What's This?
USA star Alex Morgan at a Women's World Cup press conference on Tuesday. Image: Carmen Jaspersen/Associated Press
By Sam Laird2015-06-30 21:37:15 UTC
The USA and Germany clash on Tuesday night in what promises to be an epic Women's World Cup semifinal, pitting the world's first and second-ranked squads against one another for a berth in the final match in Vancouver on Sunday.
But let's get down to what really matters: Which team has the hotter babes, bro?
In just the latest sign that FIFA doesn't take the Women's World Cup, nor its players, all that seriously, an article on its official site about U.S. star Alex Morgan rubbed many soccer fans the wrong way on Tuesday morning.
"Alex Morgan is one of the most popular players in USA women's football," the intro reads. "A talented goalscorer with a style that is very easy on the eye and good looks to match, she is nothing short of a media phenomenon."
The article is meant to be a Morgan-focused preview of the Germany match, but what perplexed many on Twitter was FIFA's apparent need to praise Morgan's looks in the second sentence of the first paragraph.
To be fair, Morgan is considered greatly attractive by a great many people. She's also posed for Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue, so it's also worth noting that she trades on her attractiveness to a certain extent.
But does a comment about her looks belong in the second sentence of an article from FIFA of all places? Probably not. It's not a crime against humanity — yet to understand why some take issue with it requires first understanding the long line of slights against the women's game that have come from FIFA.
Let's do just that.
Morgan and her teammates will face Germany in the semifinals while playing on artificial turf, a second-rate surface that players say can cause injury and make the ball react differently that it normally does on grass. The 2015 Women's World Cup is the first senior-level tournament to ever be played on turf after FIFA refused to consider installing grass surfaces despite the vehement protest of many top women's soccer players.
Germany is playing the U.S. after eliminating France in the quarterfinals. France was the world's third-ranked team, while Germany is the world's first-ranked team — so why did they match up so early? Because FIFA essentially skewed the elimination bracket, sacrificing the tournament's competitive integrity in hopes of selling more tickets. That's something it's extremely hard (at best) to imagine happening in the men's World Cup.
Then there's the time in 2004 that FIFA president Sepp Blatter said women's soccer players should play in sexier uniforms.
Then there's the time in January 2013 when Morgan herself attended FIFA's annual Ballon d'Or gala as one of three finalists for women's player of the year. She says Blatter and other executives didn't even recognize her.
"And I was being honored as top three in the world," Morgan told Time. "That was pretty shocking."
Maybe she should have shown off those "good looks" a little bit more.
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