper coach for the women’s national team.Even some of today’s current stars faced resistance from their parents when they began playing. Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy, 29, was the youngest of three children, and though her father had been a soccer player, her parents worried that if she moved away from home in central Vietnam, “nobody will mother you anymore.” Eventually, she said, her father became her biggest supporter.In February 2022, after Vietnam’s bid for World Cup qualification nearly imploded as the coronavirus ravaged the women’s team, Bich Thuy scored the most important goal in the country’s history — a deft touch with her right foot and a decisive and historic shot with her left in a 2-1 playoff victory over Taiwan, which FIFA refers to as Chinese Taipei. She dedicated the goal to her father, who died in 2016.Vietnam players in Hanoi. Their first game at the World Cup will come against the United States, the two-time defending champion.“I’m still feeling it now, like a dream,” Bich Thuy said of the goal. “My father always expected a lot of me. I’m sure he would be happy to see that.”Huynh Nhu, the team’s star, had more unconditional support from her parents. Her father, a former player, began coaching her when she was 3 or 4. Her mother worked in a market in rural Tra Vinh and brought home a soccer ball at Huynh Nhu’s request. Her father said he had attached the ball to a rope to keep her from kicking it into a canal outside the home. Now she leads Vietnam’s national team, with the aim of scoring a goal in the World Cup. That may be, for now, a more achievable goal than expecting to win a game in a group that includes the United States, the Netherlands (the 2019 World Cup runner-up) and Portugal, a fellow debutante that lies just outside the top 20 in the latest world rankings.Told that the benefactor of Thailand’s team at the 2019 Women’s World Cup, one of the richest women in the country, had exhorted her players by saying, “If you score, I’ll buy you a $5,000 Chanel bag,” Huynh Nhu laughed.“I look forward to having such a billionaire in my country,” she said.Linh Pham contributing reporting from Tra Vinh, Vietnam.Players on the Vietnam women’s team walking to their training field in Hanoi. More

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      Overlooked No More: Lily Parr, Dominant British Soccer Player

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      She persevered at a time when women were effectively banned from the sport, and was the first woman inducted into England’s National Football Hall of Fame.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.In 1921, the Football Association, English soccer’s ruling body, effectively banned women from playing the sport, deeming it “quite unsuitable for females.” But by then, a standout player named Lily Parr had already gained fame for her skill on the field.Her renown was part of the growth of women’s soccer at the time, exemplified by a match in which she played at Goodison Park in Liverpool that drew a crowd of about 53,000, with thousands more outside the stadium. (It would remain the largest crowd for a women’s club soccer match for 99 years, until Atlético Madrid hosted Barcelona in front of 60,739 fans in March 2019.)Though the association’s ban would hamper Parr’s career, barring her and other women from playing in stadiums, she competed where she could, in fields and parks in England and abroad, and continued drawing attention over her 31 years with the same team, Dick, Kerr Ladies Football Club.In 1927, the English newspaper The Leicester Mail called her “a remarkably nimble and speedy performer” with “a kick like a cart-horse.” By the time she retired from soccer, in 1951, she had scored an estimated 1,000 goals.Parr was “a great player in a great team,” said Gail Newsham, author of the 1994 book “In a League of Their Own!: The Dick, Kerr Ladies 1917-1965,” and she contributed to the club’s immense success alongside other star goal scorers like Florrie Redford, Jennie Harris and Alice Kell, the team’s longest serving captain.Soccer officials began lifting the ban in England — as well as those in other countries — in the 1970s. The first official Women’s World Cup was held in 1991, and interest in the event has grown considerably since then.This year, the Women’s World Cup, which is currently underway in Australia and New Zealand, includes an expanded field of 32 teams, up from 24.Club competition in England has grown, too; the Women’s Super League, which began in 2011, became fully professional in 2018. In the United States, the National Women’s Soccer League began in 2013.In 2002, Parr became the first woman inducted into England’s National Football Museum Hall of Fame, now in Manchester, and in 2019, the museum installed a life-size statue of her there, also a first for a British female soccer player.“We have come a long way since Lily Parr’s days, and she deserves recognition as a true pioneer of the sport,” Marzena Bogdanowicz, a spokeswoman for women’s soccer at the Football Association, was quoted as saying in The Guardian in 2019.Parr, with dark hair, leaps while training with her team. She drew attention as “a remarkably nimble and speedy performer” with “a kick like a cart-horse,” as one newspaper wrote.GettyLilian Parr was born on April 26, 1905, in St Helens, about 10 miles northeast of Liverpool, to Sarah and George Parr, a glassworks laborer. Growing up, she played soccer in the street with her brothers.Women had been playing soccer in Britain since the late 19th century, but World War I offered an opportunity for them to blossom. As men were sent to fight and women filled the country’s factories, the government encouraged soccer as an after-work activity.Parr went to work for Dick, Kerr & Co., a locomotives factory that had switched production to munitions during the war, and joined the company’s team as a left back when she was about 15.Her manner could be rough and abrupt, but with a quick wit and a dry sense of humor she enjoyed strong friendships with many of her teammates, Newsham wrote.In one perhaps apocryphal story, the team was playing at Ashton Park in Preston, England, northwest of Manchester, when a male professional goalkeeper declared that a woman would never be able to score on a man. Parr, famous for her powerful left foot, accepted his challenge. She lined up to take a penalty kick against him and broke the man’s arm with her shot.Parr and her team in 1939 discussing tactics for a forthcoming match.GettyParr, who later moved to left winger, exploded onto the scene in 1921.On Feb. 5 that year, she scored a hat trick — three goals in a single match — at Nelson, England; she scored another three days later at Stalybridge in a 10-0 win. In a 9-1 win in Liverpool at Anfield Stadium the next week, she netted five goals against a team of all-stars assembled by the comedian Harry Weldon. That May she scored every goal in a 5-1 win over a visiting French team.Parr’s shooting and crossing abilities, as well as her impressive physique (she was a sturdy 5 feet 10 inches tall or so), quickly made her a star, and she finished 1921 with 108 goals, according to Newsham.That year the team won all 67 games it played and scored some 448 goals in the process while allowing just 22. Other players, including Redford and Harris, contributed to the team’s dominance. In one April 1921 match at Barrow, for example, the team won 14-2 with seven goals from Redford, four from