In August 1971, more than 100,000 football fans packed Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium for a historic tournament. Teams from England, France, Denmark, Argentina and Italy flew in for 21 days of matches alongside Mexico’s national team, while eager sponsors lined up for a piece of the action.
The players, received a hero’s welcome wherever they went, they may as well have been the Rolling Stones.
They were, in fact, a group of around 100 women, many of them teenagers, taking part in a pioneering unofficial Women’s World Cup. Just as quickly as they tasted fame, it was snatched away as the tournament was all but erased from football history.
As far as FIFA is concerned, the women’s games officially launched with the 1991 World Cup in China: Football’s international governing body still doesn’t acknowledge the Mexico tournament.
“Imagine if you played in front of 100,000 people and you’re still told, No, this didn’t happen to you. The idea that women’s football did not progress because women didn’t want it is a myth that’s been percolating for a long time, along with the idea that women’s football was never commercial, that women didn’t want to play and that women weren’t any good”
COPA 71 was organised by the Italy-headquartered Federation of Independent European Female Football (FIEFF), and was set up in Mexico because it had just hosted the men’s 1970 FIFA World Cup. The existing infrastructure of the Azteca stadium and enthusiastic support of local sponsors made a women’s tournament not only appealing, but commercially savvy. There had also been a mini women’s World Cup event in Italy in 1970, set up by FIEFF. It was held twenty years before the first official FIFA women’s world cup.
Yet as the event came together, FIFA tried to prevent it from happening at all. While it did go ahead, and proved to be a smashing success, its legitimacy was undermined from the start, and the event failed to receive the international acclaim and attention it deserved.
Qualifying
The 1971 tournament featured five different qualifying groups, four in Europe and one in the Americas, where Argentina was the only team included in the initial draw.
Italy qualified for the main tournament against England and Austria, but England was later given a place in the finals after all teams from one of the European groups (Spain, Switzerland and West Germany) withdrew from the tournament.
Similarly, France qualified by defeating the Netherlands after the withdrawal of Czechoslovakia and Denmark qualified by default after both Belgium and Sweden withdrew.
The Americas round was not played and Argentina qualified by default, as neither potential opponents, Chile and Costa Rica, fulfilled the necessary requirements for the matches to be played.
Some of the qualifiers and finals games were officially recognised, for example, the Italian Football Federation classes all of the 1971 Italy games as full internationals.
The match between France and The Netherlands on April 1971 was the first FIFA-recognised women’s international match: it was played in Hazebrouck in front of 1,500 spectators. However, players from both teams were unaware of the nature of the match; the French players did not know they had qualified for the tournament until their coach told them after the game, and the Dutch team thought they were playing a friendly match against Stade de Reims (which provided most of the French players) to prepare for the official match in May.
A protest was filled by the Dutch organisation in charge of the team, to no avail.
The tournament
Tournament sponsors Martini & Rossi, an Italian multinational alcoholic beverage company primarily associated with the Martini brand of vermouth and also with sparkling wine. paid for each team’s travel, accommodation and kits. Goalposts were painted in pink hoops and stadium staff wore pink clothes, in order to try to appeal to women and families.
In addition to an economic support to the event, Martini & Rossi decided to award, on the model of the Jules Rimet Cup, a special trophy called Trofeo Martini & Rossi. The golden cup was inspired by the famous sculpture Nike of Samothrace, or Winged Victory, displayed in the Louvre Museum.
The players of the tournament team would be given a copy of the trophy while the original was kept by FIEFF.
Ticket prices ranged from 30 pesos (£1.40) to 80 pesos (£3.70). The tournament mascot was Xochitl, “a young girl in a football kit”.
The opening match of the finals, Mexico–Argentina (15 August) had a reported attendance of 100,000 at the Azteca Stadium.
An estimated 80,000 people attended the Mexico–England group game. The World Cup final, Mexico–Denmark, had an estimated attendance of 110,000, a world record for women’s sport.
This figure was reported both at the time and surviving footage supports the estimates. The football record at the Azteca Stadium was three years earlier, 119,853 at the men’s Mexico–Brazil match in July 1968.
The hosts Mexico qualified for the final after defeating Italy in the semi-finals. Two days before the final, the Mexican press noted the players for Mexico were unhappy they had not been receiving economic support for participating in the tournament. The Mexican team threatened to skip the final but gave up their two million peso demand and the game went forward as scheduled.
Denmark won the tournament after beating Mexico 3–0 in the final, featuring a hat trick by 15-year-old Susanne Augustesen.
The victorious Danish team were treated to a celebratory reception at Copenhagen Town Hall upon their return from the tournament. However, due to the unofficial nature of the tournament, it is not recognised by the Danish Football Association.
