Megan Rapinoe hugging Alex Morgan is a physical representation of my feelings toward this tournament.
Megan Rapinoe hugging Alex Morgan is a physical representation of my feelings toward this tournament. Elsa / Getty Images

Today's the day! The Women's World Cup in France is starting! The U.S. Women's National Team (USWNT) are defending World Cup champs and they're poised to successfully defend that title. And while the prospect of winning is definitely fueling my WWC fire, the women's soccer landscape as a whole feels fucking energized.

Maybe that's because the USWNT sued U.S. Soccer for gender discrimination on National Women's Day this year. Maybe it's because FIFA caved and "significantly raised" the prize money for the women's tournament (they doubled it so it now totals $30 million. The prize money in the men's tournament last year was $400 million). It also feels significant that Nike finally made women their own soccer kits instead of derivations of male uniforms. Yeah, that was a thing.

Really, though, the U.S. team is stocked with talent. They're fun to watch and easy to believe in—how could they not be with a bench 10-goal scorers deep? On top of that, out of 24 countries, there are six that are playing in their first ever World Cup—Jamaica, Scotland, Chile, Thailand, Cameroon, and the Netherlands.

This momentum—all those things I referenced, plus the fact that Nike is devoting more resources toward women's sports—is making me believe in a stronger future for women's soccer and women's sports as a whole.


Remember 1999? Los Angeles? Brandi Chastain's goal and that controversial jersey-over-the-head bra-baring celebration?

That emotion and cacophonous excitement from the crowd fueled a new generation of female soccer players. It made parents grab their kids and enroll them in their nearest American Youth Soccer Organization League.* That's how I found myself, at four years old, in soccer socks that went up to my thighs playing for my first team, the Pink Flamingos. Soccer became the bedrock for the next 14 years of my life.

But enough about that. Let's get to the soccer, man. The first match was today at 12:00 p.m. PST. It was France, the World Cup hosts, against South Korea. France's Les Bleus were heavily favored to win this one and, likely, the rest of their fairly weak group. Sure enough, they dominated against South Korea, winning 4-0. Wendie Renard, a center defender, scored two goals off of corner kicks. There was a third but it was recalled due to VAR—Video Assistant Referee, new technology that female players are getting introduced to for the first time during this tournament. France is expected to breeze through to the Round of 16. The Los Angeles Times has them pegged for making it at least to the Quarter Finals. CBS is pretty confident they'll be playing in the championship match. I guess we'll see. Notably, the last time the USWNT lost a game was in August 2017. That was to France.

There are a variety of ways you can watch the games in the tournament. Here's a schedule for you. I'll be streaming it here. If that fails, apparently FuboTV is a good place to watch via free trial (as long as you make sure to cancel it after the cup). I'm also counting on some illegal Reddit streams to crop up somewhere on the Internet.

Tomorrow, I'm thinking of planting myself in Atlantic Crossing from 9 a.m. until noon to watch the games tomorrow (not the one that airs at 6 a.m. though, I'm no masochist). Here's a list of places to watch the matches.

The Americans don't play their first match until Tuesday, June 11. They'll be facing off against Thailand in their first group match. They're expected to make a clean sweep of things there. If we don't seem them in the finals, something will have gone drastically wrong like glitch-in-the-Matrix or 2016-election wrong. I'll have some more on the WSNT closer to the match. Until then, there will be plenty of soccer to tide us over.


*or whatever your region's equivalent was