Harris and three from Parr. Redford led the year’s scoring with a 170 goals.On Dec. 5, 1921, the Football Association unanimously passed its resolution declaring that soccer “ought not to be encouraged” among women. It mandated that all of the association’s clubs “refuse the use of their grounds for such matches.” Because association clubs owned virtually all stadiums, women’s soccer on any significant scale was, in effect, banned.Similar bans were common across the world for much of the 20th century. The momentum that had been building since World War I screeched to a halt, and the sport, for women, withered on the vine.Parr’s team nevertheless continued to play in front of smaller crowds and on tours abroad. In 1922, she captained a trip to the United States. That October, the team tied a men’s team, 4-4, in Washington, D.C. Some sources suggest that President Warren G. Harding kicked off the game and autographed the match ball.As she continued playing, Parr trained to be a nurse and worked at what was then known as Whittingham Hospital, a psychiatric facility northeast of Preston. Some have viewed Parr as a queer icon, but there is no evidence that she was gay. “Like all our great football stars there are as many myths as there are facts, and we all embroider her story with our own influences,” said Jean Williams, a professor of sports history at the University of Wolverhampton. “That is why she means so much to so many.”Parr’s career lasted into her 40s; she played her last game in 1951. In 1965, she retired from nursing. A few years later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. She lived to see the ban on women’s soccer lifted in 1971, but died of cancer on May 24, 1978, at her home in Preston. She was 73.Only in recent decades has recognition of Parr and her club’s accomplishments gained momentum. Historical markers for her team are now at the Preston factory site, Preston North End’s stadium and Ashton Park. The English National Football Museum installed a permanent display about her life in 2021.“Lily is a lens through which to look at the women’s game in the ’20s,” Belinda Scarlett, then the curator of women’s football at the museum, told The Guardian in 2020. “It will tell the stories of all the women she played with and against.”She added that “women’s football probably wouldn’t have continued if those groups of women didn’t fight that ban and just play wherever the hell they could find a space to play football.” More

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      Even if U.S. Doesn’t Win the World Cup, Its Players Will Take Home the Most Prize Money

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      The Canadian women’s soccer team has been demanding that its soccer federation agree to equal pay and equal working conditions for the men’s and women’s national teams for over a year. Players from England are frustrated that their country’s federation won’t offer performance-related bonuses. And the Nigerian team discussed boycotting its opening game over money […] More

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      Biggest Gap for U.S. World Cup Players: Their Ages

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      The U.S. team includes past champions, veterans of the equal pay fight and 14 players experiencing their first World Cup. How they come together will shape the future.The story seemed like one Alex Morgan might tell around a campfire.Back in the day, the 34-year-old Morgan likes to begin, when players like her needed to find their way to their soccer games, they used something called MapQuest. It wasn’t an app on your smartphone, the kind with a reassuring voice that announced each turn and flashed a digital dot to show your location.It was a website, Morgan said, that generated a map and a list of step-by-step directions, which you had to print out on actual paper. Sometimes it fell to preteen kids like Morgan to read out the turns while a parent drove.“That was such a hard time,” the United States defender Naomi Girma, 23, recalled telling Morgan after hearing the story recently, feigning sympathy. “And she was like, ‘You don’t even know.’”Sports are often about gaps: talent gaps, experience gaps, compensation gaps. And in the weeks and months before the Women’s World Cup that began on Thursday in Australia and New Zealand, the players on the U.S. national women’s soccer team have found an unlikely bond in jokes, jabs and stories related to what may be their most notable feature: a generation gap.The team’s oldest player is Megan Rapinoe, 38, the iconic athlete who recently announced that she would retire after this World Cup and the end of her current professional season. The youngest is Alyssa Thompson, who is 18, just graduated high school and still lives with her parents. At least three of Thompson’s teammates — Morgan, Crystal Dunn and Julie Ertz — have children of their own.Thompson said that her older teammates sometimes play music that she doesn’t recognize, but that the different age groups find a middle ground with Cardi B. Sophia Smith, a 22-year-old forward, said she does recognize the music, though by genre, not by artist. “They sound like what my parents listen to,” she said.Alyssa Thompson, who at 18 is the youngest member of the squad, just graduated high school and still lives with her parents.Joe Puetz/Getty ImagesSmith admitted last month that she never has used a CD player and that she refuses to watch TV shows or movies if the video quality is “grainy.” One exception: videos of the 1999 Women’s World Cup final, a historic victory by the United States that spurred rapid growth of women’s soccer in America. Unlike some of her teammates, Smith has no memory of watching that team play — the final was played more than a year before she was born.Others recall a different game — the 2015 World Cup final, and Carli Lloyd’s stunning goal from midfield — as their touchstone moment. Four of their current teammates have far more vivid memories of that afternoon, because they played in the match.That generation gap, and how the U.S. team deals with it, is likely to be one of the prominent stories of the World Cup. But it is also a symbol of the latest pivotal moment in the evolution of the women’s game: a time of contentious debate about equal pay and human rights, and of battles for investment and demand for equal treatment with men. For the United States, a four-time World Cup winner, this tournament also presents a new, unrelenting challenge from rivals rising to meet the Americans’ level as leaders, spokeswomen and champions.Lindsey Horan, the U.S. team’s co-captain, is one of the veterans who won’t let the younger players forget that they have a role to play in that fight, and that winning games and championships is at the core of it.“There’s always pressure in this team,” said Horan, 29. “We live in pressure, and I think we make that known to any new, younger player coming into this environment that you’re going to live in that for the rest of your career on this national team.”The job for Coach Vlatko Andonovski has been to build a smooth-running machine from parts built in different eras. What makes the task even trickier for him this time is that the players at his disposal have a wide range of experience. Fourteen members of the 23-player roster are World Cup rookies. A few are sliding into roles long patrolled by veterans who are now injured, or retired, or facing their final games. It’s Andonovski’s first World Cup, too. “I’m not worried about the inexperience,” Andonovski said. “In fact, I’m excited about the energy and enthusiasm that the young players bring, the intensity and the drive as well. Actually, I think that will be one of our advantages.”