Members of the Chinese women’s national team.
At the 1999 Women’s World Cup, one of the most famous moments of the tournament was American defender Brandi Chastain’s victory celebration after scoring the Cup-winning penalty against China. She took off her jersey and waved it over her head (as men frequently do), showing her muscular torso and sports bra as she celebrated. The 1999 final in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, had an attendance of 90,185, a world record for a women’s sporting event.
Soccer has certainly come a long way since its origins. Ancient cultures as diverse as the Greeks, Persians, and Vikings played ball games that could have evolved into soccer. However, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) acknowledged in 2002 that ancient soccer first appeared in Zi Bo 淄博, China, when the Chinese began to play a game called cuju 蹴鞠. Cu means “kick,” and ju means “ball,” and the game is mentioned in the Shiji, an ancient Chinese text. Even LI Yu 李漁 (50–130 CE), the famed Han-dynasty poet, wrote of football.