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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. If you turned on ESPN or went into a sports bar last summer, you probably saw clips of the 2023 Women's World Cup. It was held in Australia and New Zealand. The viewership was massive. It broke records in Spain, the UK, in Australia. That level of attention was virtually unheard of 50 years ago. That's because, in the 1920s, soccer federations in Brazil, the UK, and Italy banned women from playing soccer.

In 1971, 6 women's teams from Latin America and Europe gathered in Mexico to play in an unofficial World Cup tournament. There's a new documentary that tells the largely forgotten story of the women who participated in that historic event, many without the support of their country's official soccer federation. The final match at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico remains the highest-attended women's sporting event in history. The film tells the story of comradery between women across nationalities for the love of sport, especially at a time when the world pushed women's soccer to the margins. The film is called COPA 71, and it's available to stream on Prime and Apple TV and starts its theatrical run today at the IFC Center.

Joining me in studio are directors of the film, James Erskine and Rachel Ramsay. Hi, James and Rachel.

James Erskine: Hi.

Rachel Ramsay: Hello.

Kousha: Joining us from the UK is Carol Wilson, team captain of the 1971 England Women's Team. Hi, Carol. Welcome to All Of It.

Carol: Hi there. Thank you for having me.

Kousha: Thank you, all three of you, so much for joining us. This tournament was forgotten for a long time. Rachel and James, can you tell us why this match was largely forgotten or buried in history? Rachel, let's start with you.

Rachel: Well, we do say it's not just that it's been forgotten, this is a tournament and a movement that was really actively repressed. This is not something that just fell out of history. This is something that was decided to be far too successful for its own good. The establishment, the powers that be within soccer across the world, thought this was not something that they wanted to be supporting any further.

Kousha: How did you find out about it?

James: We heard it on the radio. You're hearing about it on the radio. What we need is radio to find great stories. Chris Lockwood, who was one of Carol's teammates came on the radio, and our producer heard it on The Danny Baker Show on the BBC in England and was looking to find her lost teammates that she hadn't seen for 47 years. We heard this story from there, and we just thought it was extraordinary, so we thought we better get digging.

Kousha: Do you remember parts of that interview that surprised you, and helped plant the seeds for that documentary?

Rachel: Well, it was the idea that this was something on such a massive scale, and that hadn't been heard about for five decades. You think immediately if this is true, then this really changes our concept of the history, not just of women's sport, but of women's activism and place in the world. You start pulling at threads and realizing that the first photographs we saw of this, people were saying, "Well, that's just men's matches." Then you look closer you're like, "No, those are women on the field."

Kousha: Wow. Carol, your story plays a big role in the film. You were the team captain of the England team for this historic championship. You were 19 at the time. When James and Rachel approached you to talk to you about your time, what were your initial reactions?

Carol: Quite flabbergasted, to be honest. We didn't expect anything like this, because women's football was repressed. We hadn't spoken about it for 50 years. A lot of us didn't even tell our families. In fact, my son came home one night and saw me on Sky News, and he rang me straightaway and he said, "What the hell?" He said, "Where's this all come from?" It was a shock to everybody, I think, but we were grateful. We were so grateful.

To be honest, a lot of us thought it was really great, but we didn't really know Rachel or James at the time. We thought, "Is this a case of reporters just getting a hold of something and then dropping it?" Because we'd a lot of this over the years, but it wasn't. They were both true to their word and followed it right through, and it took them about four and a half years to make, and it just took off. It got legs. Here we are today.

Kousha: It's got legs is such a perfect way of describing the soccer documentary, so kudos to that. I hear you, Carol. [chuckles] How did they convince you that your story was worth telling? Did they need to convince you?

Carol: No, they didn't need to convince us at all, because we knew the story was great. No matter what happened over the years, nobody could have taken the experience away from us. It didn't matter really that it was repressed. It shouldn't have been, I'm not saying it should have been, it shouldn't have been, but we'd had that experience and nobody could take that away from us. Once it was out, then it was out of the box and it took off. That was a good thing. That was a really good thing.

