FIFA hadn’t noticed them yet, but they were already there. They dominated the ball with a skill only a woman with the vigor of her youth and the panache to overcome adversity could possess. Or they saved in front of goal and leaped above the height of their European opponents while the 110,000 souls who packed Azteca Stadium to see them play sent shivers through their bodies. It was 1971, in one of the largest cities in the world, in its most important football stadium. The final of the second Women’s World Cup in history took place and you, the Mexican players, were there. Although the World Cup game has not and will not be officially recognized by football’s highest authority, the history they have written represents a before and after in their country.
Few remember it and another handful know what happened. A young team of Mexican players competed at the 1970 Italy and 1971 Mexico Women’s World Cups. In the first tournament they came in third place; in the second game they finished second with a score of 3-0 against the Danish team at the Azteca Stadium, which broke its attendance record on the day of the final, 5 September, as one game was played exclusively by women. The Jalisco Stadium in Guadalajara was the other venue of this World Cup. Those weren’t easy years for anyone: the echoes of the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre could still be heard, and even closer the so-called Halconazo, that other massacre of students perpetrated by paramilitaries called Halcones. The Mexican government did everything it could to wash its face and hands clean, and made tremendous efforts to show the world that this was a country that began with modernity and development.
The country also hosted the 1968 Olympics – amid a hushed-up scandal because they were not canceled despite the student tragedy – and then, in June 1970, hosted the FIFA World Cup, which had world-moving players like Pelé crowned at the time to the greatest figure in world football.
Interest in sports increased. Mexicans were alert and excited that their country was the epicenter of international competitions that were as important as they were symbolic. This push served as fuel for the International and European Federation of Women’s Football, a private organization outside of and unaffiliated with FIFA – which does not recognize women’s sport as a professional activity – and agreed in 1970 and 1971 to merge the first two international matches between women’s football teams .
The forgotten pioneers of Mexican football
Alicia Vargas was dubbed La Pelé by the Italian press. A reporter who witnessed the Mexico team’s games in the 1970s described her in one of his articles after admiring the Mexican’s technique, speed and ability to score. Alicia Vargas, known as La Pelé, was the top scorer in that first World Cup game with five goals and is currently ranked as the third-best female soccer player of the 20th century in Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Soccer (CONCACAF).
Alicia Vargas, 1971 Women’s World Cup participant, and Azteca Stadium. Photo: Courtesy
Born in Ciudad Manuel Doblado, Guanajuato State, she competed in both Women’s World Cups when she was 16 and 17 years old, since she and her family had moved to Mexico City. “When we arrived in Italy and saw the physical condition of the opponents, we were scared, but we also said: ‘It doesn’t matter, we won’t wear them, we will play,'” he said in an interview with this newspaper . He also recalls how, with no support or resources, they debuted in Europe an improvised flag that a priest helped them make by cutting out an Aztec shield and pasting it onto an Italian flag for them to take to the field and sing could sing their national anthem. “We all shared the same ideology of doing everything on our part and putting everything into it,” she recalls.
Unlike Vargas, who has played with her brothers since childhood, Elvira Aracén had no idea that she would one day end up on a women’s soccer team. He was an athlete, he ran and jumped, he practiced different disciplines. He was born in Chontla in the state of Veracruz. I was already trained in education and fitness and thought football was only for men. She acted as a centre-forward and was a goalscorer during her preparation for the 1970 World Cup. She started out as a fitness coach, was also a goalkeeper and fought for the starting position for the team that would go to Italy: “I thought then: If you’re already there you have to be good,” she says.
Aracén only played a few minutes at that first World Cup, but when he returned he set about winning a place in the new team that would contest the following tournament, now at home. The path was full of challenges. “My family has always supported me, but there has been very strong criticism. What I remember most is that they yelled at us and that I considered the “refugees from the Metate” to be the most aggressive; They told us to go to the kitchen, wash the dishes, they told us to leave the room,” he recalls. “I really think if we hadn’t been young and rebellious, we wouldn’t have put up with it.”
Lourdes de la Rosa was an ardent admirer of the women’s team she watched on television in the 1970s. Living in a neighborhood with lots of boys and girls in Mexico City, she mastered the ball with both feet from an early age. She started playing in women’s teams at the age of 15, soccer has always been her greatest passion. He recalls that while watching the 1968 Olympics on TV, he told his mother that she would be important to his country’s sport, just like those who were on screen. Her father was her biggest fan and her mother refused to let her play a sport that she didn’t think was suitable for women.
