Editor’s note: The following excerpt is from “The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport,” by Andrés Martinez (April 2, 2026, Bloomsbury Publishing)

Summer of 1999 (Giants Stadium, New Jersey): Julie Foudy, the gifted and thoughtful midfielder who would go on to become a gifted and thoughtful sportscaster, podcaster, and author, described the moment when she visited one of our classes at ASU and recorded one of our Great Game Lab Set Piece conversations:

“First game against Denmark of the Women’s World Cup. We had been trying to sell it to big stadiums and convince FIFA like this is the way we should go. And we had journalists and FIFA representatives telling us we were crazy. You shouldn’t do it. No one’s going to come. It’s going to be an empty stadium. So, Andrés, you can imagine our excitement when we get stuck in traffic trying to get to that game, and we have no idea why there’s traffic. Then we realize, oh my gosh! It’s because they’re coming to our game. What. And then we walk out of the tunnel. And it’s like the perfect movie scene, you know. Tunnel. You see the light at the end of the tunnel, which is the field. You walk out, and the whole place gets on its feet, you know, and they said, it’s the second largest crowd at the time, besides the pope … because, the pope.”

My mom and I were at the end of that tunnel, with tens of thousands of other fans, cheering our heads off. Mom had given me........

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