Not long after he had taken up his post 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 was new to his role, but Rubiales wanted to gauge his first impressions. He wanted to know what the Spanish women’s team needed in order to succeed.
The answer he received was instructive. There was no effort to sugarcoat it for the new boss. The players, at that stage, did not have jerseys designed to be worn by women, let alone things like elite training facilities or a fully professionalized domestic league. Spain, Del Amo told Rubiales, needed “everything.”
That conversation took place in May 2018. It has taken only five years for Spain’s horizons to change utterly. The fitted jerseys arrived in 2019. The professional domestic league came 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 only by another debutante on the grandest stage in women’s soccer, England.
In one light, it is perhaps a slightly underwhelming denouement to a World Cup that has acted as a showcase for the breadth of talent now flourishing across the women’s game. The last four weeks have been…
