Reel Rundown: Filmmakers take closer look at sexism in women’s sports with ‘Copa 71’

One of the most iconic images of women’s sports came in 1999 when Brandi Chastain, then fullback for the U.S. women’s soccer team, celebrated after scoring the penalty kick that won her team its first FIFA World Cup championship.

Following that kick, Chastain famously pulled off her jersey and fell to her knees, her eyes closed and her clenched arms raised in unbridled joy.

It’s only fitting, then, that Chastain is the first women interviewed in “Copa 71,” a documentary film directed by James Erskine and Rachel Ramsay that tells the story of another women’s world soccer championship, one held nearly three decades before.

And Chastain, like many others who are likely to watch the film, is amazed that such an event had ever taken place.

The whys and wherefores of that amazement make up the bulk of “Copa 71,” it being a study both of what was and what might have been had the cultural taboos directed at both women and their interest in sports not been so prevalent.

It was in Mexico that business interests saw the potential for making money off the notion of fielding a World Cup tournament of women’s teams. If nothing else, the thought ran, the games at least would attract men interested in watching the women’s shapely legs.

The women athletes, though, were serious about the game. Many of them, like England’s Carol Wilson, had to hide their obsession because their fathers found it not fitting for a young lady. When the boys in Italian Elena Schiavo’s neighborhood wouldn’t let her play in their street game, she’d simply beat them up.

Clubs sprang up around the world, despite their being unable in many places to use facilities deemed for men only. And it was the best of these clubs, from England, France, Italy, Denmark, Argentina and Mexico, that were invited to compete for what would be a world women’s championship.

The taboos against such an event were strong, based on pseudo-science that said sports – especially soccer (or football as it is known around the world) – were bad for a woman’s ovaries. And as was generally thought then (and still is in some quarters), a woman’s main function was to have children and keep house.

Also, FIFA, the world body that governed (and still governs) soccer refused to sanction the tournament. The organization even banned the use of any facility it controlled for the tournament’s use.

Unperturbed, the organizers simply used publicly owned stadiums in Mexico City and Guadalajara, the former of which held 110,000 seats. And captivated by advance publicity, the stadiums sold out – making the Mexico City event the largest crowd to date to ever attend a women’s sporting event.

Using interviews with a number of the players, including Wilson, Schiavo and Mexico’s Sylvia Zaragoza, the filmmakers provide a detailed look at the tournament, the players and the aftermath, which proved anticlimactic.

Bowed by pressure exerted by FIFA, and buoyed by the sexist attitudes of the era, Copa 71 was quickly forgotten. It would take those following decades for Chastain and legions of other women from all over the world to flout such attitudes and revive interest in women’s soccer.

Not to mention women’s sports in general, as the likes of tennis players Serena and Venus Williams, gymnast Simone Biles and WNBA players Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese will readily testify.