‘Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong country…’
That’s what Heather O’Reilly of the U.S. women’s national team and the Philadelphia Independence of the Women’s Professional Soccer league says at the end of a Q & A about the future of women’s soccer.
It’s been a tough spring for WPS, which lost 2009 regular season champion Los Angeles Sol and St. Louis Athletica. Both teams abruptly folded due to inattentive/inept management.
With the two-year-old league down to seven teams, getting through the current season will be satisfying accomplishment.
But the history of men’s soccer in the U.S. is no less tortured, and has evolved over many more decades, as Dave Wangerin has written so eloquently.
The odyssey for the women has only just begun.
The rest of O’Reilly’s quote, in full context, is more hopeful than the headline:
… because I love soccer so much, and there just aren’t too many people who feel that way in America. Hopefully the World Cup will keep creating fans of the game in general.”
