And my main question so far is this: what has happened to Brazil women’s soccer?  Brazil crashed out in the first round at this World Cup. Well, to be fair, they didn’t exactly crash out: they came third in a group containing two countries very strong in women’s soccer, Sweden and North Korea (champions of the 2006 U-20 Women’s World Cup, and finalists in 2008).  But their only win came against New Zealand, who lost all three of their games.

This from the country that has produced in recent years Marta, Cristiane and Formiga, to name three of the best women’s players in the world over the past half-decade.

But it appears the development of women’s soccer in Brazil has completely stalled, from the available evidence. At the first U-17 Women’s World Cup held in 2008, Brazil finished bottom of their group, failing to win a game. Brazil did better at the 2008 U-20 Women’s World Cup, topping their group, then losing to a strong German side in the next round. Brazil finished third in 2006. The trend, though, is clearly one that’s gone dramatically downwards for Brazil in youth competition in the past few years.

The senior team, inspired by the remarkable crop of Marta, Cristiane, Formiga, Fabiana et al, had up to 2008 a remarkable record in recent years: silver at both the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games, and second place at the 2007 World Cup. Seven of their 2008 Olympic team currently play in WPS, arguably the world’s leading professional women’s league.

However, it appears that production line is stalling, judging from international youth results. Indeed, the problem perhaps is it’s not really a production line at all: women’s soccer in Brazil lacks any kind of structure, with no national league (hence why so many of their national team plays abroad), and a haphazard method of discovering young talent. And that talent has to overcome a considerable stigma against women participating in soccer, as the well-known story of Marta reminds us, from this interview with her from the New York Times last year:

“I had to do all of it by myself,” she said through a Portuguese interpreter. (She speaks Swedish fluently and, according to her new teammates, is rapidly picking up English.) “There wasn’t anybody for me to follow, or anyone to say to me, These are the steps you must take. First of all, I was almost always the only girl playing with boys in a small town. Some boys accepted me, some didn’t. And my family had comments made to them. Brazil is still a very macho society, and sports are mainly for boys, so people would say to them: What is this girl doing? Why is she always out there in the soccer games with the boys?”

And even Marta, four-time FIFA World Player of the Year, cannot seem to lead change in Brazil, with the authorities remaining resolutely opposed to supporting women’s soccer. As John Turnbull at the Global Game tells us:

Marta and her teammates have been advocating for a Brazilian league, but they are battling institutional inertia and a history that banned soccer for women until 1979. The federal government beginning in the 1980s limited sponsorship opportunities for women and prevented their competitions from being held at athletic grounds, consigning them to, in many cases, the beaches in Rio.

Copacabana Beach, in fact, in 1981 served as the venue for the first women’s tournament. The strongest women’s side through much of the 1980s, Esporte Clube Radar, used the beach as its home ground. Opposition to women playing football has been constant. The challenges range from the physical—Marta reports that her brother hit her when he found she was playing, and BBC columnist Tim Vickery‘s girlfriend says she got similar lashings from her father (BBC Sport, Sept 10)—to the subtly patronizing gender stereotypes that frame women, in the main, as an object of the male gaze or as devoted disciples of home and church.

“Today, when I came into the field, I heard a guy say that I should be at a laundry sink, washing clothes,” said a Radar player in 1984. “But I did not bother to reply to him, although I was angry. My reaction came later, with the ball at my feet.”

Female soccer was banned entirely by law between 1964 and 1975 in Brazil.  Since then, the successful team led by Marta that developed from that point on, culminating in second place at the 2007 Women’s World Cup, ought to have presaged change, one would think: except that the Brazilian national women’s team, as far as I can tell, hasn’t actually played a game for around two years.

