For a brief moment, it felt like time had stopped in the summer of 1999.
Chastain scores. The U. S. players stampede towards their goalscoring hero who is embarking on what would become one of the most iconic celebrations in sports history.
She rips off her shirt, whips it around and over her head before falling to her knees. It is a fitting conclusion to the final Women’s World Cup of the 20th century and, in that moment, the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) realign the stars for women’s soccer.
Never before had a crowd of such size gathered for a women’s sporting event and a better ending could not have been scripted, nor a better cast of pioneers selected, to win the hearts and minds of the estimated 40 million people watching in the US alone.
New heights were reached, records broken, and a legacy created.
Twenty years on and the impact of the squad fondly referred to as the «99ers» can still be felt. Their legacy lives on in the current generation of females playing at all levels around the world.
The «99ers» made great advances for female athletes around the world and are remembered as one of the best sports teams in history. This is their story.
Great athletes but not good soccer players
In the late 1990s, women’s soccer was in its formative years, evident through lack of resources and media coverage. Formed in 1985, the national team participated in its first tournament in Italy — against the host country, England and Denmark — but the concept of national pride didn’t immediately resonate with the players.
Michelle Akers, the force in the «99ers» midfield, recalls the-then coach yelling at the team, saying: «You guys don’t get it! This is your national team.»
«I didn’t really get it until we got our asses kicked by the other countries… They’d grown up with the game, obviously it’s embedded in their culture,» Akers, who struggled with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome during the final 10 years of her career, tells CNN Sport. «We were great athletes, but not necessarily good soccer players.»
In 1986 Anson Dorrance, the head coach of the University of North Carolina, took over as national team coach and instilled a philosophy that the USWNT abides by to this day.
«Anson Dorrance had a dream and a vision that the US could be the best in the world,» Akers explains. «He shared that with us and planted that seed in our dreams and vision of what we were trying to achieve and who we could be as a team and as players.»
The next generation needed to be given its chance to develop and blossom together. That’s when teenagers Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, and Julie Foudy were invited to a training camp and selected ahead of more experienced players.
«I was with some of the original players, they were really good players, and when they weren’t on this next team they were pissed,» Akers, a two-time World Cup champion and winner of the Golden Boot in 1991, admits.
«It was upsetting… because they were better than the younger players on that day. But in two years they would be done, and these youngsters would be dominating.
«I was just focusing on us and what we had to do. I always looked at it as if we weren’t already the best — we were going to be the best.»
Visit CNN Sport for more news and videos
A team like no other
Over the next 10 years the team became a world force, winning the inaugural 1991 Women’s World Cup in China and Olympic gold five years later on home soil.
A crowd of 76,481 supporters had gathered in Athens, Georgia, for the first women’s football gold-medal match in Olympic history — setting the team’s first worldwide attendance record for most spectators to watch a female sporting event. With success came recognition. Eventually.
Despite the turnout, none of the team’s Olympic matches had been broadcast live on national television. FIFA, the sport’s governing body, took note and decided to harness spectator momentum by marketing the team in a way that attracted sponsors and pushed ticket sales for the 1999 World Cup.
In Mia Hamm, the world’s leading scorer, the team had a «reluctant superstar.»
Emphasizing the squad’s new-found place in popular culture, the striker was the inspiration behind the ‘Soccer Teresa’ doll, launched by Mattel for that home World Cup.
«I remember Anson Dorrance always saying every time we stepped on the field we were selling our game. We wanted to win and we wanted to win attractively,» Hamm says.
Her intensity on the field was matched only by her humility off it, she explains, «Everything I did was to make us better and to make our sport better.
«But we also wanted to get into a street fight and stand toe-to-toe with the toughest to put the ball in the back of the net. All the things we really felt represent the American spirit, we wanted our team to represent.»
By the start of the 1999 Women’s World Cup, strong bonds had been formed. Not only were the «99ers» a talented team but a close one, too, and the team’s spirit resonated with the country’s large female fanbase.
«We had this sense of empowerment and purpose that enabled us to go out there and play freely,» says Hamm.
