“Unsuitable for females”: Copa 71 and the story of the unofficial Women’s World Cup

In 1921, the Football Association told the public “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females”. Yet, 50 years later, an unofficial Women’s World Cup tournament went ahead in Mexico City. Despite threats of further fines and bans from FIFA, teams from England, France, Italy, Argentina, Denmark and Mexico arrived on their coaches, spilling out into the sunny Azteca Stadium where they were welcomed with warm enthusiasm by their hosts. 

With corporate sponsorship and an electric atmosphere generated by over 112,500 spectators, you might think that the tournament’s success would bring change to the sexist sporting establishment. But the joy of the occasion was matched by the harsh condemnation the players received from their local football associations and communities after they returned home, shaming and thus silencing all involved. 

Now, another half century on, documentary Copa 71 draws on the courage of the players to finally speak about their experience and tell this story. From how they built the trust of the players, to their discoveries in the archive, Rachel Ramsay, who co-directed the film with James Erskine, and producer/lead researcher Victoria Gregory tell us how it all went down.

What inspired you to delve into this particular aspect of women’s history?

Rachel Ramsay: As filmmakers, we’re always looking for a story that you feel can change the way that we see the world. When you pour a lot of resources, time and love into a project like this, you want to feel like it’s worthwhile. It just so happens that this story is one of the most extraordinary that we’ve ever come across.

Victoria Gregory: It started back in lockdown. My husband was listening to Radio 4, and Chris Lockwood, one of the England players from 1971, was explaining how the England women’s team had come back together for the first time after 50 years. My husband rang me up and said, “You’re not going to believe this… if this story has not been made into a documentary, this is something you should look into.”

Why do you think that this story went untold for so long? 

Ramsay: The women themselves didn’t talk about this because after the huge success of the tournament, they were shamed by the media, people back at home and the football establishment. There was a real belief at the time that this was a turning point. If you’re standing on a pitch and there’s 110,000 people cheering for you, it’s not a daft idea to think, “The world is changing. Women’s football is here to stay.” But then, it was very violently taken away. That feeling of trauma that they had, that gaslighting… the best day of your life and suddenly you are told it didn’t exist and it didn’t happen. The players found it very hard to talk about, they didn’t even tell their own children about it. They thankfully kept a lot of memorabilia, and that’s how we managed to track down and put together the story.

There was nothing online about this tournament. We started from scratch. Officially, the story didn’t exist, because frankly, “unsuitable for females” was one of the famous lines from the English Football Association… it was not deemed that women should be taking up that kind of media space. 

Gregory: At that time they were coming out of the 1921 ban of women playing on affiliated grounds in England. So the tournament itself was a rebellious act, but because it wasn’t deemed official, it could then be made to disappear. 

The documentary contains  a lot of archive material. Could you discuss some of the challenges and rewards of working with that material?

Ramsay: There are enormous challenges in locating the footage. We knew it existed because we had photographs from the original newspapers where you can see all of the TV cameras. And we knew that from interviews done at the time with the tournament organisers that they were using a similar infrastructure to the Men’s World Cup the year before in the same stadiums. So we knew it should exist, but it’s not a simple question of going to the archives and saying, “Where is this?” Because it hadn’t been logged or cared for the same way. It involved a lot of quite literally shifting around boxes in Mexico. 

Gregory: We also worked with Professor Jean Williams, who was our consultant on the film, and the personal archives that the players had. For example, one of them had gone out with Super 8 cameras. We knew the scale of the tournament, they had outriders and police escorts, and you could see it all in their very beautiful footage. We had three editors working on it, and they did an amazing job of cutting that in and making it feel like you were really experiencing the tournament. If we are asking people to go to the cinema to come and watch this, you want it to feel and sound cinematic. The post-production on that footage was a huge part of this. There’s a lot of still photographs that had come from various different media, so we worked with a brilliant artist called Marina Amaral who colourised almost everything that’s in the film that wasn’t in colour.

Were there specific perspectives that you felt were essential to include, and how did you navigate the process of selecting and prioritising certain elements? 

Ramsay: It was a long process. I was very clear that this should be told as an ensemble piece. It needed to feel like a sisterhood. I didn’t want it to have a traditional sports film structure – the idea that you pick one team and you’re gunning for them to win and then they win in the end. It’s a very unusual opportunity that you can make a film about a huge sporting event like this where people don’t know what the outcome is. So, we told the story through the emotions and the experience of women themselves. Often, if you have so many voices, it can get diluted. But I think the women are such strong characters that they all stand out. The film is in Spanish, French, Italian and English, and we definitely wanted it to be told in their own words and in their own native languages. 

We were asked for comparisons when we were in development, and you realise there were pretty much no films that we could think of that are fronted by a group of women in their 70s and 80s, speaking in four different languages. There were voices at some point (that were not involved in making the film later) that doubted the ability of these women to tell their story, and doubted the fact that people would want to watch older women on screen. We definitely wanted those elements to stay.

It’s not a film about the history of women’s football. It’s an experience which speaks to bigger themes of power, financial independence, physicality and women’s place in the world.

What were the reactions of the players when they were asked to participate?

Ramsay: Asking somebody to tell their life story to you is a huge privilege, and it’s something that you don’t rush into. There was some serious trauma that these women felt from having not been allowed to tell this story for 50 years, and they didn’t necessarily want to revisit it. So that took more time and involved phone calls, then Zooms, then going out to visit them in person before we even thought about taking a camera anywhere.

Gregory: In getting backing for the film, we ended up working with Westbrook Studios, and through them we got the support of Serena and Venus Williams. We also got the opportunity to work with some amazing American players – Brandy Chastain and Alex Morgan. The further we got into this, when we were asked ‘why do you want to tell our story?’, we’d go back to them and go, “Well, we’ve got Venus and Serena Williams on board.” It empowered them to take back their space that had since been forgotten and ignored.

Do you see yourself working on more projects related to women’s history in the future? Is there anything specific you’d like to explore? 

Ramsay: Finding untold stories, women’s stories in general – yes, 100%. I think we’ll always be developing new ideas. All they need is a little bit of help to be uncovered, whether that’s in documentary or fiction. What we hope this film proves is just how many of these stories are still out there; that it gives anyone else encouragement to look for the big things that have happened, that for whatever reason have been lost to history. 

Gregory: Always keep turning over those stones. Finding these female stories is as important now as in the future. 1971 is the starting point, it’s not the definitive story. There will be many other stories around women’s football and how things will progress. It can’t be allowed to be forgotten. 

Is there one message that you want viewers to be able to take away from the film?

Ramsay: The central message from the film is really about power. Who has power, who’s given power, who decides who has the right to behave or express themselves in a certain way? Who has the right to tell anybody what they do with their bodies, how they express themselves and how they go through the world? After every single interview, I’d ask: “If you could speak to your younger self on the pitch, what would you say?” And regardless of which language they were speaking, regardless which country they were in, they all said: “Don’t let anyone tell me what to do. Be yourself. That’s all you can be.” 

Copa 71 is in cinemas from 8 March 2024.