“I’m excited about the energy and enthusiasm that the young players bring, the intensity and the drive as well,” said U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBuilding chemistry among teammates isn’t that easy, though, especially when time is running out. Not even regular doses of Cardi B can change that. The team’s recent record reflects its struggles under Andonovski to fit new players into the roster of experienced ones.At the Tokyo Olympics — Andonovski’s first major tournament as U.S. coach — the team finished a disappointing third. Canada beat the Americans to reach the final, then won the gold medal. Just last fall, the United States endured its first three-game losing streak since 1993. One of the losses, to Germany, broke a 71-game winning streak on U.S. soil.The rest of the world, finally, appears to be catching up.Janine Beckie, a forward for Canada, said there were two or three teams at the 2019 World Cup that were strong enough to win it. But now, only four years later, she estimated that six or seven had to be considered serious title contenders.“This is definitely the most wide-open World Cup in history,” Beckie said. “I’m really interested in how this young U.S. team goes through this tournament. They can either have a fresh mind-set and recover quickly from game to game, or they can have players who are overwhelmed by the length of the tournament. Being there for a month from start to finish is really difficult, especially when you haven’t experienced that before.”That is why the older players on the U.S. team have been trying to prepare the newcomers for what to expect. So as they fielded questions about what to pack for a monthlong trip to the other side of the world — headphones, books and a favorite pair of comfy sweatpants were the bare minimum — the older players also have gone out of their way to make the younger players feel as if they have been on the team forever.“The important thing is, how do we make the young players feel comfortable?” said Emily Sonnett, who was a member of the 2019 championship team and this month is back for her second World Cup. “Because if you’re not having fun, why be here? And if you’re not comfortable, how are you ever going to play at your best?”Players young and old have come to learn that leading by example can be infectious. Rapinoe, whose outspokenness has at times made her the public face of her squad and her sport, has said the U.S. team considers it “incredibly important” to use its platform to “represent America and a sense of patriotism that kind of flips that term on its head.”For example, Rapinoe and others, including Morgan and the injured captain Becky Sauerbrunn, have spoken out about social issues like equal pay, sexual abuse, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and racial equality.Megan Rapinoe has said the U.S. team considers it important to “represent America and a sense of patriotism that kind of flips that term on its head.” Marlena Sloss for The New York TimesThe veterans haven’t pushed the younger players to be as involved in the same issues, players on both ends of the generation gap said. But many of the younger ones acknowledged that they feel a sense of duty to keep that aspect of the team alive.Girma said she was inspired by the national team’s activism to speak out about social justice issues while she was in college at Stanford. Shaken by the death of a college teammate there who killed herself, Girma and several of her contemporaries are now using their voices to highlight the need for mental health awareness.Forward Trinity Rodman, 21, said that responsibility is one the newer players have begun to embrace — “I’ve definitely tried to be more than a soccer player,” she said — but that every member of the team was united by a goal they all share.“We want to win so bad,” Rodman said, “and we’re going to do whatever we can to win.”That way, someday, they will have their own campfire stories to tell. More

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      Sam Kerr Is Australia’s New Queen

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      Sam Kerr’s tone barely shifted. She had not, she said, had time to think about it yet. She had put it to the back of her mind. She had other things on which to focus her attention.Her response muted to the point of deadpan, Kerr gave the distinct impression that the offer, to some the offer of a lifetime, was just another bullet point on a busy schedule, another item on her to-do list: Barcelona on the road. Liverpool in the league. Westminster Abbey, to act as Australia’s flag-bearer at the coronation of King Charles III. Everton away.Of course, she said, she was conscious that being handpicked by Australia’s prime minister to carry her country’s flag at the coronation was an “amazing, amazing honor.” It would, she acknowledged, probably be the sort of thing she would “tell my kids about in 10 or 15 years.”It was just that the idea of it did not faze her. Indeed, such was her insouciance that she admitted that her first instinct when offered the role was to turn it down. She thought she was too busy to attend a coronation. She assumed she would have a training session that day. She did not want to miss training simply to carry a flag.Sam Kerr, left, and Australia during parctice.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThose that know her, though, would offer a supplementary explanation. Kerr has long been regarded as possibly the finest player in women’s soccer. She was, for a time, the highest-paid female player on the planet.Her teammates, colleagues and friends are unanimous in asserting that nothing that status has brought — the profile, the money, the attendant pressure — has left the slightest mark on her. “She comes across as real chill,” her Australia teammate Mary Fowler said. “For any of the pressure that I may feel, it’s multiplied for her. So I’m just like: Props to her for being able to deal with that and come across as if it doesn’t affect her.”That, she said, is just who Kerr is. It is also exactly who Australia needs her to be this month as she prepares to carry her country on her shoulders once again at the Women’s World Cup. (The start of her World Cup, though, will have to wait: On Thursday, Kerr was ruled out for at least the first two games with a calf injury.)At 29, Kerr has been a superstar for some time. Four years ago, when Chelsea was preparing its bid to sign her, the club’s management had to present a case for the investment. Both the fee to acquire her services and her salary were, at the time, substantial commitments by the standards of women’s soccer.Their case was that the money was dwarfed by her marketability. Kerr was, by that stage, the face of the sportswear manufacturer Nike in Australia. The possibility of her signing was a driving force in the decision by Optus Sport, the Australian broadcaster, to acquire the rights to the Women’s Super League in England. Chelsea’s board was told not to consider the idea that Kerr was expensive, but to see her signing as a bargain.