To see how poorly the national team is organised and treated in Brazil despite being one of the top three or four in the world, we can look back to a dispute following that 2007 World Cup, where the players felt they weren’t renumerated fairly for their performance that earned the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) almost $1 million in prize money. This resulted in the national team sending a collective letter to the CBF asking for support:

In the World Cup, for example, the Brazilian federation received $850,000 (US) from FIFA for the team’s second-place finish. The players say they are still unaware how much each of them will receive from that amount. The players are also demanding bonus money for their gold-medal finish at the Pan Am Games, which they say they still have not been paid. According to O Globo, it took two years for the 2004 Olympic team players to receive their bonus money for the silver medal at Athens.

The Brazil women are asking for a raise in their daily expense stipend from the current $35 (US) when playing abroad; a restoration of the team cook, a position that was left vacant at the start of the year as a cost-cutting measure (supposedly the absence of typical Brazilian foods like beans while the team were in China lengthened Formiga’s recovery time from leg cramps); and a greater number of matches for the national team, which currently has nothing scheduled until April.

At the conclusion of the letter, the players said that they have fulfilled their duty and have always given the maximum for the national team, Globo reports. The letter ends with the following phrase, in capital letters: “We need support”.

This raises a local and a broader point: more widely, once again there is evidence for why FIFA needs to pay players directly at the World Cup, to ensure they are paid on a fair and timely bass.

The local point is that the CBF, under Ricardo Teixeira’s corrupt leadership, is doing a remarkable disservice to one of the greatest women’s national teams of all time, missing a massive opportunity to use the starpower, skill and style of the likes of Marta to develop women’s soccer domestically in Brazil.

Brazil’s president Lula, following the World Cup pay dispute in 2007, made the same point:

“I think we have to prepare other matches. In other words, these girls can’t play only every four years or play now and then,” he said.

“I think these girls, who are not as valued as they should be by the entities that deal with women’s sports in Brazil, need to raise their heads and know that we are at the beginning a very long process and that they are valued, and have made Brazil proud.”

It appears, three years on, little has changed. Brazil’s top players are abroad; there is no domestic league (a national cup competition, Copa do Brasil de Futebol Feminino, has at least been created, upon FIFA’s request); and the Brazilian women’s national team is essentially disbanded aside from major tournaments. It may well reassemble and perform well at next year’s Women’s World Cup in Germany, given the talent it still has now, but how it will fair in the future given the lack of investment in the sport that is showing at youth international level is seriously open to question. This is a tremendous waste of an opportunity by the CBF (who are, unlike national associations in many countries, more than rich enough to be unable to claim poverty as an excuse for not developing the sport).

There is no doubt women’s soccer in Brazil has made extraordinary progress since the 1970s, when even playing the game was illegal for Brazilian women. Yet at the same time, Brazil risks falling behind the rest of the world as the next Marta still faces an uphill battle to play the game.

Editor’s Note: Chicago Red Stars President and CEO Peter Wilt returns for his third weekly column on Pitch Invasion, pulling no punches as he grades the first season of the league his own team plays in.

Sunday’s Women’s Professional Soccer All-Star victory over Swedish powerhouse Umea ended WPS’ first season and that makes this a good time to reflect on the inaugural year and analyze WPS’ progress.  I decided to grade the league in six categories of on and off field performance (mostly off) and give you my thoughts on the League’s inaugural season, particularly with my own experiences with the Chicago Red Stars in mind.

Following are my grades for WPS’ 2009 report card:

ATTENDANCE/RELEVANCE:  C

Probably the most disappointing grade for me personally.  WPS’ average attendance of 4,684 fell within the range of 4,000 to 6,000 mentioned widely as a goal by the League prior to launch for its first season.  It was on the low end of the scale, however, and included novelty bumps from each team’s inaugural game — such as14,832 at the league’s inaugural match at the Home Depot Center.

Viewing attendance figures through the prism of the bad economy makes this grade seem a bit harsh as the economy certainly contributed to lower than desirable attendance figures.  All sports, even including the NFL, have suffered at the gate in the past year, but surveys showed that fans think WPS ticket pricing is reasonable, so I’m not certain how much we were affected.

