Hear Us Out: The MLS But With Women

With its breakout names such as Carlos Vela and Landon Donovan, and the acquisition of other late-stage superstars such as David Beckham, Major League Soccer has been gaining steam over the past decade. But while the world of U.S. men’s professional sports has grown ever larger, we must ask ourselves: where are the women? While this might be a controversial or even distasteful idea for some, we here at Sports Riot can no longer remain quiet: it’s time for an all-female version of the MLS.

Women are all around us. Many of them are our wives, our mothers or our daughters. But how many of them can we call our professional soccer players? Unfortunately, young women who show any promise in soccer skills are all too often swooped up to be Vice Presidential nominees or recruited into the highly lucrative juggernaut that is the WNBA. What about those unachieved soccer dreams?

We ask you all to picture a future where not just men, but women too, kick a ball around in front of hundreds of fans. Picture the typical stoic all-star MLS team captain in their 30s, only this time it’s a woman leading the team, her close-cropped purple hair shining under the bright lights. This purely speculative fantasy might seem like an amusing thought experiment, but if American sports gets its act together, it could become reality.

And once we have Women’s Major League Soccer, what’s to stop us from selecting the most talented of these women to compete as a ‘Team USA’ against all of the other best women from around the world? Kind of like a World Cup, but with women? Of course, we couldn’t call it a World “Cup” since only men wear those, but maybe they could play for the World Sports Bra, or perhaps the World B-Cup or C-Cup, whichever is more empowering. And with the can-do attitude of the modern American woman, who knows? Unlike the men, this fictional national team might even win.