Saskia Webber was part of the United States squad that won the 1999 Women’s World Cup. Twenty-five years later, she’s still growing the game.
For Saskia Webber, it wasn’t all about soccer in the early days. The former United States Women’s National Team goalkeeper grew up in an era where the beautiful game was still trying to find a true ‘Green Card’ to the country.
“There were no academies; there weren’t tons of clubs or opportunities. So it was more that at the weekend, get your kids out, let them run around. So I did. I wasn’t the chubby kid that they threw in goal back in the day. I was just really athletic.”
Very athletic indeed. Webber was talented across the board. There was baseball, tennis, basketball, lacrosse – which vied with football as a pathway - and even bodybuilding. Webber adds that she was “fearless”. Her passion for the goalkeeping ID within a team was enough for her to pull the gloves on.
The Princeton-born star pupil didn’t lack confidence. There was an acceleration through the phases to the USWNT too. Webber admits that “I was good at the position. Back then, we had the Olympic Development Program (she went on to be part of the team that won gold at the Atlanta ‘96) and I played on a club team. When I got asked to join the step up in age to our U-17 regional team, I was on the youth national team radar.”
The Collegiate pathway was key. Rutgers University has a rich heritage of producing top athletes – Alexei Lalas is among its former alumni – and Webber made her mark, one that is etched in history.
She played in four consecutive East Coast Athletic Conference Tournaments, securing three ECAC Championships in the early 1990s. In her senior year, she was named the country’s top goalkeeper. Her school record of 34 shutouts stood for 17 years.
“With the college system, first of all, you develop as a person. That experience of being away from home for the first time and being on your own, whether it’s doing your laundry, organising your schedule. It’s part of growing.”
Preparation for a life outside is a story that became problematic for her and many peers although she has former teammates who are now putting on gloves of a different kind in medical surgery.
The quality of the football and the competition in-college was also a key tool in the springboard to the national team. After graduation, she eventually became number one but ultimately lost this role to Briana Scurry. In true goalkeepers' union spirit, Webber was never the one to show displeasure, whatever her desire to remain as the go-to choice.
Webber has spoken glowingly in the past about her 175-cap colleague. Scurry played on her first soccer team at the age of 12, a boys’ team, because there were no girls’ soccer leagues. They both knew how to break barriers.
“Bry and I, we played together for 10 years on the team, simply
because we had such a good connection, and we supported each other so well. I think the support that we always had for each other meant that we lifted each other up. We had such a good core of such a solid group, whether it was Tracy Noonan in there as well, and then you have Mary Harvey. There was never that sense of, oh, she’s playing, I’m not, so I’m not going to support her. You can’t succeed if you have that”, she explained.
What Webber needed was competitive games. It wasn’t until the Millennium that the first women’s professional soccer league in the United States was set up. After all, the MLS’s first draft was only in 1996, two years after the States hosted the men’s World Cup.
“There was no place to play. And so after I graduated, it was like, what do you do now? I went to Japan where the best players in the world were and there were a bunch of Americans there as well. And it was full-on professional for me. I had friends that went to Sweden to play pro, but they were, like, working in the shop during the day and stuff. But there I was on a full salary, And it was great. It kept my career alive, and put me on the ‘99 team.”
Webber herself did not play minutes on that World Cup-winning team although her presence was more than felt via red, white and blue hair streaks. It was the home tournament that broke the mainstream and changed the dial for women’s football.
Within months of the victory over China in front of 90,000 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, WUSA, the first fully paid women’s professional soccer league, was founded. Webber was a founding member and played the inaugural season for the Philadelphia Charge.
“I think the difference between the ‘95 World Cup and the ‘99ers is just apples and oranges. I mean, we were playing in ‘95 in Sweden to get bronze and there were fewer people than your average NWSL game. The Rose Bowl four years later was crazy, and it was so much fun, but we knew at the time that a change had happened. We had to grab hold of it and keep pushing it forward.”
America’s female soccer team were suddenly Sports Illustrated’s Sportswomen of the Year. The image of Brandi Chastain on her knees felt like the Chloe Kelly moment of the Euros.
Despite the gravitas of that achievement, there are still harsh realities holding up progress a quarter of a century later. This filters into both American men and women’s goalkeeping which at its height had four starting goalkeepers in the Premier League. Friedel, Howard, Keller, and company now seem like a lost generation.
“The focus on the development of the goalkeepers is so paramount in Europe now, and we still don’t put that emphasis on it here,” said Webber who is now a broadcasting host for the NWSL.
“Two of the top goalkeepers here are [Ann-Katrin] Berger and [Almuth] Schult from Germany. I coached at a club here, and I was getting paid nothing to be the director of goalkeeping. I think there’s a fundamental disconnect in the development across the board in the United States. There’s no pathway.” Who’s going to be the next Alyssa Naeher?
The women’s game is still very much the domain of men in key management and coaching roles. At the beginning of November, there were only three female bosses among the 14 clubs in the NWSL. Money is one of the obstacles together with prevailing and deep-rooted attitudes.
“Where was the set-up for you to succeed as a coach when you retired? It wasn’t there. I hate to go back to money, but it wasn’t there. You had to find something else to do, which takes female goalkeepers, female coaches, players that would be coaches, or just coaches in general, away from the sport.”
One of the knock-on effects of developing infrastructure is a perceived drop-off in the standard of goalkeeping. Webber baulks at the tropes directed at women in the position.
“I think there’s no place for it," said the 53-year-old. “Don’t talk to me about goal size. I had a goalkeeper at UCLA, Idalia Serrano, who was 5ft 5 inches, and the key for me was to figure out things positionally so she could use her athleticism to cover the amount of ground my other goalkeeper at 6’1 could cover. And that’s on me or the goalkeeper coach more widely. It’s not about ability in the traditional sense."
Webber is glowing about new USWNT boss Emma Hayes and her approach to the whole spirit and structure of the international process. Past and present can thrive together. “We had our 25th anniversary for the ‘99 World Cup winning team and she sat us down in a room for three hours with the current team, the Olympic team, and we had a Q and A. We all talked and we all got to know each other. That sisterhood goes on.”
The formation of Angel City FC in Los Angeles is very much the indirect birthchild of the USWNT legacy. Webber is one of multiple high-profile female-led co-owners of the franchise, including 14 former national players.
Although the team is in its infancy, it has been valued as the most lucrative women’s sports team globally. Webber was moved to ensure players are not lost after kicking their last professional ball. It was a mission to do things differently and challenge the inequity the women’s game always faces in comparison with their male counterparts.
“We have developed Players 22 Future, giving grants to retired players who are trying to start businesses. Say if they want to become a coach or a general manager for example. We’ve started that program within Angel City, and now the league is gradually absorbing it too with seminars and stuff like that.”
Is there one piece of advice that she could tell her younger self and those that follow her?
“You know, goalkeeping takes a certain type of person. Don’t get bogged down in getting scored on. Act as if you know it doesn’t bother you. Whatever you do on the field resonates throughout the whole team.”
That’s the kind of body and mind armour that will resonate with goalkeepers everywhere.
