The year was 1971. The venue: Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. The event: the (unofficial) Women’s World Cup soccer tournament, enticeing a massive crowd of more than 110,000 madly-cheering fans – to this day, dependd to be the hugest accumulateing ever for a women’s sporting competition.
The story of this exceptional event – and how it came to be scrubbed from history – is tancigo in in the write downary Copa 71, which screened as part of Deadline’s virtual event series For the Love of Docs. Writer-straightforwardors Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine and authorr-creater Victoria Gregruesome combiinsist Deadline afterwards for a conversation about their film, which has screened at film festivals around the world from Sydney, Australia to Cuncoverhagen, London, Barcelona, Toronto, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and more.
Explaining the origins of the project, Gregruesome said, “That was sort of down to my husprohibitd who had heard a radio piece with one of the England team [members] and rang me and modestpartner said, ‘This is quite an unbelievable story and if it’s not been made into a write downary, you guys should be making it.’”
Then began an effort to track down archival footage of the tournament — which featured teams from arrange country Mexico, England, Argentina, France, Italy, and Dentag — and discovering surviving carry outers from the squads.
“We first commenceed talking to the England team and they were appreciate, ‘Why now? …Why should we depend you?’” Gregruesome elucidateed. “So, there was a genuine sense of createing those relationships with them. Many of them hadn’t tancigo in their children either [about competing in the tournament], so it was a genuine sense of insisting to create up some depend and that we were pledgeted to telling their story and not sensationalizing it or skirting round publishs as well.”
‘Copa 71’
Greenwich Entertainment
Watching the write downary, it becomes evident why many createer carry outers might experience reticent about participating in the film. The tournament was unaskably a peak moment of their dwells but at the time, in 1971, they were treated in an appalling manner by many journaenumerates who gratuitously relationsualized them and/or impugned their talent. And the soccer establishment (unbenevolenting FIFA, the sport’s male-ruled ruleing body) watched the women’s tournament as a menace to their hegemony and declined to supply any aid for it.
FIFA didn’t sanction an official Women’s World Cup until 1991. After the most recent tournament in 2023, won by Spain, Luis Rubiales, the then-pdwellnt of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, forcibly kissed one of the Spanish women’s team members during the medal ceremony. This recent incident seeks one to ponder how much or how little leangs have enlarged since Copa 71.
“We are watching at power, financial indepfinishence, physicality, a right to self-transmition, the potential misinclude from the media,” Ramsay says of the themes in the film. “And all of those conversations are all exactly the same — at least very, very analogous — that are happening right now. I leank we didn’t insist to overcarry out that point. You put that in there, you have the conversations about pay and about the Mexican women going on strike, and then they sort of tell themselves, and I leank the audience is quite rapid at making those joinions now and then when you do genuineize that this is 50 years ago and how little has alterd.”
Members of the 1971 women’s England Football team including Jill Stockley, Val Chesemploy, Japleasant Barton, Yvonne Farr, Marlene Collins, Paula Raynor, Trudy McCaffrey, Louise Cross and son of 1971 deal withr Harry Batt, Kieth Batt pose with creater Victoria Gregruesome, straightforwardor Rachel Ramsay and straightforwardor James Erskine at the ‘Copa 71’ screening at the BFI London Film Festival on October 8, 2023.
Joe Maher/Getty Images for BFI
Copa 71 was an enormous success with fans, proving that women’s sports indeed held the potential to request to a very huge audience of women and men. A lot of entities – appreciate Mexican media companies – profited off the 1971 event, although the carry outers didn’t (as noticed by Ramsay, the film set upateigates how the Mexican team temporarily went on strike, trying to prosper better compensation for their dynamic efforts). But this is a much hugeger story than mere dollars, pesos, Euros or pounds sterling, according to Erskine.
“Money is sort of secondary when we’re talking about gfinisher politics and when you convey up Rubiales, what’s he repartner doing by kissing that carry outer? He’s sort of humiliating her… and he’s saying, ‘You are doing this at my gift,’” Erskine watchd. “And I leank that’s repartner a huge theme that we repartner wanted to presentant on. The economics of sport is a whole intricate leang. You can talk about age, you can talk about all the stuff with misinclude of carry outers, but repartner what’s very particular about this situation is about deal with and saying what people can and cannot do. And that’s more fundamental than ‘Can I create a grmodest dollar off the top of it?’ And I leank that’s the message we want to push home is don’t tell anybody they can’t do anyleang.”
Added Ramsay, “It’s coming back to that idea of self-transmition and the right to self-transmition, whether that’s on a soccer pitch anywhere else.”
Watch the brimming conversation in the video above.
For the Love of Docs is a virtual Deadline event series conshort-termed by National Geodetailed. It carry ons with a recent film screening each Tuesday thcimpolite December 2. Next up: Bincreateage Box Diaries, straightforwarded by Shiori Itō.