While the attendance numbers are critical, the more important issue with any team or league is its relevance in local markets and nationally as that will ultimately determine future support and success — more so than past attendance.  WPS and individual teams certainly put a stake in the ground and built their relevance nationally and in the League’s seven markets in 2009, but it does not appear that either the number of emotionally connected fans or the depth of that connection is large enough yet to be deemed a success.  Boston, Washington and Bay Area were able to carry on connections from WUSA, while Saint Louis, Los Angeles, Chicago and Sky Blue (the NY Power’s home base of Long Island is a different market IMHO) started from scratch.  Based on social media attention and observation at games and team events, it appears that a solid number of fans in each market have become passionately connected to the teams and players through WPS.  There are also a decent number of people in each team market who have become connected casually to their local teams.

The depth of support and passion among those that are attending the games is impressive, but the breadth of that support needs to grow.  Anecdotally in Chicago (and I believe this is true throughout WPS), it does not appear that the Red Stars have become an ingrained part of the Chicago soccer culture despite a strong mixture of traditional and new media and grass roots marketing.  That growth will likely occur over time if WPS and teams maintain their focus and continue to provide quality entertainment and strong marketing efforts.  League-wide attendance did trend upward from week 17 through the playoffs in week over week averages.  In Chicago, each of the final five home games had higher attendance than the previous game, culminating with 7,959 vs. Los Angeles in our season finale.  The late season growth is likely due to several factors including more lead time for groups and promotions, better weather, more word of mouth promotion and an improvement in the economy.  It is also worth noting that the League believes it has learned some lessons on scheduling that will be implemented next season in order to make attending games more convenient for fans.

NON-TICKET REVENUE: C-

Starting a professional sports league in the worst economy of our lifetime — tough.   Starting a professional SOCCER league in the worst economy of our lifetime — really tough.   Starting a professional WOMEN’S SOCCER league in the worst economy of our lifetime — are you kidding me?!?  Well that was the reaction I got from a lot of people.  The bad economy certainly impacted ticket sales a bit, but I think the impact on sponsorship and ancillary stadium revenue was much stronger.  Corporations were all in cutback mode for sponsorship, not frozen or even expansion…and the new kids on the block were often left holding an empty bag.

It hit the League and the teams.  WPS, working with Soccer United Marketing, earned some great partnerships with Puma, EuroSport and Fox Soccer Channel early on and later with MedImmune, the US Coast Guard and several others to create a solid foundation for future years.  Similarly, teams all fell short of initial projections, but made up ground as the year went along.

The poor economy hurt merchandise, concessions, parking and camp revenue also.  The bright side for WPS is that as the economy improves, these are all categories that will likely grow.  Camp revenue was down nationally due to the economy, but several teams including Sky Blue FC and the Red Stars did well with their camps.  In Chicago, nearly 500 girls went through the Red Stars camp program in its inaugural summer.  The good word of mouth we’re getting on the camps means we’ll likely double and even triple this important revenue and marketing area in the next couple years.

FAN EXPERIENCE: A-

While I personally thought we would have higher attendance, the people that did attend really enjoyed their experience and felt they received value for both the cost of their ticket and their time.  The fans were more engaged in the action on the field than I anticipated and the teams all did a very good job managing the balance of sport and entertainment. WPS restricted the amount and types of promos during game action and teams created activities and attractions for fans of all ages.

Access to players, coaches and staff was as good as any League I’ve ever been associated with, the stadia all provided intimate settings with great sightlines and attention to customer needs was a priority throughout WPS.  Most teams have the beginnings of passionate supporters groups, including Local 134 in Chicago, Marta’s Maniacs in Los Angeles and Laclede’s Army in St. Louis.  Jock rock was avoided in most venues as the crowds provided the sound track with loud cheering for individual plays if not the organized cheering of large supporters sections.  Efforts were also made with varying degrees of success to diversify the audience by marketing to young urban men and gay and lesbian and ethnic communities.

