The Inside, Untold Stories of the 1991 Women's World Cup
The Inside, Untold Stories of the 1991 Women's World Cup
After several unofficial tournaments, FIFA finally agreed to a first official tournament for women to be held in China in 1991. This is the story of how it played out, by those who were there.
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The first official Women’s World Cup took part across four venues in the Guangdong region of China, three years after the same place had hosted an unofficial tournament as a pre-cursor to the real thing.
The tournament was officially known as the 1st FIFA World Championship for Women's Football for the M&M's Cup, with FIFA still reluctant to call it a World Cup. Games also only lasted 80 minutes, rather than the more conventional 90.
Over 500,000 fans attended the games, with USA running out eventual winners in a competition which gripped China’s locals.
This is the inside, untold story of the tournament, by those who lived it…
Sun Wen China
Betty Bavagnoli Italy
Wendi Henderson New Zealand
Anneli Andelén Sweden
April Heinrichs USA
Márcia Taffarel Brazil
Doris Fitschen Germany
Keld Gantzhorn Denmark (Head Coach)
Even Pellerud Norway (Head Coach)
The build-up saw 11 teams vie to qualify for the tournament to join hosts China, with nations set to be split into three groups of four, while preparations closer to home were well under way to host the first official tournament…
SW: In the 1980s, there were many women's teams in China, and hosting the 1991 Women's World Cup was so natural for us. I remember when we went to Guangdong province to play as a guest team, the fans were always very enthusiastic. So I believe the Women's World Cup then was in the best place at that moment.
WH: Historically, Australia and New Zealand always had this Oceania Cup and often we’d play Australia and they might bring in Taiwan or one or two others. I came in the late 80s and remember going to Australia in 1989, A & B teams I think they called it, and Taiwan.
They threw together what they called the Oceania qualification and it came down to counting goals in the final games because we’d both won a game apiece against each other and we’d both beaten Papua New Guinea, Australia had to get so many goals, so we qualified for the World Cup.
EP: We had a tournament in Winnipeg in Canada in 1990, that was my first tournament. We had Canada, USA and Norway and that was a big-eye opener for me. We beat Canada, but the USA played us off the field, we had no chance. I think it was 4-0 to them, that was a real shocker for me. I knew they were good, that was the level I knew we had to expect in China.
We flew home and had some serious talks about how to deal with that gap before China and what we could do to improve. We went to China from this small league with a few hundred fans to playing the hosts in the first game in front of a full stadium.
MT: In 1988, I was selected to the national team, but unfortunately it wasn’t an official tournament. I was working at that time, most of the players were amateur, everyone worked or studied besides playing soccer. Soccer wasn’t professional in Brazil at that time, it was new.
We could play, but only from 1983 on, then in five years there’s an international tournament to see if there was enough interest for a World Cup. In 1991, we felt the interest got a little bit better. It wasn’t amazing because we didn’t have much media attention in Brazil, but we had some who came to training. Our training ground was a military school, we were there for many months to prepare ourselves for the World Cup.
BB: When FIFA decided to do the World Cup in 1991, it was amazing, the excitement, it was emotional and every perception for us as players was amazing.
That period for women's football was a time of a lot of movement for the game, a lot of talking. At the same time, every single player fought a lot to improve and progress the women's game and to achieve their objectives to play in the biggest tournaments and increase the invisibility.
KG: There had been a tournament before, so they had tried it, how to make a World Cup happen, the whole event.
There was only 12 teams in the 'pre' World Cup, but we heard a lot about it. Sweden and Norway in it, Netherlands, we'd played some games against them and really enjoyed it. For all of us it was a great opportunity to get something out of playing football, not just money. It was a great motivation for us to try to qualify once we heard about this.
DF: It was great to be part of the first official World Cup. It was very special for it to be in China. Nobody on our team had ever been to China, it was kind of an adventure for us. It was the first time we'd played against countries like Nigeria and Chinese Taipei, we'd only ever really played in Europe. I think we'd played the USA once, so it was all new and exciting for us.
AH: I think our experience was different to the fan experience. It felt like a World Cup, it felt like that. 60,000 people in the stadium, there was a long build-up, we had a year-long build-up with World Cup qualifying which was in Haiti, within weeks of a government coup, so there was some concern we wouldn't even go to qualifying. We stayed in a hotel, the power went off every night, we'd take the shampoo and wash our hair in the swimming pool!