Squads
The Lost Lionesses were the first women’s football team to represent England at a major international tournament, the 1971 Women’s World Cup in Mexico. Being unofficial, unrecognised and disbanded shortly after their return to England, the team was largely overlooked for nearly 50 years, first gaining widespread media coverage in England in 2019.
The team called themselves the British Independents, but were billed as “Inglaterra” (Spanish for “England”) during the competition.
Patricia Gregory watched the victory parade for Tottenham Hotspur’s 1967 FA Cup victory and wondered why there was no women’s team; sending this question to a local newspaper, it was printed and received responses from girls wanting to join a team.
Harry Batt was trying to start women’s football teams. Whilst Gregory was a young woman seeking to play, Batt was an older man inspired by women’s football in Italy.
Batt was a bus driver at the time he founded Chiltern Valley Ladies in Luton, but was a linguist who had been injured fighting against Francisco Franco’s Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War before being part of the Merchant Navy in World War II.
Both Gregory and Batt were involved in the WFA, which rejected professionalism of the women’s game and was unimpressed with Batt taking Chiltern Valley and others to Europe to play in competitions, in part because they were in the process of founding the first official England women’s national football team.
Batt’s teams in international competition adopted the British Independents name, and did not wear the Three Lions, to appease the WFA.
Batt scouted players from his own team as well as others around South East England to form international representative sides that played in FIEFF European football competitions, as well as the 1970 Women’s World Cup (itself an all-European FIEFF-organised competition) in Italy.
There were fourteen players in the team that went to the 1971 Women’s World Cup, most of them teenagers without work obligations over the summer and so able to travel. England’s team included 13-year-old Leah Caleb, 14-year-old Gill Sayell and 15-year-old Chris Lockwood; their captain was 19-year-old Carol Wilson and they were accompanied by referee Pat Dunn as a chaperone and trainer.
They were received very well in Mexico, barraged by fans from their arrival and needing a police escort to the Estadio Azteca. Here, they played to a reported 90,000 capacity crowd when they lost to Mexico; the host team was also fond of them, throwing a farewell party.
Though the coverage of the team in England was far inferior to that in Mexico, the MP for Luton suggested injuries they sustained should be investigated, with local newspapers variously writing about the rough play of their opponents and the popularity of the team among the Mexicans.
When the team returned to England, many of the players were given suspensions, subsequently suppressing their experiences with the Lost Lionesses for many years. Batt was banned from football and his teams disbanded, something which his son said broke his spirit entirely; he became introverted and did not speak about football again. The FIEFF was shortly after banned by FIFA
12 members of England’s 14-woman squad reunited in June 2019 for the first time since the tournament.
15-year-old Susanne Augustesen scored a hat-trick for Denmark as they beat Mexico 3–0 in the final. Augustesen was honoured by the mayor of her hometown, Holbæk.
Group stage
Group 1
Results
15th August — Mexico 3–1 Argentina
21st August — Argentina 4–1 England
22nd August — Mexico 4–0 England
Final Group Positions
Mexico: Pld — 2: Won — 2: Drawn — 0: Lost — 0: F — 7 A — 1 Pts.- 4
Argentina: Pld — 2: Won — 1: Drawn — 0: Lost — 1: F — 5 A — 4 Pts.- 2
England: Pld — 2: Won — 0: Drawn — 0: Lost — 2: F — 1 A — 8 Pts.- 0
Group 2
Results
18th August — Denmark 3–0 France
21st August — France 0–1 Italy
22nd August — Denmark 1–1 Italy
Final Group Positions
Denmark: Pld — 2: Won — 1: Drawn — 1: Lost — 0: F — 4 A — 1 Pts.- 3
Italy: Pld — 2: Won — 1: Drawn — 1: Lost — 0: F — 2 A — 1 Pts.- 3
France: Pld — 2: Won — 0: Drawn — 0: Lost — 2: F — 0 A — 4 Pts.- 0
Semi-finals
28th August — Denmark 5–0 Argentina
29th August — Mexico 2–1 Italy
Third place play-off
4th September — Italy 4–0
Final
5th September — Denmark 3–0 Mexico
Fifth place play-off
A match for fifth place was played between the two teams which did not advance to the semi-finals.
28th August — England 2–3 France
A documentary is in Cinemas from March 8th which tells the tournament story.
Later tournaments
The tournament was later followed by the series of Mundialito tournaments throughout the 1980s, mostly held in Italy and FIFA’s Women’s Invitation Tournament in China in 1988 before the first FIFA Women’s World Cup in China in 1991.