Crowds that are small relative to MLS and other sports made getting in, out and around WPS games convenient for fans.  High and low end hospitality areas, tailgating and fan fest areas at many venues provided plenty of reasons to arrive early and stay late as well. Minor league baseball impressario Mike Veeck visited a Red Stars game at the end of the season and came away impressed with the overall fan experience.  This is high praise from someone who understands fan experience as well as anyone in sports.  WPS teams need to improve getting the message out regarding the overall fan experience in order to get more people to arrive early, stay late and enjoy the full WPS experience around the game itself.

QUALITY OF PLAY:  A-

WPS rosters were filled with virtually the entire 2008 Olympic gold medal winning U.S. Women’s National Team, the three 2008 FIFA Female World Player of the Year finalists and the best players from Brazil, England, France, Australia, Japan, China and several other nations.  While Leagues in Sweden, Germany, France and England could claim one to three good teams, WPS was unique in having seven teams filled with national team players.  The Red Stars, as an example, could field 13 players with full national team experience representing seven different countries…and that’s the team that finished in 6th place.  WPS certainly achieved its goal of parity as any team could defeat any other on a given day.

While some teams took a little time to mesh and some games saw more fouls than scoring opportunities, the typical WPS game was free flowing with end to end action, gorgeous goals and often featured segments with ten or more passes being strung together.   Europe’s Kelly Smith, Sonia Bompastor and Carre Jonsson all brought class, Brazilians Marta, Cristiane and Daniela provided flair and young Americans Tasha Kai, Lori Chalupny and Megan Rapinoe added personality and skill.  The high level of play kept fans attention riveted to the field.

WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM WUSA?  A-

When I was in grammar school, I never liked to go first.  Whether it was demonstrating something in gym or answering a teacher’s question in class.  Giving it a shot after someone else failed always gave me the benefit of learning from the first person.  The same can be said of all of my pro soccer experiences.  My predecessors with the Milwaukee Wave and Chicago Power were rather underwhelming, the Chicago Fire had the benefit of studying the lessons of MLS’ first two seasons and WPS was able to go to school on three years of WUSA shortcomings.

WUSA spent too much money on traditional advertising, stadia, staff and players and avoided working with MLS and other established soccer organizations.  Many of their owners were disengaged from their teams, many of their team CEOs had little pro soccer business experience and much of their promotional efforts were misguided.  WPS’ business model was based on not repeating these errors. In general, I’d say WPS succeeded in keeping true to the new curriculum.  Engaged owners?  Check.  Reduced and more efficient spending?  Double check.  Work with MLS, USYSA, AYSO, WPSL, W-League and any other soccer related acronym?  Check.  Hire more experienced soccer execs?  Check again.   We weren’t perfect in this area though:  Rules of engagement on the player side changed regularly in WUSA and despite warnings from those who went through it the first time, WPS was unable to totally avoid this trap.

OFF FIELD ENDEAVORS:  B+

This category is a compilation of several including ownership, marketing, communications and operations.  Ownership in WPS is very different from WUSA.  In addition to being a traditional franchise model as opposed to WUSA’s single entity, the team ownerships are mainly individual or groups of successful businessmen who have personal connections to soccer.  WPS owners as a group do not have the net worth of the corporate cable giants that owned WUSA, but they do have the interest, knowledge and passion for the sport that was missing in WUSA with the major exception of the Washington Freedom’s John and Maureen Hendricks who are the sole WUSA owners to invest in WPS and represent the best of both types of owners.  WPS’ See Extraordinary marketing campaign was on message, professional and distributed well economically to its target audience both online and through Fox Soccer Channel.

