Opinion: Get excited for 2019 Women’s World Cup

It’s time to see the ladies bright in the most beautiful sport in the world. The Women’s World Cup is around the corner, and France will host one of the tightest tournaments ever played. It is a win-win event for soccer fans, and we need to pay attention for different reasons.

It will be an attractive tournament.

There are at least seven to eight reliable candidates to take the 2019 Women’s World Cup. By the level of the squads, it is expected to be a very engaging tournament. It will probably be much more exciting than the last one.

Norway, Sweden, USA, Brazil, Spain, England, France, Netherlands, Japan and France will give us a good spectacle. In the end, soccer is entertainment, and this World Cup seems to grant us plenty of it.

You will learn, learn and learn.

If you are a soccer player, regardless of gender, you’ll learn much more from the ladies game. IUPUI’s women’s soccer coach Christopher Johnson once told me on record, “As a coach, you can be more technical and tactical because there’s not that separation in athleticism between other teams.”

Consequently, watching the Women’s World Cup will less complicate the analysis and understanding of a position. Nevertheless, the intensity of the game is also worth watching. The game doesn’t occur in slow motion; it is just a lesser-but-very-intense pace in which you could identify with more clarity the arranged lines, movements, spaces and players’ tasks.

Women are the essence of the game.

No faking, no diving, no inappropriate conduct that puts the game in jeopardy. The ladies play the game the way it should be played. They’re physical, they’re technical and they don’t degrade it with wrong actions. If a player falls, she stands up. They act as the ladies that they are.

They deserve our attention.

In the last four years, women’s soccer has been pushed forward — a little bit. New leagues emerged, the level of competition rose and people seem to be paying more attention thanks to the publicity and marketing involvement from individual clubs.

However, that is not enough for them. There’s an enormous pay gap between male and female players, even in the prizes granted by FIFA. According to FIFA numbers, $30 million were given to the 2010 World Cup champions, while the ladies just got $1 million in 2011. In the 2014 edition, that number rose $5 million for the men, and just another $1 million for the women.

In total, FIFA gave more than $300 million in the 2010 and 2014 World Cups in prizes. For the 2011 and 2015 Women’s World Cups, the primary soccer organism gave away $10 million and $15 million, respectively. The talking point is that the male soccer industry generates more money than the ladies, even if some women’s national teams are more successful than the guys.

According to Forbes contributor Bill Conerly, the disparity exists because the men “have hugely higher attendance and hugely higher television audiences. Men’s soccer salaries are pulled up by competition with international teams, where pay runs as high as $79 million a year.”

However, as soccer fans, we need to push for more equality. Paraphrasing Conerly, the fan base is also guilty of the unequal pay gap. We attend MLS games, and we watch them on TV. It is time to support the women’s game by consuming their product, and the World Cup is the perfect place to begin because the ladies always put on a hell of a show.

Follow Luis on Twitter: @LFulloa.

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