Fatalism can be a fan’s best friend. When the United States’ women’s team began this World Cup, I wanted the best to transpire, but my mind kept warning me that the team was destined for the worst. It was painfully evident that the squad wasn’t well-coached and that injuries to crucial players left it unable to surmount bad tactics. From the opening game, I watched the rest of the tournament in search of another nation that I could adopt as my own if the U.S. flamed out.
Spain caught my eye, with its intricate passing and stylish domination of the ball. And as an Anglophile, I was intrigued by England, until its star Lauren James impetuously sunk her cleats into the backside of a fallen Nigerian player, Michelle Alozie—and the English team rushed to soft-pedal the offense. But now that the U.S. are out of the World Cup, there’s one nation that every neutral fan of goodwill should fervently support, because of both its electric style and all that its players have struggled to overcome. That team is Colombia.
Although it’s easy to laud the progress of the women’s game—and the success of the U.S. women in their struggle for equal pay—many countries still treat their female players appallingly. And Colombia is arguably the most egregious documented example.
We know much of this because of the bravery of the country’s midfielder Daniela Montoya. During the 2015 Women’s World Cup, her team qualified for the round of 16, an incredible achievement for women’s soccer in Colombia, which was still nascent. Her teammates didn’t just fail to receive equal pay; they reportedly received no pay at all, merely a bit of help covering expenses. When Montoya complained to the press, her country’s federation denied her a spot on the Summer Olympics squad in 2016. She later brandished audio clips of a Colombian soccer official purportedly explaining that she was punished for having had the temerity to open her mouth.
Such wage theft is rampant in the Colombian game. One women’s team, Atlético Huila, won South America’s continental club championship, the Copa Libertadores. The players were told that they would collectively receive about $55,000 for their triumph. But the squad’s winnings were apparently paid instead to a businessman who financed the team. And like Montoya, the player who brought these complaints to the media was left off the roster of the national team, even as the pressure she helped apply forced the club to finally give the women their promised reward.
These incidents only add to the litany of official acts of disrespect: Players have complained that the national federation has made them pay for their own international flights and wouldn’t even buy them new jerseys. One powerful owner of a Colombian club, who also served in the nation’s senate, once described the women’s game as a “petri dish of lesbianism.”
It gets worse. The technical director of the U-17 national team, which represents Colombia in international youth tournaments, allegedly abused the girls in his squad. According to allegations leveled in 2019, he touched these teens inappropriately, propositioned them, and entered their hotel rooms without their consent. (Global Sport Matters, a project of Arizona State University, has recounted this in an excellent report.) Again, the players who spoke up were frozen out of the national team. The technical director agreed to a plea bargain for admitting to a reduced charge but escaped any prison time.
Despite all that, at this year’s World Cup, the Colombia women deservedly beat Germany, the No. 2–ranked team in the world. They have just eliminated Jamaica, advancing to the quarterfinals, where they will play a depleted English squad on Saturday.
The thrilling heart of the Colombian team is 18-year-old attacker Linda Caicedo, the revelation of this tournament, now frequently hailed as having the potential to be one the greatest players in the history of the game. She can beat a swarm of defenders on the dribble or scythe a defense open with a line-breaking pass. (Her goal against Germany was an impeccable display of footwork and is one of the best in the competition so far.)
Even if she wasn’t so immensely talented, she would be enthralling on the basis of her biography alone. At age 15, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer that required surgery. Despite her ailment and age, she continued criticizing the Colombian federation, her employer, for its poor treatment of the team. Her skills are so evidently extraordinary that the Spanish superclub Real Madrid transferred her into its rapidly improving women’s side. Still, with Caicedo’s medical history, a sense of her fragility is ever-present. Last week, before Colombia’s game with Germany, a video captured her suddenly collapsing in the middle of practice, laying face down in the grass, with medics rushing to her attention. The team’s official explanation was fatigue, but the episode captured the combination of sublime perfection and its contingency that make Caicedo such a sympathetic and ultimately irresistible protagonist.
What’s perhaps most exciting about Colombia’s performance is how it has connected with fans. The traveling Colombian contingent in Australia and New Zealand is one of the largest and loudest at the tournament. And that is an achievement unto itself: The women have succeeded in winning over their compatriots, despite the obstructions of owners and officials they have encountered on their way. That makes them, in a sense, the true heirs to the U.S. women, who in their prime, also changed public opinion by dint of both their courageous activism and their excellence on the pitch. Americans, embrace the Colombian team as your own.