Lourdes Constantino, soccer player at the 1971 Women’s World Cup. Courtesy
When he found out the women’s team was returning from a tour of South America to try out other players who would be taking part in the 1971 World Cup, he jumped in without a second thought. From a selection of around 300 women, only a dozen made it, from which they were selected for the final exams. De la Rosa still remembers the past week when he arrived at the concentration site by public transport, subway and bus. He does not forget coming home late on the last day of testing, a Sunday evening. He took a minibus and inside, on the radio, the names of the players who were being chosen for the new team that would compete in the World Cup in a few days could be heard.
Lulú de la Rosa, as her friends and family call her, fondly recalls this trip: “The moment I got into the Pesero, the driver left the radio on and said the names of the chosen ones and started saying, ‘ Now to the Old.’ Who will see them in a selection or at a World Cup? A woman next to him answered him and they started arguing. Lulu excitedly remarked that her name was on the list they just heard. All the people who travel to Iztapalapa on the same transport congratulated her. When he finally got home, the driver didn’t ask him for any money and wished him luck from afar with a forgiving look.
Decades passed before the Mexican players who played in both games received recognition beyond what they received from the fans during the games and from the love and hugs of their family and friends who accompanied them along the way . Antonio Moreno, director of the International Soccer Hall of Fame in Hidalgo state, says the first two generations selected to enter the institution “opened in 2011” were all men.
There is a committee made up of women and men from Mexico City and the interior of the country that, according to its criteria, selects and rewards those who qualify. Until 2013, it was the women of the commission who suggested putting female names on the list. “One woman was elected for 2013: the American Mia Ham was the first to stand by majority vote. In the second year it was decided that we would try to get someone from Mexico to come. Oddly enough, no woman entered. The winner of the women’s sector was Leonardo Cuéllar, who was the promoter and pioneer and the only one who cared that Mexico had a women’s team,” he says.
After several consecutive years, women from different countries were elected until 2018, when the Hall of Fame decided to honor from now on an international female footballer, but also a Mexican female footballer. The first person to come to public attention was María Eugenia La peque Rubio, one of those selected for the 1970 World Cup, which represented Mexico in Italy. And it was only in 2019 that Brazilian Sisleide Lima do Amor, known as Sissi, was shortlisted along with Alicia La Pelé Vargas. It was one of the first and very few official awards given to players from Mexico’s virtually forgotten teams. Only until 2017 was there a women’s league in the country.
The women’s soccer team that took part in the 1971 World Cup at Azteca Stadium. With kind approval
The loss to Denmark: a destructive rumor and a hiatus of almost 50 years
A week before the final at the Estadio Azteca against the Danish side, a rumor circulated in the media that the Mexican players were demanding two million pesos (almost $120,000) – partly in protest at the lack of support to get out there and play the final. None of the players learned who was responsible for spreading the echo of this bogus protest, but what happened from then affected the mood of the team.
Several nights before the final, they received calls from people supporting or complaining about them at the hotel where they were staying; also from the media, who wanted to clarify, deny or confirm what was already known. “The press said it and the same press was over us. They told us how we would ask if we were amateurs. And I said: If we’re amateurs, let the tickets come back. So why do they charge? We’re the ones on the show, we’re the ones playing, we’re the ones representing Mexico. Let the tickets come back!” recalls Alicia Vargas, who still doesn’t know how this could have happened to them just hours after the final at the Azteca.
They played a difficult game, “we did everything we shouldn’t have done”, they think back several decades after that game in which they lost three goals. However, the public has never let them down, it is said. In other scenarios, people would have slowly left the stadium, but the Mexican fans stayed until the end as the tall, blond Danes became champions for the second time. Despite their physical and moral defeat, the Mexicans always knew that they had gone as far as no other women’s team in the country before. They were certain that this could only be the beginning of a new form of victory for national women’s football.
In 2022, the Mexican Senate recognized the women who made up the teams that competed in the two World Cups. Elvira Aracén said at the time: “We are grateful that the Senate of the Republic has given us this recognition after more than 50 years, because we move with dignity, courage and good will in a sport that was only intended for men.” And it was not just a journey through a sport that has excluded her in many ways. In the memory of extraordinary women like Alicia Vargas, Elvira Aracén or Lulú de la Rosa, the memory of the desire to play football despite the inadequacies and lack of support lingers on. They were young and had everything before them and little to lose. It was like this.
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