In 1988, the nascent USA team travelled to China to take part in a dress rehearsal for the first women’s World Cup. They recall an eye-opening experience

When Americans are in China, visiting the Great Wall of China is usually is a highlight of their trip. In 1988, however, taking in the Great Wall meant disappointment for the US women’s national team.

The players would have preferred some wall passes against Brazil in the semi-finals of the Fifa international women’s tournament instead of passing their time at the Wall.

“We weren’t on planning on going to the Great Wall because we had hoped we would finish through the tournament,” former USA midfielder Tracey Leone said.

“We went to the Great Wall because we were knocked out and not playing any more.”

It was the only occasion in which the USA women failed reach at least the semi-finals of an elite FIFA-sanctioned tournament. Since then, they advanced to the final four of six Women’s World Cups and five Olympic tournaments as the only international side to do so.

The Americans begin their quest for their third world championship against Australia in Winnipeg in the Women’s World Cup Monday as one of the tournament’s favorites.

Twenty-seven years ago, they were just another women’s team, trying to find itself. The invitational tournament brought together the world’s finest teams in what turned into the dress rehearsal for the first cup, which also was hosted by the Chinese in 1991.

At the time, though, the inaugural cup hadn’t been scheduled yet.

The American women’s program was still in its nascent stage, all of 21 games old.

University of North Carolina coach Anson Dorrance had taken over for Mike Ryan, the first coach. His task was to mold together a side that would not only be competitive but dominant.

The early years of the USWNT were hardly first-class.

Players wore hand-me-down uniforms from the men’s team. Training camps were rare. Players got together more on the fly or when they flew to games and tournaments.

“When we first started out, we kind of had to fight and scratch and really to get into that upper echelon of teams,” Leone said. “That tournament proved that we had a lot of work to do. We wanted to get there, but we needed to work extremely hard to advance to that level.”

The USA’s goal was to be be as good as Germany, Sweden, Norway and China.

“I remember Anson talking about trying to mesh the best qualities of all the countries into our style,” Leone said. “He wanted to take combination play from the Germans and put that into our game. He wanted to take the ability from Norway to hit those perfect long balls into our game and the heading. He was studying these teams, as were we, to figure how to get to [their] level.”

There was no experience to fall back on.

“No one was through it before us so we were kind of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed players saying: ‘How is this going to work?’ We were navigating our way with very little experience or no experience from people before us,” Leone said. “It was definitely a humongous learning curve.”

Slowly but surely it started to change.

“We were just starting to get to know each other,” said midfielder Julie Foudy, a member of that 1988 team who did not get into the game as a 17-year-old. “Those were really the years we set the foundation of what this team would become and would be based off in terms of workmanlike and blue collar and all these things we took great pride in.”

Not much was reported about the tournament, since women’s international soccer wasn’t just under the radar in some places, it was underground given the lack of publicity for the women’s game back then.

The 12-team tournament kicked off and finished within a 12-day period.

The Americans won once in four matches and were eliminated in the quarterfinals by Norway, 1-0, a team destined to become the USA’s arch-rivals for the next decade.

The USA trounced Japan, 5-2, on June 1, on the strength of a hat-trick by Carin Gabarra, played Sweden to a 1-1 draw two days later before registered a scoreless tie with Czechoslovakia, never been known for its women’s game, on June 6.

The Americans were forced to play without their top striker, Michelle Akers, after she suffered a concussion in the opener and taken to the hospital.

“She was actually banned by US Soccer because of concussion fears and liability issues,” Dorrance said. “I think she played the first game, headed the ball and that was it for her for the tournament. She headed a goal kick and then collapsed. That was really bizarre.”

The Norwegians vanquished Brazil, 2-1, in the semi-finals before edging Sweden 1-0, for the title.

Dorrance considered the tournament stage two of the building process. Stage one was the Ryan regime as he was just trying to get a competitive side up and running.

“This is sort of pre-final roster for the 1991 World Cup,” said Dorrance, who admitted the details of those games were a bit fuzzy. “As you can see from the results, they were mixed. My guess is the Sweden game was pretty even or maybe Sweden had the run of the game, even though we tied them. It sounds like we didn’t have the dominant personality to take out Czechoslovakia, but still had the talent to beat a team that was equally inexperienced like we were but lacking our athleticism and size like Japan.”

Brandi Chastain, then a forward and the penalty-kick hero of the Americans’ 91 triumph, saw the potential.