Every radio station, TV stations, people would stop us in the street. I don't know, I think in the UK people tend to like underdogs. I think a lot of it was a case of that at the time, but it was such a good documentary. It was full of humility, humor, sadness. It had a whole range of feelings, and it covered everything. It literally covered everything and all over right across the six teams as well. It was really great to see the other teams experiencing the same repression that we did.

Kousha: Yes, I imagine that a lot of it was about actually seeing, and after the fact how similar the experiences were. Listeners we're talking about COPA 71. It's a documentary largely forgotten- Rachel, you mentioned this repressed in a lot of ways- Women's World Cup Tournament in 1971. It's opening tomorrow at IFC Center and streaming on Amazon and Apple TV. We're here with Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine, who are the directors, and Carol Wilson joining us from the UK who was the team captain of the England team during the 1971 games.

Let's talk about the history a little bit here. James, the ban on women's soccer started in the UK in 1921. What were some of the biggest reasons for a ban? Why an outright ban?

James: Well, I think the big reason was because the men wanted to control women. That's not the reasons they gave, the reasons they gave was that it was a risk to their fertility playing something like football. That was obviously a big threat, but that was all made up. They made up stuff. They just didn't want women to play. They didn't want to share, women were coming back in the first war. They were asking for things like the vote, and where could this stop? First of all, you get the vote, then you get to play football. This must stop now. They were Victorian and because the sport was controlled from England at that point, that message spread around. A few other guys thought, "Yes, that's a good idea. Let's just stop women from playing football."

Kousha: Carol, you grew up during this ban. When you played soccer growing up, what were people saying about it? Were you met with stigma, with disdain? What was that like?

Carol: Well, obviously the kids were great. They were the same as me, but adults looked down on you as a girl. Always in a dress kicking a ball about in the back lane. It was frowned upon I think you'd say. My dad was all for it. He thought it was amazing. My mom supported me, so I didn't have any trouble with my parents at all, but figures in authority, we weren't allowed even to play in the same schoolyard as the boys when I first started school. Right up until I finished school, we weren't allowed to play football at all. It wasn't even going to be thought about. It wasn't even a question. "No, you can't." It wasn't until I joined the Air Force that I managed to get a couple of games and it was there, I was spotted.

Kousha: Wow. Do you remember when you first heard about the 1971 World Cup? Did you think it was something that could actually even happen?

Carol: No. I thought it was a pipe dream, if I'm honest. In fact, when I went to Sicily to play in the qualifiers, we won all our matches in Sicily, and I was surprised to even get to Sicily.

Kousha: Wow.

Carol: It was all paid for. I was, "My God, who's this lunatic who's doing this?" I was as surprised as anybody else, as were the girls. A lot of the girls were young and I don't think they fully thought through what it meant. I don't think they took on board exactly what that meant. To a lot of them, the really younger ones, I think what it meant was, "Oh, great, we're getting to play football at last." It wasn't until later years that they realized exactly what the experience meant.

Kousha: Yes. There's a text that just came through from a listener who's listening to the segment right now and it reads, "I'm crying listening to her speak. Love this. For reference, I'm from Columbia and grew up seeing football as a boys' sport." This conversation continues for generations, for decades. Going back to the history, that ban that we're talking about, started to crack as we approached the 1970s. Women started playing soccer in public, but they were met with harsh treatment, mockery. I want to listen to a quick interview that a reporter has with Trudy McCaffery, who's one of the teammates who played at the 1971 tournament. Here's that clip.

[audio clip]

Interview: Congratulations, Trudy. What's a nice girl like you doing playing football though?

Trudy McCaffery: What's wrong with playing football?

Interview: Well, it's a man's game, isn't it?

Trudy McCaffery: No. Sport is for everybody.

Interview: Why are you so mad keen on football? Why don't you play hockey or something like that?