“If there is an icon of this World Cup, it’s her,” one media executive said of Kerr, adding, “In terms of universal respect, I can’t think of anyone who is on a par with her.”William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThis summer has borne that out. Kerr is the undisputed star, the main event, the central character of not only the biggest Women’s World Cup in history, but a World Cup that Australia desperately hopes to win on home soil.Her image has been plastered across the country. She is front and center in all of the tournament’s marketing campaigns. She has been depicted, alongside Princess Leia and John Lennon, in a mural in the hip Sydney suburb of Marrickville, and she is on the cover of an updated edition of the FIFA video game. She has published an autobiography. She is, as her former teammate Kate Gill put it, the “poster person for the team.”Seemingly every major news outlet has carried an account of her upbringing in Fremantle, just outside Perth, in Western Australia, detailing her family’s rich sporting background — both her father and brother played Australian Rules Football professionally — and her rise to prominence in a sport that she and her family initially “hated.”“She is everywhere here,” said Jon Marquard, the television and media executive who pieced together that Optus deal. “If there is an icon of this World Cup, it’s her. The position she is in is actually a pretty unusual thing. In terms of universal respect, I can’t think of anyone who is on a par with her.”Her sporting peers in Australia, instead, skew toward the historical, those whose legacies have been burnished just a little by time: the runner Cathy Freeman, the swimmer Ian Thorpe, the tennis player Ashleigh Barty. Her current peers, even in the traditional national sports cricket, both codes of rugby and the A.F.L., do not compare.Kerr, carrying her nation’s flag, leading an Australian delegation into Westminster Abbey during the coronation ceremony for King Charles III in London in May. King Cheung/Associated PressIn a nation as consumed by sports as Australia — “sport to many Australians is life, and the rest a shadow,” as the essayist and thinker Donald Horne put it in 1964 — that is a considerable honor. Marquard puts that broad popularity down not only to Kerr’s achievements, particularly outside Australia, but to her nature.“We have historically had a bit of tall poppy syndrome,” he said, referring to a situation where a person’s success causes them to be resented or criticized. “There is a cultural ethos in Australia generally of not getting above yourself. Anyone who does tends not to be seen as authentic, and that is central to the culture.“You can respect what someone like Nick Kyrgios has done, but he can be quite divisive. Whereas Sam has none of that hubris. She’s seen as genuine. The whole team is, really: You see them spending ages chatting with fans after games. Even with all of the demands on her, Sam has stayed quite grounded. It’s quite remarkable.”Steph Catley, a defender for Australia, put it rather more succinctly in comments to The Sydney Morning Herald. “She’s out there,” she said. “She’s very just like: ‘Blah. I’m Sam. This is me.’ She’s still like that.”That means, rather than being intimidated by her status — and the expectation now heaped on her shoulders — Kerr seems not only to welcome it, but to encourage it. She has spoken, semi-regularly, of her hopes for this tournament and what it will provide her — and provide women’s soccer in Australia — with what she terms a “Cathy Freeman moment,” a reference to the runner’s iconic victory in the 400 meters at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.Kerr with fans after an exhibition victory against France last week in Melbourne.Mackenzie Sweetnam/Getty ImagesGuiding Australia to a World Cup win in the same stadium, Kerr has suggested, would have much the same impact on a subsequent generation of Australians.“If the pressure’s not there, it probably means it’s not that big of a game to be honest,” she said this month. “Pressure is a privilege, and I love pressure. I love being in a moment where one or two moments can change the path of your career, really, and I think this World Cup is one of those moments.”By the time Kerr allowed herself to think about her exact role at Westminster Abbey in May, she admitted that she did get just a little nervous. All she had to do was walk a few paces in front of the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, but she had to do it with the Australian flag on her shoulder and the eyes of the world upon her.That was the first coronation she attended this year. Her hope is that there will be another, and one in which she will have a significantly more prominent role. The difference is that this time she is not nervous at all. More

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      ACL Injuries Are Hurting Women’s Soccer

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      The World Cup is missing some of the sport’s biggest stars because of a knee injury epidemic. No one can say for sure why it’s happening, or how to fix it.The third time around, Megan Rapinoe’s reaction to a potentially career-ending knee injury went no further than an eye roll. She had torn her anterior cruciate ligament. She could reel off the recovery schedule from the top of her head. She could see, crystal clear, the next nine to 12 months spooling out in front of her.The surgery, the painstaking rehab, the grueling weeks in the gym, the anxious first steps on the turf, the slow journey back to what she had once been. As she considered it in 2015, she felt something closer to exasperation than to despair. “I was like, ‘I don’t have time for this,’” she said.The first time had been different. She had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee at age 21, when she was a breakout star in her sophomore year at the University of Portland. At that time, she felt what she called “the fear” — the worry that it might all be over before it had begun.A year later, she had done it again: same ligament, same knee, same arduous road back. It did not stop her from doing all that she had dreamed of doing. She turned pro. She was named to an all-star team. She represented her country. She won a gold medal at the Olympics. She moved to France. She played in two World Cups. She won one of them.And then, during a training session in Hawaii in December 2015, months after her 30th birthday, it happened again. This time, it was the right knee, and this time, her reaction was different. “It changed for me as I got older,” she said. “That one was like an eye roll. ‘This is annoying. I know what it is going to take to come back’. But generally, I think there’s this fear. Is this going to be the end? Am I going to come back from this? Am I going to have pain forever?”Over the last year or so, that fear — and the searching questions it prompts — has coursed through women’s soccer. The sport has at times seemed to be in the grip of an epidemic of A.C.L. injuries, one so widespread that at one point it had sidelined a quarter of the nominees for last year’s Ballon d’Or.Alexia Putellas, the Spain midfielder who won that award and the consensus pick as the best player of her generation, has recovered in time to grace the World Cup, the sport’s showpiece event. But countless other stars have not. They will, instead, spend their summer at home, nursing their injuries, cursing their luck.Alexia Putellas of Spain missed last year’s European Championship after tearing a knee ligament. She hopes to play a key role in her country’s World Cup campaign.Damien