“We were all new to soccer at the international level; our first game was in 1985,” she said. “We were super-competitive and naive players, but losing to Norway obviously didn’t deter our spirit. It helped us recognize that this is for real – we’re representing our country. I believe that realization has been in the fabric of women’s soccer.”

Since the media hardly played any attention to the women’s game, Dorrance did not have pressure from the fourth estate but he had to face the US Soccer’s internal politics.

“Rest assured that within the soccer community itself, whenever I clipped an older player, I had political hell to pay,” said Dorrance, who endured much criticism for having eight UNC players on his 18-player roster.

“A lot of people who were leading US Soccer across the country on the women’s side all had vested interests in certain players to make the roster. So I was under regular and consistent scrutiny. There were various conspiracy plots to get me fired by higher level officials.”

Some difficult decisions had to be made.

“I knew there had to be a jump,” he said. “Obviously, when you are developing a team you don’t know what the jump is going to be, whether its going to find additional players, whether it’s going to be to continue to improve your game. We’re trying to find more elite players. The elite players I was looking for was the youth. You’re wondering if they’re going to mature fast enough to win a World Cup in ‘90, ‘91 or ‘92. So there’s a really very difficult decision you’ve got to make.”

Dorrance likened his decision-making process to what current US national coach Jill Ellis faced.

“Should she keep Shannon Boxx and cut Crystal Dunn or keep Crystal Dunn and keep Shannon Boxx?” he said. “Or should she keep [Christie] Rampone or invest in a Julie Johnston or a Whitney Engen. And what should she do with [Abby] Wambach? Should she leave her on the field? Or should she invest in Alex Morgan or maybe Sydney Leroux or maybe Christen Press?

“There’s nothing you secure about that. You’re just going on your gut. Hindsight then tells you if you made the correct decision. They talk about the fog of war. Well, you’ve got the fog of what’s going to take to win this thing. You just don’t know if you’ve got to go with your experience.”

Dorrance decided to keep some experienced players – he called them “superstars” – captain April Heinrichs, Gabarra and Akers. The next question was: who was going to be their supporting cast?

“You’ve got these sure-fire things that are going to be still effective for you in 90, 91 or 92,” Dorrance said. “But who are you going to surround them with? It’s gut-wrenching because they play on your mind. It isn’t just for performance, you have affection for what they invested in your team and in the game for the development in the United States. You’re just caught in a whirlpool of emotional commitment to these wonderful people that have carried you so far but also skepticism of whether or not they can continue to do that. You’ve got these youth kids. They need to be invested in but you do that to sacrifice your veterans.”

We already know that Dorrance made the correct decision, bringing in players who were not only destined to become American soccer legends. They included a pair of 16-year-olds – Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly – and college standouts Joy Fawcett (South California) and Carla Werden (North Carolina).

The rest of the team started to come together.

“We learned many of the same things we learned at the collegiate level: that you have to persevere, you have to battle, and you have to fully engage and fight to call yourself a champion,” Chastain said. “It’s not easy.”

The off-field lessons were as valuable as well. “We learned that if there’s a World Cup in China that you should bring your own chef,” Foudy said. “Probably the most important lesson, because in ‘87 and ‘88 we all pretty much on the China diet, which was Snickers and warm Pepsi.”

Both were tournament sponsors.

“That’s literally what we lived on,” she said with a laugh. “In China, the more exotic the food, the more it was considered an honor. It was a token of respect not just to give you fish, but to give the fish with the head, and everything staring at you. Not just give you a turtle claw, but give you the whole turtle. We quickly realized that if we were able to run in ‘91 we would have to come with our own chef.”

The Americans also came with something else – confidence.

“We were always a confident group,” Chastain said. “When you’re selected to play on the national team, you have the confidence that you’re the best the country has to offer. Whether that’s accurate or not, you believe it and it’s all about your perception. We were a close-knit group and we were all comfortable with each other and confident.”

This time the USA ran the table, winning all six of their games. When push came to shove against Norway in the final, the Americans pushed themselves. Akers scored the dramatic, game-winning goal with two minutes remaining in the 80-minute match (yes, they played 80 minutes in those days).

“It was so amazing,” Bates said. “It was so new. We had like 70,000 at the championship game. We were in awe that our team is going to be playing in this type of environment. We were so united. I don’t think I was ever on a team that was so close to a level that it’s hard to explain because of all the things we experienced and gone through with each other. There was no ulterior move, nothing selfish. There was nothing about individual. It was all about the team. It was so pure.

“The final game when [Akers] scored … I’m not certain many times I’ve been that happy in my life.”