Copa 71

Women’s football is the fastest-growing sport in the world, with attendances in the Women’s Champions League each year surpassing the previous. Since 2018/19, the average attendance at Women’s Champions League games has doubled, and last season there were more record crowds, including for the final between Barcelona and Lyon in Bilbao. Given this record growth, you can’t help but wonder where the sport would be today had it received the backing a group of pioneering players deserved following a groundbreaking tournament in Mexico 53 years ago. 

Towards the end of the documentary Copa 71, Argentinian Elba Selva chokes up as she reflects on the direction modern women’s football has taken. “Nowadays, girls can play freely…” she remarks, before her voice trails off and her eyes fill with tears. Selva is one of the extraordinary women profiled in Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine’s 2023 documentary which tells the story of the 1971 unofficial Women’s World Cup held in Mexico. The event drew record crowds – the final between Denmark and Mexico, played at the iconic Azteca Stadium, is still the highest-attended women’s sporting event in history with 112,500 spectators – but was largely written out of the history books, as women’s football itself generally was at that time, for it was an era in which it was illegal in Italy and Brazil, and banned or actively discouraged in most other countries.