Meyer/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe list is a long one. Catarina Macario, the U.S. forward, tore the A.C.L. in her left knee last year and could not regain her fitness in time. She will not be present in Australia and New Zealand. Nor will two of the stars of the England team that is hoping to dethrone the United States: The team’s captain, Leah Williamson, and its most productive goal-scorer, Beth Mead, both fell victim to A.C.L. injuries this season.The Olympic champion, Canada, has lost Janine Beckie. France has not been able to call upon Marie-Antoinette Katoto or Delphine Cascarino. The Netherlands, a finalist in 2019, is without striker Vivianne Miedema.But these are just the famous names, the familiar faces, the notable absentees. The problem has become so acute that, at times, it has strained tensions between national teams and the clubs that employ the players from which their rosters are drawn, with at least one high profile European coach suggesting that too much was being asked of the athletes.Miedema herself pointed out that, this season alone, almost 60 players in Europe’s five major leagues had torn their A.C.L.s. “It is ridiculous,” she said earlier this year. “Something needs to be done.”Working out precisely what that might be, though, is more complicated than anyone would like.Lack of KnowledgeThere is fear, of course, for players who are enduring those long weeks of recovery, but it is not the only type of fear. In Europe particularly, over the last 12 months, the sheer scale of the issue — the numbers of players being struck down by torn A.C.L.s — set off a psychological contagion.A number of national associations, as well as local offices of FIFPro, the global players’ union, reported inquiries from active players — those who had seen teammates or opponents or friends condemned to months on the sideline — seeking reassurance, solace or even just basic information.“The players are asking for research,” said Alex Culvin, FIFPro’s head of strategy and research in women’s soccer. “We’ve had a lot of feedback from players saying they feel unsafe. You saw it last season — at times, players were not going in for tackles as they normally would because they were worried about injury.”The problem, Culvin said, is there is not enough research available for anyone to give the players clear answers. European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, has been running an injury surveillance study on men’s soccer, for example, for more than two decades. The women’s equivalent has been operating for only five years. “That lack of knowledge creates fear,” Culvin said.It is established fact that women are more at risk of suffering an A.C.L. injury than men. Quite how much more at risk is a little murkier. Martin Hagglund, a professor of physiotherapy at the University of Linkoping in Sweden, puts the risk at “two to three times greater, based on a systematic review of studies.” Culvin goes a little higher: Some studies, she said, suggest the risk for women could be “six or seven” times as great as that for men. “There is a real range,” she said.The France striker Marie-Antoinette Katoto, on crutches, was left off France’s World Cup roster after she was unable to complete her recovery in time.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe issue of why that might be is more contested still. Traditionally, much of the research has focused on biology. “There are obvious anatomical differences” between men’s and women’s knees, Hagglund said. Not just the knees, in fact — the whole leg. Some studies have suggested that women’s A.C.L.s are smaller. There are differences in the hips, the pelvis, the engineering of the foot.Increasingly, too, there is a body of evidence to suggest there is a link between hormonal fluctuations and susceptibility to injuries in general, and A.C.L. injuries in particular. Chelsea, one of the leading clubs in England’s Women’s Super League, now tailors players’ training loads at specific phases of the menstrual cycle in a bid to mitigate the impact.As a paper published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in September 2021 pointed out, though, the instinct to focus purely on physiological explanations is both rooted in and serves to reinforce the misogynistic stereotype that “women’s sport participation is dangerous predominantly due to female biology.”It also runs the risk, in Hagglund’s mind, of turning a blind eye to the host of other issues that may have played a part in depriving the World Cup of so many of its brightest lights this month. “The focus on anatomical differences means we have left out the other parts, the extrinsic factors,” he said. It just so happens that those are the ones that might, feasibly, be addressed.Injury as a Measure of ValueIt is perhaps natural that for the players themselves, the cause of the run of A.C.L. tears is obvious. “We keep adding games left, right and center,” said Miedema, one of four players at Arsenal alone who have sustained the injury this season. “Instead of 30 games a season, we now play 60. But we don’t have the time and investment that is needed to keep players fit.”Kristie Mewis, a U.S. midfielder, contended that the “intensity” with which women’s soccer is now played had compounded that effect. It is not just that there are more games, she said. It is that they are exponentially faster, more physical and more demanding than ever before. “As the game is growing, it’s getting more competitive,” she said. “Maybe stress has something to do with it.”Rapinoe would endorse both ideas — “the load and intensity are different,” she said — and would add that while women’s soccer has professionalized on the field at breakneck speed, it has not always matched that pace off it.Megan Rapinoe has endured three A.C.L. tears, injuries that left her unable to play in the 2007 World Cup and the 2008 Olympics.Rob Kinnan/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“We don’t generally charter; we don’t fly private,” she said. “We don’t have the resources. So with recovery, you’re being asked to produce a bigger load than you ever have but with less resources than you really need to do that.”To Hagglund, that is only the start of a long list of possible structural, cultural factors that might be at play. “Women’s soccer does not have the same organizational support as men’s,” he said. That applies not just to travel, but to the number and the quality of medical staff members, physiotherapists, nutritionists.Likewise, young female players, until relatively recently, did not have the benefits of the same sort of specialized strength and conditioning training that is commonplace in boys’ academies. Women’s teams have what he called smaller “competitive” squads — they rely heavily on a handful of high-profile players, ones who cannot afford to be rested. “That means they are more exposed to fixture congestion, there is less rotation, they are more likely to play with an injury,” he said.And then there are the environmental problems. Women’s teams do not play on the same perfectly manicured lawns that top men’s teams do. “In Scandinavia, certainly, it is still quite common for teams to play on artificial turf,” he said. The players must do so, often, while wearing shoes designed with men’s feet, rather than women’s, in mind.As diffuse as all of those problems are, they come down to much the same thing in Culvin’s mind. “It is a question of value,” she said. “What value do we place on an