COPA 71 - Mark Reviews Movies

Copa 71, Greenwich Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 20, 2024

According to the official history, the first Women's World Cup took place in 1991, but any official history is going to be incomplete in some way. As a case in point, Copa 71 looks into another international women's soccer tournament, dubbed a World Cup, that occurred in Mexico 20 years before the supposed first one.

The final match would be attended by a crowd that has yet to matched by any other sporting event for women, but it is not part of any official history and has gone forgotten by most people. Until the filmmakers present it to her, even Brandi Chastain, a retired soccer player who was part of the United States national team during the '91 tournament and the first Olympics tourney for women five years later, had never heard of it. It's a pleasant shock and, at the same time, an infuriating one.

This documentary, directed by Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine, corrects the record by presenting the course of the tournament as it happened, interviewing participating players from around the world to describe the experience and the sheer thrill of, for the most part, being seen as the skilled, competitive athletes they were. In being a primarily straightforward account of the weeks-long event, the film treats them in a similar manner. There's more than enough frustration before and after the tournament to go around multiple times over, so the movie gives these women their moment in spotlight, outside of the decades of discrimination and suppression.

There was plenty before the '71 tourney, as those players initially describe how they fell in love with soccer (football for all of them, of course), desperately wanted to play the game, and kept finding pushback whenever they did attempt to. Women playing soccer wasn't just socially frowned upon in some places, despite it thriving in countries like England until the early 20th century.

Some "reputable" medical journals published studies explaining that playing the game could somehow damage women's wombs and ovaries, and enough people bought it that, starting in 1921, England's Football Association banned women from playing on any of the pitches of its member teams. It was essentially illegal in Brazil for women to participate in the sport at all, which would partially explain why Argentina had the only team from the Americas in the '71 tournament.

Thankfully, such notions look silly now, as women's sports in general are on a continuing upswing in popularity. It's still disheartening, though, to hear and read opinions from 100 years ago that have been voiced and seen as commonplace up until recently. One reporter in England back then, for example, described the sight of women's soccer as being akin to watching a dog walk on its hind legs, and apart from the fact that he stole the joke, the observation is pretty lazy.

With the personal and sports and political histories out of the way, Ramsay and Erskine let the players take over their own stories, while archival footage of the tournament, which was broadcast live throughout Mexico, proves both the talent on the field and the popularity of the event. Yes, it was quite popular and profitable, with large crowds in two of Mexico's biggest stadiums and corporate sponsorships, and there are a few other shoes waiting to inevitably drop from that outpouring of support.

One is the International Association Football Federation (FIFA), which refused to acknowledge the tournament and still exists in an official state of denial that the event took place. The participants can take some solace in FIFA's history of not being the most reputable organization, one supposes, but at the time, they still perceived soccer as a boys' club. What does it say about their worldview now that the '71 World Cup isn't recognized?

The other is a matter of pay—or, more to the point, the lack thereof. That's still ongoing today, and when the host country's team suggested they should receive some kind of compensation for playing and representing Mexico, the press, which had been so favorable to and supportive of the tournament, suddenly turned, implying or outright stating that the team was holding the tourney hostage. The players from Mexico's team can't help but laugh at the obvious discrimination, while still pointing out quite seriously that, yes, they definitely should have been paid.

All of this gives us context for why the tournament mattered at the time and why knowledge of it now still matters. The narrative of the tournament plays out with some suspense, since this is lost history until recently. The footage is noteworthy, not only for the highlights selected by the filmmakers, but also because this is likely the first time it's had the potential for a significant audience since it first aired on TV.

Shots of the crowds at the matches—adults, men and women, and children, boys and girls—make a point that too many seem to forget, ignore, or deny still. There is an audience—and a wide one—for women's sports, if they're actually made available and accessible. That was true in 1971, when more than 110,000 people filled a stadium in Mexico City, and it might be even truer now.

Those conclusions are mostly between the lines of Copa 71, but they're undeniably here to be made, witnessed, and proved. The story—of triumphs on the field and heartbreaks both on and, as the teams return home, off it—is first and foremost, which lets us see and makes the best case for the other arguments.

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