The League’s commitment to online marketing paid dividends as it mastered Twitter earlier than other pro sports leagues.  WPS also effectively used Facebook, its own team and League websites and its own social media web site to get the word out in an interactive and viral way.   Commissioner Antonucci, a former Yahoo! executive  made online marketing a focal point of the League and her lieutenants Rachel Epstein, Karyn Lush, Rob Penner, Amanda Vandervort and Jill Coy effectively designed and rolled out the League’s online marketing and communications strategy.  Weekly insider emails which have become a staple of team to fan communication provided informative content unavailable from traditional media and the standard Sunday Fox Soccer Channel time slot provided destination viewing to the nation’s soccer base.  The League’s partnership with EuroSport gave fans of WPS teams an easy way to buy merchandise online and via catalog.  Efforts are near completion on a national retail partner that will provide in store access to WPS merchandise as well.

Reducing budgets from the WUSA days risks a negative impact on brand image.  For the most part, I believe WPS maintained a professional image at both the League and team level via its online branding, by hiring young talented staff and making the game day experience pleasant without being ostentatious. Except for promising the best women’s soccer league in the world, which it delivered, I believe WPS promoted modest expectations and in most cases over delivered.  Community interaction of players and staff with the public was kept on message and generally impressed stake holders.  Staff and players are communicating effectively with the public.  The main challenge is to increase the opportunities for that interaction.  That can be done with even more appearances (teams were very good with this) and larger and more experienced sales staffs.

SOCIAL IMPACT:  N/A

Please don’t confuse the term “Not Applicable” with “Did not happen” or “Failure” or “Success”.  There is no doubt that WPS players are de facto role models, give young girls aspirational heroes and advance the cause of equal opportunity for women in sports and sports business.  My point in calling this category out as a non-gradeable category is that I believe WPS needs to succeed as a business based on its entertainment value, marketing  and on field performance not as a social cause.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t real value or benefit to providing opportunities for women and goals for young girls to admire and aspire to emulate.  It just means that as a business, WPS needs to stand on its own legs and not be considered a charity that is supported BECAUSE it provides the added social benefits.  It should be mentioned that WPS teams and players were active in many charitable and social endeavours including Greenlaces, the environmental awareness non-profit founded by Chicago Red Stars defender Natalie Spilger.

OVERALL, AKA SUSTAINABILITY:  B

WPS laid a tremendous foundation for a sport that has proven to be difficult to sell during the best of times muchless the worst economic time of our lives.  As heavy as the lifting was for the first season — and at times it felt like we needed Vasiliy Alekseyev — year two will be a greater challenge in many ways.  The novelty bump will be gone (though I suspect it wasn’t as great a bump as MLS or other leagues experienced) and the League will need to innovate and keep up an aggressive and energetic start up approach through an improved 2010 economy.  If not, the energy from a new endeavour will be limited to the expansion franchises in Philadelphia and Atlanta.

WPS will not “make it” in 2009, 2010 or 2011.  “Making it” in this case is about sustainability and that merely requires keeping enough teams in existence for the League to be around for future generations.  The League has not yet proven its business model operationally, but it has set a base line that allows adjustments to be made in order to work toward profitability much like MLS did in its early years.  If you’ve followed WPS this year, please feel free to provide your grades and feed back in the comment section.

Last week’s column on customer service received some great comments and helped unearth a terrific blog post from my friend Magda Walczak on the effectiveness of customer service at shoe company Zappos.  Next week’s column will be a Q&A with  Portland Timbers Director of Soccer Development and Assistant Coach Amos Magee.  Amos’ experiences give him a unique perspective on all levels of soccer in the United States.  I think you’ll enjoy reading his comments.  Finally, if you’d like to follow my Tweets, my Twitter name is @RedStarsCEO.

The LA Sol were always supposed to be there. Featuring the world’s best female player, Marta, and playing at the best venue in the league, the Home Depot Center, they dominated the WPS regular season, losing only once before they clinched a place in the playoffs as early as June 27th. By July 26th, they’d also clinched the regular season title and the right to go straight to the final that they’ll host in Los Angeles this Saturday.

They weren’t supposed to be playing Sky Blue FC, though. In May, only seven games into their season, the team fired general manager and coach Ian Sawyers after disputes with team ownership became apparently untenable. Assistant coach Kelly Lindsey stepped into the head coach role.