athlete? The players might be professional, but the conditions around them are not always suitable for professional athletes. There is not equity in the workplace until we value them properly in all components — the fields, the stadiums, the support staff around them.”The Right FitLaura Youngson is always surprised, even now, by the number of players she encounters who have convinced themselves that soccer cleats are designed to be uncomfortable. “That’s the perception,” she said. “That they’re supposed to feel like that, and that women, in particular, are just supposed to put up with it. They’re really not meant to be like that.”Still, the belief is widespread. Earlier this year, an in-depth study conducted by the European Club Association and St. Mary’s University, London, found that 82 percent of elite female players experienced “pain or discomfort” from the footwear they wore while playing.The reason for that is simple. In contrast to running, say, where major footwear brands realized long ago that women and men required — and would buy — different types of shoes, the soccer versions sold to women are, largely, not actually designed for them. The abiding market principle has effectively been, as Youngson put it, “that women are just small men.”Laura Youngson started a company that produces custom-made soccer cleats for women, using research that found they tended to have narrower heels, wider toe boxes and higher arches than men.Hannah Peters/FIFA, via Getty ImagesFor a long time, like everyone else, Youngson just accepted that her soccer shoes never seemed to fit quite right. Then, after organizing a charity game on Mount Kilimanjaro in 2017, she realized that she was not alone. Even the professional players on the trip had the same complaint. She saw an opportunity — both a business one and a moral one — to put it right.Since then, the company she founded, Ida Sports, has conducted extensive research to produce the first custom-made women’s soccer cleats. They found that women tended to have narrower heels, wider toe areas and higher arches. (They are also more likely to change than men’s are, particularly during and after pregnancy.) That means they “interact differently with the ground,” something that Ida Sports has tried to remedy by redesigning the sole of the shoes she makes.There is also enough evidence to suggest that the shape and structure of women’s feet may make them more susceptible to injuries, both chronic and acute, including A.C.L. tears. Youngson does not claim to have a silver bullet for the knee injury epidemic, nor does she believe that wearing better-fitting shoes will end the problem on its own.“But there is definitely an opportunity for further research,” she said. “People are doing great work studying hormones and behavior and other things. We know boots and surfaces. There are definitely recommendations that we would make. The issue is, how do we keep more players on the pitch? Even if it is for a 1 percent gain, it is worth it.”Like Rapinoe, the former England international Claire Rafferty endured three A.C.L. injuries in her career. As with Rapinoe, her reaction changed over time. After her first, in her left knee, she felt “invincible,” as if she had gotten her bad luck out of the way early. She was only 16. It would, she assumed, be smooth sailing from there.She did not know then that the single greatest risk factor for sustaining an A.C.L. injury is having experienced one. Research suggests that 40 percent of players who have torn a cruciate ligament will do so again — in either knee — within five years. It is closer, in other words, to the flip of a coin than a roll of the dice.Rafferty learned that the hard way. In 2011, she tore the A.C.L. in her right knee. That time, she recalls being “in shock.” She did what she could to mitigate the risk. Despite her entreaties, her coach at Chelsea, Emma Hayes, regularly refused to allow her to play on artificial surfaces. Two years later, Rafferty tore the A.C.L. in her right knee again.“Nobody thought you could come back from three A.C.L.s then,” she said. Rafferty did. Physically, at least. Mentally, the scars did not heal. “I wasn’t calm,” she said. “I thought every game could be my last. I was playing with a lot of fear. I had quite a lot of anxiety. I couldn’t play like I did before.The former England player Claire Rafferty retired from soccer after three A.C.L. injuries left her unable to play without the fear that another was only a step away.Ker Robertson/Getty Images“I remember hearing people ask, ‘What’s happened to Claire Rafferty?’ I wanted to tell them that I couldn’t run properly because I was so afraid. I didn’t enjoy playing football. I started to resent it.”That fear, the one felt by the players missing this year’s World Cup, the one shared by all those who now feel unsafe on the field, had overwhelmed and inhibited her. She knew what she had to do. Long before her career should have ended, she walked away. She was 30. For women’s soccer, the real risk of its A.C.L. epidemic, the one rooted in lack of knowledge and a historical lack of care, is that she will not be the last.Jeré Longman More

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      Women’s World Cup Contenders

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      The Women’s World Cup, which opens this week, is the biggest in its 32-year history, but it may also be the most open field the tournament has seen.While plenty of the 32 teams descending on Australia and New Zealand probably have modest ambitions for the next month, it is not a stretch to say that almost half of the field might regard themselves as serious title contenders. (Some more accurately than others.) These 10 countries are the most likely to stick around all the way until the end.United StatesForward Trinity Rodman is one of 14 U.S. players headed to their first World Cup.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressTwo things can be true at once. By common consensus, Vlatko Andonovski’s team arrived in New Zealand as the favorite to win the tournament. It has the aura of experience, the dazzling jolt of youth and the deep bedrock of talent to lift a third straight World Cup. It has a psychological edge, too: It has been the game’s superpower for so long that respect can manifest as awe.At the same time, the undisputed primacy the United States has enjoyed for more than a decade has never been more fragile. There is a risk that this squad will fail the Goldilocks test: Some players are too old, some are too young, and so perhaps none are just right. Europe’s major nations have closed the gap. In the space of a month last year, the Americans lost to England, Spain and Germany. The United States has the squad to emerge as champion. But for the first time in some time, it is not alone in that.EnglandRachel Daly started at left back in the Euros last summer. Now she is England’s most potent striker.David Rogers/Getty ImagesExpectation hangs heavy on Sarina Wiegman’s England. The Lionesses won the European Championship on home soil last summer, the team’s first major honor, and followed that with a victory in the Finalissima — a game between the European and South American champions — earlier this year. Winning the World Cup would be the natural conclusion to a trajectory that has been on a steep upward curve for 10 years.Fate, though, has intervened. Wiegman has lost her captain, Leah Williamson; her most creative player, Fran Kirby; and her most potent attacking threat, Beth Mead, to injury. Millie Bright made the squad but is still, strictly speaking, recovering from knee surgery. Wiegman is an astute enough coach — and she has enough talent at her disposal — to disguise those losses. But she will be doing so on the fly.AustraliaSam Kerr will shoulder the hopes of one of the host nations.