Trudy McCaffery: Well, it's always been football since I was about three.

Kousha: Rachel, can you tell us a bit about--I see you smiling right now- how the news journalist media treated women's soccer at that time?

Rachel: Yes. They were seen as a bit of a joke. There's one headline that we show that came from the period where it says, "Watching women's soccer is like watching a dog walk on its hind legs. It's impressive to see it done, but it's not very well done." These ideas of women being related to dogs if they were to play something like this, really hits you in the gut.

One of the things that was so amazing was talking to all these women around the world and how similar their experiences were. We're talking to Carol in England and we're talking to Elena in Italy, we're going to Argentina, Mexico, Denmark, France. There's this huge collective experience that they were having that they're all growing up as girls who feel like they are the only girl in the world who wants to play football and for it, they're considered a bit mad. That's something that I think pretty much every-- We interviewed over 30 of these women around the world and they all said the same thing. To get to Mexico City, to realize that you can play in front of 110,000 people and that you found your tribe, I think that was something that we weren't expecting how strongly they'd all feel about that.

Kousha: That's so interesting. They weren't expecting. That's where my mind immediately goes to because you're interviewing women from all around the world who were at a very specific moment in their lives, specific moment in time. Were there other similarities between their experiences that you heard that either surprised you or took you tor reframing this whole event in a new way that you weren't expecting when you started the documentary?

Rachel: I think the fact that they'd all started playing out on the street and realizing how accessible football really should have been, for all of these girls wanting to play, the absolute passion, the athleticism, the level of competitiveness. What was absolutely brilliant is that regardless of who we were talking to and the fact it was five decades on, all those women remember every single tackle. They remember the goals. They remember who it was that they were they were fighting against and they hadn't seen the footage because the footage had disappeared for 50 years. These exist in their emotional memories and they talk about what it felt like to step onto the pitch of the Azteca in front of a crowd like that. I think one thing we love so much about this film is how generous all of the women were in taking us back through those emotional memories because they were really quite traumatized by having been gaslit into believing that this didn't happen for so long.

Kousha: Yes. We're talking about Copa 71. It's a documentary on the largely forgotten, repressed Women's World Cup Tournament in 1971. It's opening tomorrow at the IFC Center and streaming on Amazon and Apple TV. We're talking to Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine, who are the directors. We've also got Carol Wilson, who was the team captain of the England team during the 1971 games. Got to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk more about the documentary, hear another clip, and hear more about the experience. Stay with us.

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Kousha: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar and we're talking about the documentary Copa 71. It talks about the largely repressed and forgotten Women's World Cup tournament in 1971. It's opening tomorrow at IFC Center and is streaming on Amazon and Apple TV. We're here with Rachel Ramsay, who's a director, James Erskine, another director of the documentary, as well as Carol Wilson, who is the team captain of the 1971 games. She played for England.

We're talking about the history a little bit and I want to talk about how the event actually happened because, James, despite all the mockery that we heard before the break, there was one group of businessmen that were really keen on making this World Cup happen. They pulled a lot of strings with partnerships, they filled big stadiums, big media campaigns. Who are these men? What was in it for them?

James: Well, Mexico City in the late '60s, early '70s was hopping, it was all happening. The Olympics came to Mexico City in 1968 and they built this fantastic stadium called the Azteca Stadium and they had a fantastic Olympics there. Then they also had the 1970 Men's Soccer World Cup there, which is famous for Brazil winning it for the third time, and Pelé and this magical football, and also being in color, being broadcast around the world, the Olympics was broadcast. Suddenly there's a lot of excitement.

