TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 PIONEERS 4 CHAPTER 2 TAKING OVER 16 CHAPTER 3 GOING GLOBAL 26 CHAPTER 4 NEW WAVE 36 GLOSSARY 46 INDEX 47 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 47
CHAPTER 1 PIONEERS With 11 players on each side soccer requires great teamwork A truly great player can have a massive impact for a team however And throughout the history of women's soccer some superstars have stood especially tall The pioneers of women's soccer turned the game from an 4
1918 Women's soccer became briefly popular in the early 1900s afterthought to a mainstream sport Each generation of new players has emerged to take the game to the next level Soccer was still a young sport going into the 1900s Though people had long been playing soccer-like games many point to 1863 as the official beginning That's when men's soccer clubs from around England came together to set official rules Over the coming years the sport began to grow And by the 1920s one of the most popular teams in England was the Dick Kerr Ladies The team was made up of workers from a local munitions factory in Preston England With the country fighting in World War I 1914 the team proved to be a welcome distraction A crowd of 10,000 fans came out to see them play on Christmas Day in 1917 Eventually crowds reached five times that One of the big reasons for the growing fan interest was a teenage scoring sensation named Lily Parr Parr was just 15 when she joined the team in 1920 Yet with her powerful left-footed shot she quickly became a dangerous scorer She reportedly once shot the ball so hard that a male goalkeeper broke his arm trying to save it Parr scored routinely She tallied 43 goals in her first year with the team Fans across England were drawn to watch Parr and her team However the success would not last 5
