For 28 years, or eight cycles, women’s football has had a place at the Summer Olympics. Yet from the inaugural event at the 1996 Atlanta Games and through all seven editions, the World Cup holders from the previous year have yet to complete the double and collect a gold medal.
Even the great Germany team — who were the first to win back-to-back World Cups in 2003 and 2007 — could only claim bronze in 2004 and 2008. While the great United States teams crowned world champions in 2015 and 2019 fared far worse, as they were eliminated in the quarterfinals and semifinals respectively.
Italy’s men won gold in 1936, in between their first two World Cup wins, but why has a women’s team never managed to claim that elusive Olympic gold the following year?
We might get more of an answer on Saturday. This tournament has brought a new World Cup champion and Olympic debutant at the same time: Spain. And only a semifinal against Brazil, and final against either the USWNT or Germany now stands in their way.
Ahead of Paris 2024, there was plenty of optimism that Spain could be the ones to make history, yet they also had to deal with a lot of upheaval — they changed their coach, with Montserrat Tomé replacing the controversial Jorge Vilda — and off the pitch the feud with their federation following the fallout of the Luis Rubiales-Jenni Hermoso scandal has rumbled on.
Three wins from three in the group stage have not told the whole story. La Roja have been underwhelming and have so far failed to get out of second gear. Indeed, they nearly got knocked out at the quarterfinal stage, needing a 97th-minute goal from defender Irene Paredes to force extra time against Colombia before winning 4-2 on penalties.
To make history, Spain need to overcome it. Only Japan and the USWNT have come close to doing the double before.
When the U.S.’s famed 1999ers ran the Olympic gauntlet in Sydney, they only lost the final 3-2 to Norway in extra time after a sudden-death goal from Dagny Mellgren.
Then, after Japan’s fairytale success at the 2011 World Cup in the wake of disaster at home following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the U.S. team avenged their penalty-shootout loss in that final by beating the Nadeshiko 2-1 at London’s Wembley Stadium to take gold at the 2012 Games.
“I think [at the World Cup] we had a big purpose, a desire to win the tournament because the bad things happened in Japan,” former Japan midfielder Yuki Nagasato told ESPN. “It was bigger than us. Like the U.S. in 2019, when they were fighting equal pay; so that kind of desire to win above the win. That’s the purpose we had.”
In 2016, all eyes were on the USWNT again. With gold medals won at the Athens (2004), Beijing (2008) and London (2012) Games, the expectation was on them to win in Rio de Janeiro. Yet a team that had so emphatically won the 2015 World Cup went out in the quarterfinals on penalties to Sweden — the only reigning world champions to have failed to make it to a medal match.
Arguably the main reason why no team has followed up their World Cup success with gold is that the Olympic football tournament is an endurance test; a gauntlet to be run. Only 12 nations qualify, meaning the standard is incredibly high [unlike the men, who put out U23 teams, the women’s event is far more prestigious], and countries have to use smaller squads of 18, rather than 23. There are also only two rest days between each game (save for an extra day before the gold-medal match), barely allowing for any recovery as they play three group games in nine days.
“It’s just really hard to win this kind of tournament,” Nagasato added. “It’s multiple things [needed] to win: it’s timing, it’s peaking, it’s [avoiding] injuries … you need to get every single piece together to win.”
Rhian Wilkinson, who was part of Canada’s bronze medal-winning teams in 2012 and 2016, and is now manager of Wales, told ESPN there are a lot of variables to finding success.
“I would say it [the Olympics] is a very different tournament,” she said, “The World Cup is the most accurate decider of who the best team in the world, and you’ve got a bigger roster, you have rest between the games. You’ve got the preparation piece down to a tee and then you have to deliver consistently. The Olympics is so quick and such a tight roster that there is a little bit more luck involved. It could be the weather that you get, it could be the travel distance, there’s so many variables.
“And then there’s how healthy you can keep your team … how healthy they [other players] are coming in. At the World Cup, you can carry players that might play a little later in the tournament if you’re one of those top teams. It’s a dangerous thing to bring anyone with any kind of knock to the Olympics because you are playing non-stop, and you have to be able to do some rotation, because it’s impossible [the schedule].”
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Kassouf: Hayes gets the patient USWNT performance she’s been looking for
Jeff Kassouf reacts to the USWNT’s extra-time win over Japan in the quaterfinals of the Olympic tournament.
Wilkinson, an ever-present for Canada at the London Games, recalls running on fumes by the latter stages of the tournament as the cumulative effort expended to reach a medal match caught up with her.
“That was one of the issues we had in 2012 is that team … I played every single minute of every single game, and that was a challenge.” she added. “It’s not a crazy thing that [in the last game] I had nothing left: of course I didn’t. And that can’t really happen in top teams. But yeah, that’s why I think you don’t get back-to-back winners because it takes different things to win those two tournaments.”
Spain arguably have one of the best squads in the world, with quality players all over the pitch, but they first need to overcome Brazil in the semifinals on Tuesday to keep the double dream alive. They managed their group-stage clash with the South Americans well enough, winning 2-0, and will be feeling confident. But they can leak goals — a trend seen in the UEFA Nations League too — and that could tell if they come up against USWNT, who are looking good under new boss Emma Hayes, in the final.
The U.S. are seemingly at their most dangerous in Olympic tournaments following a disappointing World Cup; of their four gold medals, they failed to make the World Cup final the year before on three occasions. Their 2023 World Cup campaign was the most disappointing of the lot, exiting in the round of 16 to Sweden.
So Spain will certainly be wary of a U.S. side looking to get back on track. But if they are to make history, they’ll need the right balance of talent, endurance and luck to do so.
