The National Team Read online

  “If that environment isn’t going to be professional and if that environment isn’t going to allow me to be the player that I am, then it’s not worth it. Soccer’s not a game that you can restrict players, especially creative players and players who have proven themselves at that level.”

  With the 2004 Olympics on the horizon, the veterans were desperate to get the situation under control.

  A group of about seven senior players planned to stage an “intervention” of sorts with their coach to lay out their grievances. One of the younger players on the team remembers the veterans told the team about the plan and it was welcome news. It wasn’t just the veterans who were fed up—many other players shared similar concerns.

  “In the locker room, we were suffering,” says the player, declining to speak on the record. “The locker room was the place where we were always together and where people complained. Players were breaking down in tears.”

  When the veterans met with Heinrichs, they put it all on the table. Overworking the players, not communicating decisions, enforcing such strict rules both on and off the field—everything. The message was clear: “You need to back off because we are miserable.”

  Heinrichs sat back and listened. She didn’t argue. She also didn’t make any promises. But she did cut back on the training regime that players felt was driving them into the ground. She did make an effort to find the middle ground between what she believed as a coach and what the players were demanding.

  For the veterans behind the intervention, their resolve was as strong as ever to band together and figure out how to win in Athens. They told one another: The best thing we can do is to find a way to win, regardless of who our coach is.

  For the younger players, they had to balance their loyalty to the coach who brought them into the fold and the veteran players they revered. But as the 2004 Olympics approached, there was a keen awareness that the veterans would retire after the tournament. All the players felt they owed it to the veterans to succeed in Athens, and sending them off the right way became a theme.

  “There was this overall sense of: We need to figure out a way to do this and to honor their legacy,” says Angela Hucles. “When you talk about mentality and figuring out ways to get what you want in life, all of it starts with your why. It all starts with having a good enough why because it is the driving force of the actions that will take place after that. For many of us, honoring the veterans was a big enough why.”

  * * *

  With the veterans determined to finish their careers as champions and the rest of the team committed to the same goal, the Americans started the 2004 Olympics in Greece in the way they were accustomed to: They won and they won and they topped their group. As usual, they headed for the knockout round with momentum on their side.

  But conspicuously, Brandi Chastain was the only non-goalkeeper who hadn’t yet played a single minute of the tournament. Even when the Americans were comfortably set to advance out of the group stage, no one was rested to give way to Chastain. When Los Angeles Times journalist Grahame L. Jones asked Heinrichs why Chastain hadn’t played, he wrote, “Heinrichs went into a long and convoluted explanation.”

  As the Olympics knockout rounds approached, Grant Wahl from Sports Illustrated caught wind of Chastain’s meeting with Robert Contiguglia months earlier and started asking both Chastain and Heinrichs about it. Both declined to comment.

  Around that same time, Cat Whitehill, the young defender who had been starting in Chastain’s place, was asked to meet with Heinrichs before the quarterfinal game. There, Heinrichs told her: “My hand has been forced and I have to start Brandi over you.” Whitehill asked Heinrichs what that meant but didn’t get an answer.

  The U.S. won the quarterfinal versus an on-the-rise Japan team with Chastain playing the full 90 minutes, her first appearance of the tournament. Wahl’s article came out three days later, and he reported that Chastain “asked that Heinrichs be fired” and that “Contiguglia told her no.” It was the first time details about that meeting had been made public.

  Contiguglia confirmed to Sports Illustrated the meeting took place, but he declined to discuss specifics. He also vigorously defended Heinrichs, saying: “As our technical director, she has built the youth teams into powerhouses, so our future is incredibly bright. And I can tell you the national team is better today than ever before: tactically, technically, and fitness-wise.”

  The timing of the news scoop—amid an Olympics—couldn’t have been worse. It led to further speculation about why Chastain spent the first three games on the bench. Some players had already known about Chastain’s meeting with Contiguglia and were angry it was being rehashed during the Olympics. For others, it was new information, but not surprising—everyone knew Chastain and Heinrichs had differences of opinion.

  But the team didn’t dwell on it because looming in the semifinals was Germany. It was the same team that had so thoroughly dismantled the Americans the year before at the 2003 World Cup, and it was the exact same stage of the tournament when that defeat had happened. Would the Americans be able to topple the Germans in what was practically a do-over?

  Mia Hamm was determined. Heading into the semifinal match, she studied clips of her performance a year earlier in the 3–0 loss. Watching herself, she was frustrated.

  “I wasn’t as aggressive as I should have been,” Hamm later said. “If it’s an organized back line, the way you beat it is to try and tear it apart.”

  She wanted to make up for her performance last time around. This time, she wanted to be relentless and smother Germany. That’s exactly what she did, slicing her way through Germany’s back line and being so threatening that the Germans could never feel too settled.

  The U.S. went up 1–0 in the 33rd minute, but moments before the match was about to end, Germany equalized in stoppage time. Now, with the score tied, the match had to go into extra time.

  The stakes couldn’t be higher, and Heinrichs turned to 19-year-old Heather O’Reilly, who only a few years prior had posters of Hamm on her wall. This was O’Reilly’s first major tournament.