It was the guys that owned that stadium and owned the television stations basically, they were like, "We've got this big stadium, we're having all these events. Everybody wants to come watch them. What can we put on next?" Then they heard about this thing called Women's Football and there had been a tournament organized by Martini & Rossi the drinks brand in Italy, in Turin in 1970. They flew over there and said, "You guys did this in a small way, we're going to do it in a big way. Do you want to partner with us?" Because they controlled television and because they controlled newspapers at the time in the country, they were able to offer promotional support. Even when FIFA stepped in and said, "You can't do this tournament." They said, "We don't care because it's our stadium, so we're going to put on the show," and they put on the show.

Kousha: Interesting. When we talk about the show that they put on-- There's a text that just came through that I think is super interesting as well. It says, "This is a lovely discussion, but I can't help but notice the absence of African or Caribbean players. Were they present in Mexico 47 years ago?" Rachel, what do you think?

Rachel: The teams that were playing at the time, none of them had official national teams, so the teams that are getting themselves over to Mexico had to be coming from the grassroots of where they were playing soccer and where they were playing football. I think it was really focused in Europe at the time. There was also nothing from the US. I think the European tradition of soccer was very strong before the '70s and that time and I think that's probably where those teams are coming from.

James: Women's football was still banned in Brazil until 1986.

Rachel: Oh, yes. It was illegal in Brazil.

James: It was a criminal offense, so, of course, there wasn't going to be a team from Brazil, sadly.

Kousha: Yes. Carol, I want to bring this back to you to bring it to the ground level of what it was like because once you arrived in Mexico, that atmosphere of excitement, of trepidation and thrill, that's really portrayed well in the film. I want to play a clip that highlights just how you were feeling. Here it is.

[audio clip]

?Speaker: To go somewhere like that and for ordinary working-class girls, it was a dream.

?Speaker: We got to Mexico and they pull the ladder up and the doors open and all these flashlights went off.

?Speaker: Just light, light everywhere.

?Speaker: You couldn't see.

?Speaker: I said, "There's someone famous on this plane," but it was us.

Kousha: Carol, we hear you in the clip and that was them getting off the plane. How did that excitement feel in your body? What sounds, what sights, what smells do you remember from that time?

Carol: I just remember the smell of the [inaudible 00:19:02] the heat once the doors opened. It was like Beatlemania is the only way I can describe it. We thought, "Wow." We were stunned. I've got to be honest, we were stunned on the steps. We still didn't think it was for us. We really did think it was for some celebrity on the aircraft. It wasn't until we got into the airport that we realized there was a whole press entourage there waiting for us and we had to go through interviews and so on in the airport before we could leave. Yes, it was just-- we'd gone from having six men and their dogs watching us on the pitch that was so uneven, there were potholes everywhere, to going to play in front of nearly 100,000 with a flat pitch. We just couldn't believe it.

Kousha: How did that affect the team dynamic, having all of that attention?

Carol: Well, it didn't, fortunately. There were mainly young kids. There was a couple of us, either approaching 20 or over 20. The younger ones were extremely focused. Extremely focused because all they wanted to do, well, myself included, and the others, all we wanted to do was play football. It was spectacular, don't get me wrong, all this press interest and having a photographer assigned and police cars and police motorcyclists, front and back. It was quite strange. I've said it before, it was like being thrust into a parallel universe.

Kousha: I'm thinking of your reference to the focus on the team, and I'm thinking of the games that you played, and there's one specifically, that one match with Mexico. That was the decider for the group [unintelligible 00:21:30] and you were playing against the home team on their home turf. How did that match feel for you before you started? How did you get morale in the team going?

Carol: That was the match that I liked the most. I'm sure if you spoke to the girls, they'll say that too. We had a fantastic reception from the Mexican people, amazing. They were really great. Yes, it was really frightening going out onto that pitch from the tunnel. I didn't think I was going to make the track, legs like jelly, but of course, we went out, and once we were on the park, it was absolutely fine. The girls gave 110%, 120% in that match.

I'm sure if we'd had the support that we ought to have had before we left England, then, we would've been a lot more prepared for the games, is all I can say. It was what it was and we thoroughly enjoyed the game against Mexico. Thoroughly enjoyed it. We played our hearts out. We lost to a better team, and we enjoyed the matches, is all I can say. It was amazing.

