Female footballers around the world have been fighting many reputation battles and facing significant resistance from those inside and outside the sport, epitomized by the rarity of support from the sport’s own global governing framework.
By the early 1970s, the Football Association of England had ended a five-decade blockade on women’s football.
The first unofficial Women’s International Cup was held in 1970 in Italy and some time later, every other unofficial world tournament was held in Mexico, attracting more than 100,000 spectators, but none of these competitions were supported by FIFA.
A novice footballer, Wille had joined the NFF in 1976, at the same time as she had given her good will to women’s football in the country, and was no longer prepared to accept the status quo.
“I said ‘we must have a women’s world championship and we have to be participants in the Olympic Games,'” she defined.
Her NFF colleagues decided she should attend the FIFA congress being held in Mexico City (incidentally, the same city that hosted the unofficial 1971 world tournament) and build a statement about women’s football.
“They thought it would mean more if a woman did it and not a man,” Wille said. She didn’t hesitate.
However, when the morning of the pronunciation arrived, all the nerves had taken over him.
“When I arrived at the place where it would happen, there were only men, apart from the translators,” she said.
To construct a pronunciation, it was necessary to take a card and wait for it to be decided. A dissenting woman had once spoken at a FIFA congress.
Wille, 4 feet 10 inches tall, was known at the level, but got off to an inauspicious start when she was too sharp to reach the microphone.
“So someone had to come help me and then I started talking.”