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is difficult not to see the co-host less as “Australia” and more as “Sam Kerr and Guests.” At 30, Kerr, the Chelsea striker, may well be the finest player in the world. She is a totem for her country. She is the face of the tournament, the person expected to deliver what she has referred to as a “Cathy Freeman moment.” She is the star on which Australia’s hopes hang.That assessment is not quite true. Tony Gustavsson’s squad is drawn largely from the major leagues of Europe and the N.W.S.L. In Caitlin Foord, Hayley Raso and Alanna Kennedy, the supporting cast is a strong one. Its momentum, too, is considerable: Australia has won eight of its last nine games, including a milestone victory against England. Kerr will have to deliver, of course, but she is far from alone.The NetherlandsThe Netherlands lost to the United States in the World Cup final in 2019. Its path runs through the Americans again.Rob Engelaar/EPA, via ShutterstockIn 2019, the Dutch emerged as the standard-bearer for Europe’s coming force, an advertisement for the game’s shifting power base. They fell agonizingly short, losing to the United States in the final. Progress since then has been patchy, as they have lost Wiegman, who left to coach England, before falling in the quarterfinals of the European Championship last summer.The core of the team that made the final four years ago — Danielle van de Donk, Jackie Groenen, Jill Roord, Lieke Martens — remains, and the Dutch have the talent to make a deep run once more. Two things stand in their way: the absence of striker Vivianne Miedema through injury and an unfortunate draw for the group stage. The Dutch face the Americans early; defeat in that game will most likely mean a tougher route for the remainder of their stay.CanadaChristine Sinclair has played 323 games for Canada.LM Otero/Associated PressThe Canadians have made precious little impact on the latter rounds of the World Cup in the last two decades, extending their stay beyond the first knockout round only once. Yet even that, on home soil in 2015, lasted only until the quarterfinals.In many ways, it is hard to see that changing this time around. Christine Sinclair is 40; Janine Beckie is out, another victim of women’s soccer’s A.C.L. epidemic; Canada has won only one of its last five games and has been drawn in the same group as Australia. But there is a resilience to this team that should not be underappreciated: It is only two years, after all, since Canada — completely overlooked then as now — won gold at the Tokyo Olympics.BrazilMarta is headed to her sixth World Cup with Brazil.Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersOn some level, Brazil’s stay in this World Cup will be seen as Marta’s valedictory tour: a sixth and (presumably) final tournament turned into a lap of honor for a 37-year-old player regarded by some as the best of all time.It is hard, certainly, to believe that it will end with Marta’s repeating Lionel Messi’s trick and finally winning the honor that would mean more to her than any other. Brazil’s squad is not as strong as previous editions, and none of them were strong enough to overcome the superpowers of North America and Europe, either. Still, in Pia Sundhage, Brazil has a canny, adroit coach, and the likes of Debinha, Kerolin and Geyse mean Marta may not have to bear the load alone.SpainAlexia Putellas of Spain is the reigning world player of the year.Steve Luciano/Associated PressMore than anyone — even England — Spain should be the biggest threat to the United States’ crown this summer. Its national team is, after all, based largely on the Barcelona team that has become the dominant force in European club soccer. Alexia Putellas, while most likely not fully recovered from the knee injury that kept her out of the Euros last year, is the reigning world player of the year. Spain has lost just once in a year.The problem is that Spain has been engulfed by civil war between the players and the country’s soccer federation since last summer. Though an uneasy truce has been called — allowing some of the 15 players who had demanded the dismissal of the coach, Jorge Vilda, to return — the effects are still being felt. A dozen players are still missing, and Vilda must find a way to instill a team spirit in a squad consisting of both rebels and their replacements.FranceWendie Renard, center, and Kadidiatou Diani had threatened not to play for France under its former coach.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Spanish might have had the least ideal preparation for a major tournament, but kudos to the French for giving them a run for their money. Corinne Diacre, the longstanding coach who had lost the faith of a considerable number of her players, was finally ousted in March. She was replaced by Hervé Renard, a globe-trotting coach of some renown but absolutely no experience in the women’s game.He has, at least, restored some familiar faces to the squad: Wendie Renard and Kadidiatou Diani, both of whom had refused to play under Diacre, are back. Amandine Henry, the vastly experienced midfielder, had been recalled, too, only to suffer a calf injury that will keep her out of the tournament. France’s hopes, now, rest on the new coach’s being able to get the best out of a team he has only just encountered.GermanyLena Oberdorf and Germany will enter the World Cup off a run of puzzling results.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf anything at all is certain about this tournament, it is that the Germans will reach the quarterfinals. In eight attempts, they have never failed to do so, and given a kindly group draw — Morocco, Colombia and South Korea — there is little reason to believe they will not make the last eight again.Whether Coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg can steer her team any further, though, is open to question. Germany has a well-balanced squad — two outstanding goalkeepers, the emerging star power of Lena Oberdorf, the creativity of Lina Magull, the goals of Svenja Huth and Alexandra Popp — and finished as runner-up in last summer’s European Championship. But its form is sputtering: It has lost to Brazil and Zambia in the last couple of months and just squeezed past Vietnam in a warm-up match last month.SwedenKosovare Asllani and Sweden finished third at the 2019 World Cup and second at the Tokyo Olympics.Kimmo Brandt/EPA, via ShutterstockNobody ever thinks about Sweden. Sweden might have one silver and three bronze medals to show for its eight previous World Cups, and it might be a reliable force in the European Championship, but the operating assumption is always that Sweden is not a genuine contender.It is worth pointing out, then, that Sweden not only has the likes of Fridolina Rolfo, Stina Blackstenius and Hanna Bennison to call on, but that it made the semifinals of the Euros last year, and it swatted aside the United States on the way to the Olympic final two years ago. Sweden is a threat. But nobody ever thinks about Sweden. More

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      Why Does Every Women’s World Cup City Have Two Names?

