Soccer History | Tianhe Stadium — The World Cup FIFA Would Not Call a World Cup

The tournament FIFA now counts as the first Women's World Cup was not called one at the time. Its official title was the 1st FIFA World Championship for Women's Football for the M&M's Cup.

Mars, Incorporated sponsored it. FIFA was not yet willing to put its World Cup brand on women's football.

The matches ran eighty minutes rather than ninety, on the assumption that the players could not manage a full game. In the knockout rounds, a level score after eighty minutes brought twenty minutes of extra time.

A win was worth two points. Both rules were dropped for 1995 and have not returned.

The final was played on 30 November 1991 at the Tianhe Stadium in Guangzhou. The United States beat Norway 2-1, Michelle Akers scoring both goals with Linda Medalen equalising in between. Vadim Zhuk of the Soviet Union refereed.

The crowd is recorded three different ways: 60,000 in FIFA's own account of its own tournament, 63,000 in the standard reference work, 65,000 elsewhere.

Twelve teams played 26 matches across Guangzhou, Foshan, Jiangmen and Zhongshan between 16 and 30 November. Total attendance was 510,000, an average of 19,615.

China had opened the tournament in this same stadium by beating Norway 4-0. Ma Li scored the first goal in the competition's history and Zhong Honglian kept the first clean sheet.

Carin Jennings was named the best player of the tournament. Akers finished top scorer with ten, a total nobody has since approached.

Two qualifications belong in the record alongside the success.

The historian Sue Lopez noted that although attendances were high, many tickets were complimentary, and that curiosity about foreign women playing football drew a good part of the local crowds.

And FIFA's own technical report shows the argument was not settled by the result. Afterwards, players and officials were divided over whether to keep eighty-minute matches or move to ninety, and over whether a size five ball was appropriate. Some teams reported difficulty obtaining decent equipment in the right size at all.

Twenty years earlier, a women's World Cup final that nobody recognised had filled the Estadio Azteca with around 110,000 people.

This one was recognised, and shortened.

Sources: Wikipedia; FIFA; Chicago Stars FC; The18; reporting on FIFA's technical report.

Cover photo: Tim Wu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.