  Almost immediately after extra time began, O’Reilly got past the charging goalkeeper but scuffed her shot on the open goal. It hit the outside of the post and trickled out of bounds.

  “I remember that play like it was yesterday, and it was a really defining moment in my career because it was almost so bad that it was embarrassing,” O’Reilly says. “The team was relying on me to come in and be poised enough to make an impact, and I blew it. And I remember looking over at Abby, who was my strike partner at the time, and I was looking for her to say, No problem, HAO, you’ll get the next one! But she was so tired and the team was so tired that she didn’t say anything—she just kind of shook her head in disbelief.”

  “It was a defining moment because it was something where I definitely could’ve crumbled. I was 19 years old. I could’ve let it impact me. But I was able to shake it off, and just a couple minutes later, Mia got in behind and cut it back to me.”

  In the 99th minute, Hamm fed a ball to O’Reilly, and the youngster made no mistake this time—she tapped it in for a heart-stopping finish. It was perhaps the best hint yet of the national team’s upcoming transition. From old to new—from the player on the brink of retirement to the player competing in her first major event—the Americans found their winning combination.

  The golden-goal rule had ended months earlier, and Germany could still wage a comeback before the clock ran out, but the Americans defended well through the end of extra time. After 120 minutes, the U.S. beat Germany, 2–1. The Americans were moving on to the gold-medal match.

  This was the moment. This was the chance for the national team to reclaim its first world title in five years. The team could win a gold medal here in Athens and send the veterans out in the right way. Nothing less than winning would do.

  The only team standing in the way of gold was Brazil—the same Brazil team the Americans had already beaten 2–0 in the gr
oup stage. There should be no reason the Americans couldn’t beat them again.

  But things are always different in a tournament final. The players only had to look back four years to the 2000 Olympics—they beat Norway in the group stage, 2–0, and then lost to them in the gold-medal match. They beat Brazil 2–0 in the group stage this time around—would the gold-medal match end up like last time, too?

  The final in Athens quickly stirred up feelings of déjà vu.

  The U.S., just like four years before, scored first. In the 39th minute, Lindsay Tarpley collected the ball in the midfield, turned, and fired a gorgeous shot from about 25 yards out. Goalkeeper Andréia couldn’t reach the ball, even with her arms at full stretch as she dived toward the ball.

  But Brazil would eventually return fire after some spectacular saves from goalkeeper Briana Scurry. In the 73rd minute, Cristiane ran onto a long ball and raced up the field. She crossed the ball, hoping to find a yellow shirt, but Scurry came off her line and cut it out. Scurry couldn’t hold on to the ball, however—it was just too far out of her reach—and Pretinha was there to tap the ball in.

  With the score locked at 1–1 at the end of 90 minutes, the match went into extra time. The last time a gold-medal match went into extra time for the Americans, it hadn’t gone so well.

  But this time, the Americans had Abby Wambach. They also had Wambach’s head, which would eventually be responsible for 77 goals for the national team alone, almost as many as she’d score with her feet. The 5-foot-11 Wambach tended to tower over everyone else on the field, and she had a brawny build that made her difficult for defenders to outmuscle.

  In the 112th minute, with penalty kicks looming, Kristine Lilly lined up to take a corner kick. Her left-footed kick was a powerful one that sailed high and toward the back post. Wambach lunged into the air, drove her head toward the goal, and connected perfectly. The ball made the back of the net rattle.

  The Americans had to hold on to their lead for another eight minutes, plus stoppage time, and they defended in numbers to prevent Brazil from equalizing.

  The whistle blew and the Americans ran into a huddle together, laughing and crying. The final score was 2–1, and the USA won gold in Athens.

  Mia Hamm, tears streaming down her face, ran to the crowd to get some American flags for her and her teammates.

  It was the end of an era. The players who had been the face of this national team were going out on top.

  “There was closure,” Julie Foudy said afterward. “I can go away and feel good about it.”

  * * *

  On a cool December 2004 evening in Los Angeles, the national team gathered into a huddle before a friendly versus Mexico. Julie Foudy gave the pregame pep talk: “Let’s have a ball out there tonight, huh?”

  Her teammates whooped and called out, “Yeah!” Foudy continued: “Let’s have fun. That’s what this team has been about for 18 years. Let’s do it!”

  With that, the players put their hands together for their final chant before running onto the field. It was the last time Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, or Joy Fawcett would be part of a pre-match huddle, and they knew it. This was their farewell game. The match was the last stop of a 10-game victory tour—the very victory tour they helped engineer six years earlier after the 1999 World Cup.

  Young girls held up signs that said things like “I dream big—thanks Mia” and “Thanks Mia, I ♥ you.” Another one said: “1987–2004—I was born . . . so was a legacy . . . Thanks for a lifetime of memories.”

  It was the end of an era with the team’s veteran leaders stepping away, but for the players who remained on the national team, there was another big change they wanted.

  By this point, four years into April Heinrichs’s tenure as head coach, many players continued to feel disenchanted with the direction of the team. The intervention before the Olympics had been only marginally successful at improving the way Heinrichs related to the players.

