I KNOW A SOUND IS STILL A SOUND AROUND NO ONE///
WOLF KINO.
JUNE 2025.
THE metro from Mitte to Neukölln was muggy, much like the humid outside. My friend and I held all our limbs out and away from our bodies so as not to encourage yet another sweat stain clinging to our shirts.
We were on our way to Wolf Kino, where we would watch a documentary about the women’s world cup held in Mexico, across both Mexico City and Guadalajara in 1971.
Taking place in August and September between the qualifying countries of Denmark, Italy, England, Argentina, Mexico and France.
Neither of us had heard of the event before the previous evening when deciding to go to see a movie. The documentary, ‘Copa 71’ had been released in September 2023, nearly two years before and neither of us had heard of it then either.
> Were we not meant to know.
PRODUCED by Venus and Serena Williams, a Sports Illustrated article reads that the film would feature ‘never before seen’ video footage of the football the six women’s teams played.
Walking from the metro, we step into the wonderfully chilled cinema, goosebumps running up our arms in relief from the heat. We take our seats in one of their two screens, alone but for one other spectator. And the 1999 women’s world cup winner Brandi Chastain came on the screen. The directors of the documentary had set up a screen for her with some of this never before seen footage and Chastain expressed surprise as she had never heard of ‘Copa 71’ either.
From here, the documentary follows women’s football as it was leading up to the non FIFA affiliated 1971 Cup. It would then go on to show that these six national teams got together to play the cup in Mexico despite having no institutional backing from the likes of FIFA. And the focal point of the documentary would be the interviews with women who had played on these national teams as they recalled with vivid detail their experiences playing football in this Cup.
> Why do you play football?
> Why would you like to know?
EXPERTS called into the documentary to give comment explain very well the turmoil women’s football was in, with relation to the organisation FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association). According to their Britannica definition, FIFA is the body which ‘sets the rules of play,’ and ‘establishes standard for refereeing and coaching,’ all while organising the ‘World Cup (both men and women’s).’ Being such a pervasive organisation in football, FIFA hardly even needs introduction. However, it is useful to consider how FIFA is defined now when viewing it within the context of its past actions. The FIFA of 1971 did not at all organise the women’s world cup taking place in Mexico, the documentary displaying how FIFA greatly opposed this tournament.
When Peter Bradshaw reviewed ‘Copa 71’ for The Guardian in March 2024, he wrote that nothing FIFA or the UK’s football organisations did was ever so ‘spiteful, sexist and dishonest’ as the way they treated the Women’s World Cup of 1971 held ‘outside FIFA’s pompous auspices.’
Women’s football was unsurprisingly under attack throughout the twentieth century. The documentary highlights the ban from professional pitches that England enforced against women in 1921, the mockery that women across Europe and Latin America – where the documentary focuses upon – faced when playing the game.
And working from a year old memory, the documentary explained the further crackdown on women’s football which the European teams experienced when returning from the games in September 1971. The former teammates who were interviewed recalled not receiving any praise or attention like they had in Mexico, just an honest wish for it to appear like it had never happened at all.
AND though this was all interesting in itself, what captivated me the most were what the women interviewed truly remembered.
Those who stuck out most to my friend and I were the two Danish players, Ann Stengard and Birte Kjems who interviewed together and said several times when asked about the sexism they faced that they just ‘liked football so we played football.’ Commenting on the games fifty years later, their recollection was level and warm.
The Italian team’s dynamic came through vividly in the interviews given by three players in particular. The intense Italian player Elena Schiavo – who had enthralled her entire team – spoke about her relationship with football, her recollection of the game. Two other Italian players spoke at length about this intense teammate of theirs, about how her body was so powerful, how you simply knew when she was angry with you, and about how tough she was to deal with if they lost a game. They recalled how she could make you feel special. Remembering their relationships with each other so clearly after the time that had gone by.
The Mexican teammate Silvia Zaragoza laughed when the crew told her how the Argentinian teammates they interviewed were still bitter about Mexico winning their game. Thinking they were favoured as the cup was played in their home country, Zaragoza remembered the uproar Argentina’s loss caused with clarity.
Each of them spoke about how it felt travelling to as far away as Mexico, the surprise and excitement of being in front of such monumental crowds.
A PERSPECTIVE pushed throughout the documentary was that nobody knew about these games happening in Mexico. That nobody since has learned about them.
Just how many people went is unknown as the numbers vary greatly between vastly different sources, the Sports Illustrated and Guardian articles mention different numbers, the Wikipedia page and others like University of Manchester’s ‘Women in Sport’ page also differ.