We were nervous because for some of us it was the peak of our career, for me especially, we wanted to win. It was what we'd worked for for most of our career.
When the 11 nations descended on China at the start of November ahead of the big kick-off, the atmosphere inside the country from the locals and the enthusiasm towards the tournament instantly took many of the players and coaches by surprise, such was the intrigue within China about the tournament…
WH: You definitely got the feeling China didn’t want to fail at hosting this. It was the first ever FIFA recognised World Cup and it would go down in history either way. They got behind it and supported it as a country. Everything was laid on, it blew us away.
I think we were the first country to arrive for the tournament and I remember coming out of the gates and being struck by media and cameras and that was something so new for us but also new for the game. The experience was mind-blowing, none of us had experienced anything like that. We were like ‘is this real? Are we royalty?!’ Anything you wanted, you got. People rushed around for you, you definitely sensed they didn’t want it to be a failure.
MT: For me, I was surprised because I didn’t go to ‘88. A lot of the players knew what to expect, but I didn’t. From the airport to the hotel, the entire road to the hotel you could see people cheering.
There were banners in the street. They knew it was a coach with a team on, they didn’t even know which country, but they were cheering. That for us was an eye-opener because it was clear so many people were aware of the tournament. There were a lot of fans in the stadium, people were lining up in the roads to get in the stadium, that was so cool.
KG: It started once we left the plane. It wasn't common in Europe for there to be journalists and cameras standing in the airport to take pictures and interview female players, but that's what happened in China.
We could feel from the beginning this was a great thing for China, it was a step for them towards getting the Olympic Games, which they got some years later. They had to show the world they could handle a major event. From the very first day we could feel 'man, this is something quite different' to what we'd ever seen before. There were more journalists when we trained than we had for actual games here in Europe.
DF: I remember we had a training session and we had more than 3,000 people watching our session - that was just amazing. We had a lot of Chinese supporters at games, I think we had eight fans who had come from Germany.
It was a great atmosphere every game, we used to play in front of 1,000 people in Germany and there we had 20,000 Chinese fans watching us.
BB: China was a country that was growing in terms of women's football at the time and I remember it being so different, such a different culture to what we were used to, but we realised we needed to keep every single emotion, every single detail brief, all the atmosphere, we had to breathe it in.
It was fantastic, amazing. Imagine in 1991, so far from now, that kind of atmosphere and those kinds of crowds. When we arrived, every single stadium was full of people, we were all so excited, that's the right word. It was an amazing experience.
AA: I remember a lot of screaming Chinese people in the crowd! It was the first time I played with so many people in the stadium, it was incredible. When we usually played, we might have 5,000 and now we were playing in front of 50,000. It was really exciting and really fun.
When the action got under way on 16th November, hosts China faced one of the favourites Norway, in front of 65,000 supporters, with Denmark and New Zealand joining them in Group A.
Rivals USA and Sweden were in Group B, along with Brazil and Japan, while Germany, Italy, Chinese Taipei and Nigeria made up Group C…
SW: Back in 1991, when I was 18 years old and named as a starting player playing in the first match, my parents were very surprised.
I still remember the psychological state of the first game during the march-in ceremony. I was so nervous that the rhythm of my breathing changed, "is the next breath in or out?", I asked myself - it was so funny!
EP: We hadn't seen the Asian countries. We had to be there two hours before. Big buses, police escorts, people in the streets. It was so big, you kind of lose yourself a little bit, you don't feel connected to the game and your team. The sound, the music, the opening ceremony, I will never forget those hours in the changing room before that first game.
We started well, we got a penalty which we missed. After that, we didn't have the ball, China totally outplayed us and that always stuck with me. To come back from that and raise a team that was not used to losing, and to lose 4-0, that was tough. There were rough days after that and I learned a lot after that in terms of getting the confidence up again after that.
After China decimated Norway 4-0 in the Tianhe Stadium, the action for everyone else got under a day later, with the remaining 10 teams all playing on 17th November, with Denmark beating New Zealand in Group A to set up an exciting second match against the hosts…
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