Kousha: The film takes us to the final tournament, which ended up being Mexico versus Denmark. James, the film says that this game almost never happened. James, can you explain why?

James: Yes. The reason why it never happened was because throughout this tournament, obviously lots of money had been made for the promoters. None of that money was shared with the women who played in there. The Mexican women were upset about this, and they decided that they would basically go on strike and not play the game because they felt conned, and they felt disappointed. In the end, they were persuaded otherwise, and that national spirit was more important and the promise of money down the line, which was never fulfilled, was a motivator. Even in the spectacular situation, they were not treated fairly or correctly.

Kousha: From here, the film does take a bit of a somber turn because especially after the tournament, when athletes return home and after several weeks of camaraderie, like we hear Carol talking about, and you talking about as well. There's a buzz around the Women's World Cup, but they return to an entirely different reality. We have a clip of that. I want to listen to it. Here's that clip.

[audio clip]

?Speaker: We arrived at the airport, and I can't remember seeing one photographer there.

?Speaker: Nobody there to meet you. No bunches of flowers, no invitations to parties, nobody really wanting to know you. It was less than the one man and his dog who used to turn out and see us play on Sundays.

?Speaker: Then we found out we got banned because we got banned inside ourselves. We were shamed. We never spoke about it; never spoke about it.

Kousha: Rachel, can you take us through that moment when the women's team returned to the UK, how were they treated?

Rachel: Well, as you hear the players say, then, as Chris said, is that they were treated like they'd done something wrong. They'd overstepped that there's this idea they should have been kept in the box that the male establishment could control. If they didn't do that, for example, going and playing in front of 100,000 people in Mexico, then they were there to be punished for it. It's about this kind of idea of being punished for your success. That is such a grim concept, but it is something I think that a lot of people relate to in different ways. We say this is a sports film, it's a film about soccer, but really, it's about far more than that. It's about what happens when your right to self-expression is taken away from you.

I think what we've done in the film and what the women are able to express, and it didn't just happen in England as well, it happened in Denmark, it happened in Mexico. Everyone is being told that, "You went so far, but actually, we're going to make sure that you can't go any further, and we're going to go further than that and actually take it away from you." That is something that we wanted the audience to really be able to feel and to go on that journey throughout the whole of the film.

Kousha: Did FIFA or any football federation ever issue an apology? The first official Women's World Cup happened far after that in 1991, but has anything been done?

Rachel: I have one word for that, "No," and still no.

Kousha: Carol, the film shows you at Wembley Stadium at a women's match last year. What was it like watching the new generation of female athletes on a field in your home country?

Carol: Oh, it was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. Just to be there when that happened, my feet were off the ground most of the time. It was just super, is all I can say. The only thing I did think about later was it is great, it's fantastic, and I'm so happy for the girls, but this should have happened 40 years ago.

Kousha: James, last question to you. Towards the end of the film, we see Alex Morgan, Brandi Chastain, other American soccer players reflecting on this forgotten history. Some of them saying, "I didn't know about it," even up until this point. Why was it important to include their voices?

James: I think what we really wanted to show is that even the people that are most famous for this sport today didn't know about this, that this is a surprise. The film is about history, and it's about role models and that people grew up without role models and that they have become role models. To understand the deeper roots is how something stays around forever.

Kousha: I'm happy that this history now can stay around forever. The documentary is COPA 71. It's about the largely repressed and forgotten Women's World Cup tournament in 1971. It's opening tomorrow at the IFC Center. You can also catch it streaming on Amazon and Apple TV. Directors, Rachel Ramsay, James Erskine, former captain of the 1971 Women's World Cup for the England team, Carol Wilson. Thanks, all three of you, for being a part of this history and bringing it to us.

Rachel: Thank you so much.

James: Thank you for having us on.

Carol: You're very welcome.

[00:28:07] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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