Taking each number into account, it looks like anywhere from 90,000 to 112,500 spectators were at the final game in the Azteca Stadium, Mexico City.
When contrasting the tone of the documentary, this was a surprising fact to find out particularly when taking into account the passion of the women involved and their recollection of the games during their interviews.
This brought up several questions for me:
> Who actually gets to decide what is ‘revealed’ in history?
> Did the tenth of a million spectators forget about it?
> Did the teams forget?
> Was this event not ‘revealed’ by the women who played time and time again in their personal lives?
TAKING this difference in narratives between the actual women who experienced the games and the documentary filmmakers, I felt compelled to consider the method the documentarians used to collect the women’s stories. Using interviews to extract their memories I would consider an oral history collection.
Oral histories can be here defined as histories which are often collected through an interview format. These interviews are recorded and in the context of historical collection will often be transcribed for use in historical research. Oral history practice is particularly useful in collecting the stories and memories of those who would not leave a written record and for this reason is a useful way to engage in women’s histories.
Six years after the women had played the Azteca and Jalisco stadiums in Mexico, the Women’s Studies journal Frontiers (University of Nebraska) published their Summer 1977 issue on the topic of women’s oral histories.
And on a packed train with the sun glaring at me from behind [May 2026] I read Sherra Gluck’s introductory article to this issue. Squinting my eyes, it introduced the tone of the issue and reminded me of the questions I had regarding ‘Copa 71.’ Gluck’s introduction is important to this Frontiers issue as she provides context to what the reader should be thinking about while they go through the other articles, much like how the documentarians’ perspective impressed upon the Copa 71 viewers.
> What do we want people to remember?
> How do we like to frame things?
GLUCK’S What’s So Special About Women? Women’s Oral History pointed out the ‘reciprocal affirmation’ which the interviewer bestows upon the interviewee when collecting oral histories. This recognises that the interviewer’s interest is the axis from which the interview will hang. She further goes on to state that an interviewer, though inevitably biased themselves, ought to put effort into balancing what they personally think is important about the women and what the women themselves think is interesting.
The women, at the time of the interview, had aged fifty years since their games. And despite this time that had passed they spoke of their experience from memory with assuredness.
From this I struggled to believe that everyone in their lives did not know about the remarkable sport they played. It feels unimaginable and untrue that the hundred thousand attendees had never uttered a word about what they had seen in August and September of 1971. That the stories of watching the women play had not been spoken aloud and made into memories for person after person. From attendee to rememberees.
It even seems reasonable to believe that those at the time who were against organised women’s sports raged about the 1971 Women’s World Cup taking place, and that those who they raged to would have remembered this.
This importance which the documentary placed on official institutions like FIFA’s recognition of the world cup felt displaced.
> Do we only value histories written down?
> Do we only value histories written down by institutions?
THIS documentary surely introduced many more than myself and Brandi Chastain to the games, and brought up several questions about what is valued in history and what is desired from historical sources.
>Who we want our historical source to be for one: Would you rather listen to someone who went to the game or wait until it is recognised by FIFA?
>Where we want our historical information to come from: Would it be more inspiring seeing it in the FIFA museum or is experience through memory good enough?
‘ORAL HISTORY is not, nor should it be, the province of experts,’ Gluck wrote, and that ‘anyone who can listen to the women who are speaking can do oral history.’
THE INTERVIEWS were striking in the documentary. Leaving a viewer helpless but to notice the teammates’ experiences not purely in their struggles against patriarchal institutions and societal conceptions, but looking at them holistically. They articulated their desires – for each other, for the game they were playing; Their interactions with the people they met through the game.
In many ways they spoke the most, asking loudly: Who exactly was this history unspoken for?
The resources I used:
My memory the very primary source.
Copa 71 (2023).
Matthew Hall for The Guardian (8 September 2023) https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/sep/08/copa-71-when-112500-fans-packed-out-the-unofficial-womens-world-cup-final
Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian (6 March 2024)
Madison Williams for Sports Illustrated (19 February 2023) https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2023/02/19/serena-venus-williams-produce-film-1971-womens-soccer-world-cup
Britannica Online ‘FIFA’ https://www.britannica.com/topic/Federation-Internationale-de-Football-Association (As of 16 June 2026)
Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Summer 1977 Vol. 2, No. 2 ‘What’s So Special Abour Women? Women’s Oral History’ by Sherna Gluck (1977). Accessed via JStor.
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