Just six weeks later, Lindsey (along with Assistant head coach Joe Dorini) herself mysteriously resigned in what appears to have been a continuation of coaching staff/ownership disagreements, even though the club had remained in playoff contention throughout her time in charge.

Lindsey responded angrily to comments criticising her by Sky Blue’s ownership after her resignation, writing an email to ESPN defending herself:

I am disappointed by what has been said in the press, and that Sky Blue has decided to challenge my abilities. I will not do the same instead I will share my views with the ownership group privately. I will let my record as a head coach speak for itself. At this time, as to why I left, especially when the team was on the verge of securing a playoff bid, I point to the public comments made by Sky Blue as an example of the behavior I do not wish to be a part of any longer.

At that point Sky Blue FC sat fifth in the standings, with the top four qualifying for the playoffs. U.S. National Team veteran Christie Rampone took over as Interim Player/Coach.  A rookie head coach, Sky Blue’s third of the season, hardly seemed like a recipe for a championship run.

But they stayed in contention, and qualified on the last weekend of the season despite losing 3-1 to the Washington Freedom, ironically thanks to the LA Sol’s 2-1 victory over the Boston Breakers, who would have taken Sky Blue’s spot had they beaten LA.

And this week, two wins in the playoffs away from home against the Washington Freedom and St. Louis Athletica have propelled Sky Blue to within 90 minutes of one of the most unlikely championship wins in American professional soccer history.

Some are unhappy with the playoff format that has even given Sky Blue this opportunity to snatch the title at the Home Depot Center — in just a 20 game season, they finished 15 points behind the LA Sol in the regular season. The Women’s Sports Blog writes that:

On the one hand, Sky Blue FC have a lot of pride to play for and no doubt a monkey off their backs with a popular player as coach.  On the other, they’re just demonstrably worse than both teams they’ve beaten to reach the finals.  Does an inspiring story trump the ability of the playoffs to determine who deserves the trophy?

But it should be noted that WPS’ playoff format was designed to better reward regular season play than its MLS counterpart, and their road there this week reflects that. After all, all the Sol have to do is win one game at home in the playoffs to clinch the championship, having had plenty of rest. Sky Blue FC have been given a tough enough path in the playoffs, needing to win three successive road games in just one week to win out. Should they do it, it would be hard to begrudge an amazing turnaround.

It’s very hard to accept any kind of patronising view towards the World Cup when we hear Marta’s story. That doesn’t mean one has to enjoy it or even watch it necessarily, but if one loves football, it’s impossible not to respect the passion and pride for the game shown by the players who just want to do what we all dreamt of once: represent their country at the highest level they can playing the intoxicating game we all can’t get enough of (a passion notably absent amongst certain male superstars in recent years when they’ve pulled on their country’s shirt).

Marta and her teammates have been advocating for a Brazilian league, but they are battling institutional inertia and a history that banned soccer for women until 1979. The federal government beginning in the 1980s limited sponsorship opportunities for women and prevented their competitions from being held at athletic grounds, consigning them to, in many cases, the beaches in Rio.

Copacabana Beach, in fact, in 1981 served as the venue for the first women’s tournament. The strongest women’s side through much of the 1980s, Esporte Clube Radar, used the beach as its home ground. Opposition to women playing football has been constant. The challenges range from the physical—Marta reports that her brother hit her when he found she was playing, and BBC columnist Tim Vickery’s girlfriend says she got similar lashings from her father (BBC Sport, Sept 10)—to the subtly patronizing gender stereotypes that frame women, in the main, as an object of the male gaze or as devoted disciples of home and church.

“Today, when I came into the field, I heard a guy say that I should be at a laundry sink, washing clothes,” said a Radar player in 1984. “But I did not bother to reply to him, although I was angry. My reaction came later, with the ball at my feet.”

And of course, it does come down to what happens when the ball is at a person’s feet. And boy, Marta has some feet, as this video demonstrates as she put five past Canada earlier this year (alright, the defending’s atrocious):