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      A concerted effort to say Indigenous names correctly, and tell the stories behind them, will show up in stadiums in New Zealand and Australia.When soccer fans land in New Zealand this month ahead of the Women’s World Cup, they may find themselves welcomed not to Auckland or Wellington, but to “Tāmaki Makaurau” (“Tah-mah-key Ma-kow-row”) or “Te Whanganui-a-Tara” (“Tay Fung-a-noo-ee a Tah-rah”).Those names — what the cities are called in the country’s Indigenous language, te reo Māori — are reflected in the official documents for this year’s Women’s World Cup, which has placed Indigenous languages and imagery unapologetically at the forefront.Every city that will host a match is listed with its English and Indigenous names, and FIFA announced this month that it would fly First Nations and Māori flags in every stadium. The effort came after soccer and government officials in the host nations pushed for a more inclusive approach, and it “will mean so much to so many,” the head of Australia’s soccer federation said.In New Zealand, the decision reflects an ongoing conversation about the nation’s identity. For decades, many New Zealanders routinely mangled and mispronounced the Māori names of the country’s cities and towns. Taupō (“Toe-paw”) was pronounced “Towel-po.” Ōtāhuhu (Oh-tah-hu-hu) was “Oter-hu.” And Paraparaumu (“para-para-oo-moo”) was sometimes simply referred to as “Pram.”More recently lawmakers, broadcasters and much of the general public have cast out those mispronunciations as part of a concerted national effort to say the names correctly. At the same time, many are choosing to use their cities’ original Māori names over their English alternatives. Last year, a formal petition to rename the country altogether and restore all Māori names was signed by more than 70,000 people.“Before, it felt like a choice to say the names right,” said Julia de Bres, a linguist at Massey University in New Zealand. “And now it feels like a choice not to.”Visitors should absolutely use those names, as well as the common greeting “kia ora” (“key ow-rah”), said Hemi Dale, the director of Māori medium education at the University of Auckland.“Once you grasp the vowels, you can get your tongue around most of the words — long sounds, short sounds, the macron,” the horizontal line above a vowel that indicates a stressed syllable, he said.The Māori flag outside Te Papa museum of New Zealand.Marty Melville/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images(A note: New Zealanders overseas — of any descent — will often permit themselves an internal wince at how foreigners say the word “Māori.” The correct pronunciation is closest to “Mao-ree,” and never “May-or-i.” The plural is simply “Māori,” without an “s,” which does not appear in the language.)The championing of Māori place names is visible throughout New Zealand life: Increasingly, New Zealanders call their homeland Aotearoa, the Māori name that is often translated as “land of the long white cloud” and that has been used by Māori to refer to the country for decades, if not centuries. Māori and English names are used by the country’s weather forecasting service, on newly released official maps and on signs on the nation’s roads.The changes are an effect of a decades-long movement to revitalize a language that risked being extinguished by colonialism, said Rawinia Higgins, the country’s Māori language commissioner.As English-speaking settlers became the dominant population, Māori and their language were sidelined and suppressed. As late as the 1980s, Māori children were beaten at school for speaking the language, and many adults chose not to pass it on to their families.Starting in the 1970s, the Māori language revival movement has led to te reo’s being adopted as one of the country’s two official languages, alongside sign language, and the establishment of nearly 500 early childhood schools in which Māori is spoken exclusively.Many non-Māori New Zealanders have embraced the change, and there are long wait lists for Māori language courses. The government aims to have one million New Zealanders — roughly one-fifth of the population — speaking basic Māori by 2040.But for a small but vocal minority, a bicultural society is viewed as divisive rather than inclusive.Last year, after the chocolatier Whittakers temporarily changed the packaging on its milk chocolate bars to read Miraka Kirīmi (Creamy Milk), some in New Zealand called for a boycott of the brand. The question of bilingual road signs has taken on outsize importance ahead of this year’s general election, where questions of racial politics have become a feature of the center-right’s rhetoric.Place names, as some of the more visible examples of the shift, have become caught in the fray. Lost in that debate is the reality that the country’s colonial names often had little to do with the places they related to.Christchurch, for instance, was named to recall a college at the University of Oxford, while the name Auckland was bestowed as a thank you to George Eden, the Earl of Auckland. Eden was the boss of a former governor of New Zealand, William Hobson, who chose the name. Eden never set foot in the city.By contrast, Māori place names reflect location-specific information, including important stories or where food might be found, said Hana Skerett-White, a Māori teacher, advocate and translator who has worked with artists such as the singer Lorde.“The Māori names tell us stories,” she said. “They speak of our history, of important events, and they actually act as pockets of knowledge, which is how we transmit information from generation to generation.“When those names are taken away, so too are our knowledge systems disrupted in the process.”A view of Tāmaki Makaurau, or Auckland in English.Catherine Ivill/Getty ImagesEnglish translations for Tāmaki Makaurau, as Auckland is known in Māori, vary. One version indicates that the city, with its palm-fringed harbors and volcanoes, is a place desired by many. Another tells the story of Tāmaki, a beautiful princess, and her many admirers.From a Māori perspective, each understanding is equally valid, and individual tribes, or iwi, may approach it differently, said Pāora Puru, a Māori language advocate and a co-founder of the Māori social enterprise Te Manu Taupua.“People have their own interpretations, their own meaning,” he said. “I liken it to an invisible umbilical cord that connects you to that place, and to your ancestors’ traditional connection, association, occupation or use of that particular area.” More