  Players who decline to speak on the record say Heinrichs often didn’t read the room well and failed to communicate her decisions. She was also so inflexible and strict that it felt like disrespect for the players’ input as longtime professionals. Some players share off-the-record anecdotes about alternative career plans they had lined up in case they had to follow Tiffeny Milbrett’s lead and quit.

  After the Olympics, a group of players went to U.S. Soccer president Robert Contiguglia and demanded that Heinrichs be let go as coach. Contiguglia says now: “I do remember them threatening to retire based on who they had as coach, but I’m not going to go into that.”

  Again, just as he had with Chastain a year earlier, Contiguglia rejected the players’ pleas and continued to support Heinrichs. The players threatened to go public with their complaints, but he refused to act. As one player puts it: “It was time for a change, but U.S. Soccer didn’t think it was time for a change. We definitely made our viewpoints known.”

  So, instead, the players went to Heinrichs directly and brought her a letter formally asking for her resignation. The letter was blunt and ruthless: The players said they didn’t think they could win with her, and they didn’t feel she was qualified for the job she had. She was a poor leader, and she had alienated too many players, the players added.

  The letter offered strength in numbers and Heinrichs eventually agreed to leave her post. She had almost a year left on her contract, but she stayed with U.S. Soccer as a consultant.

  “I think so highly of April Heinrichs that it was not easy for me to accept her resignation,” Contiguglia said in the U.S. Soccer press release announcing her exit. “Through her five years on the job, the program has grown tremendously.”

  With its coach gone and its core of veteran leadership retired, the team was about to go through some severe growing pains.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Why Do We Have to Deal with This Discrimination?”

  The national team had just finally won another major tournament. Five years after the 1999 World Cup, which was a turning point for the players, they had won the Olympics in Athens.

  The timing, it seemed, couldn’t be better. The team’s contract was about to expire at the end of 2004 and, again, they had proved their worth, giving them leverage heading into negotiations. Or so they thought.

  In actuality, the team winning a gold medal triggered bonuses from their 2000 contract that didn’t come cheap for U.S. Soccer. The team got a shared $720,000 bonus for winning gold, on top of smaller bonuses each player got for making the roster, plus a payout for a victory tour. If anything, winning the gold medal must have reminded the federation just how much was at stake in these contract negotiations.

  “They were so mad about what we had done—the independence we had created,” says John Langel, the team’s lawyer. “In the previous contract, the women got a huge Olympic-gold bonus and then a tour bonus. U.S. Soccer had to do a 10-game outdoor tour—it was a payday of $2.5 million for the players, and the federation didn’t like it.”

  With a quiet post-Olympics year ahead, U.S. Soccer secretary general Dan Flynn informed the players that the national team would “go dark” for 2005 and play between four and six games total that year. Rather than schedule the usual slate of games, the federation would instead focus on scouting new players.

  “If there are no games, where will the women play?” Langel asked.

  “The W-League,” replied Flynn.

  “Are you kidding me?” Langel said.

  The W-League wasn’t a professional league. It was a development league that included amateur, unpaid players. There was no comparison between playing international opponents with the national team and competing in the W-League.

  “We told them we don’t necessarily need a residency camp, but we don’t have anywhere to play at all,” says Cat Whitehill, who graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in communications. “They wanted nothing to do with us.”

  U.S. Soccer argued the next World Cup wasn’t for another three years
and there were no major events the team needed to prepare for. It would be similar to the team’s schedule in 2001, when U.S. Soccer hosted just two home games for the national team.

  But for the players who had now made soccer their living and didn’t have the WUSA anymore, that was unacceptable. It’s not as if U.S. Soccer was simply scaling back friendlies. The federation said it had no plans to send the team to the annual Algarve Cup in Portugal, which the team always competed in. A team wouldn’t be sent to the Four Nations Tournament in China either, despite the competition being a usual fixture on the team’s calendar.

  The players demanded to know how U.S. Soccer could justify skipping the tournaments. Flynn replied that it was “the technical director’s recommendation” to play a lighter schedule. The technical director? April Heinrichs.

  The players wanted to figure out if Heinrichs really believed the team should play so few games in 2005, so Julie Foudy reached out to her.

  “Is that true? Did you tell U.S. Soccer we should only play five games?” Foudy asked.

  “I never said anything like that,” Heinrichs told her. “I told them you should play 20 games.”

  If Heinrichs hadn’t recommended such a sparse schedule and, in fact, recommended around 20 games, it seemed that U.S. Soccer was making a decision that went against what was best for the players. The players saw a clear double standard—the men’s team hadn’t played so few games since 1987, almost two decades earlier.

  They concluded U.S. Soccer’s real reason was the same one behind most disputes between the players and the federation: money. The federation, it appeared, did not want to spend the money for training camps, player stipends, and travel for overseas competitions, even as it was sitting on a $30 million surplus at the time.

  “In 2005, they had no plans for us and wanted us to go quiet so they didn’t have to pay us the entire year,” says defender Kate Markgraf.