World Cup hero Brandi Chastain has US women's soccer coaching aspirations

Publish date: 2024-04-08

Brandi Chastain welcomes the question she’s likely been asked countless times since ripping her shirt off and dropping to her knees upon scoring the game-winning penalty kick in the 1999 Women’s World Cup final.

The photograph of Chastain — eyes closed, mouth open, chiseled arms and clenched fists held up in exultation, wearing nothing on top but a black sports bra — made its way on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the bedroom walls of soccer-playing girls across the country. Chastain, then 30 years old and an 11-year veteran midfielder of the United States women’s national team, attributes the image’s grip over the sports world to a couple of reasons.

“We had never experienced a woman’s celebration in that form. I think it just caught people off guard a little bit,” Chastain told The Post ahead of the inaugural Women’s International Champions Cup kicking off in Miami next weekend. “Then, the still image just references so many different emotions.

“I think everybody can find themselves in that picture.”

In the nearly 20 years since a team led by Chastain, Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy defeated China in front of a sold-out crowd at the Rose Bowl, Chastain has kept herself active in the women’s game as it’s reached new levels of exposure and profit.

Where Chastain remembers receiving a thank-you card and $500 check from US Soccer after winning the 1991 World Cup, the current generation of US women’s players took the federation into a legal dispute over unfair treatment and inequitable pay after ending a 16-year World Cup title drought in 2015. The team achieved a new labor contract with raises in salary and improvements in travel and accommodations.

With the next World Cup in France only a year away, the women have another opportunity to prove their international dominance and worth in US Soccer’s eyes. Chastain said she hopes to be a part of that growth again one day, but feels US Soccer does not necessarily foster the transition of former national team players into coaching.

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“My ultimate goal is to be the national team coach,” said Chastain, who currently coaches the the Under-14 team of the California Thorns, the girls’ youth affiliate of the National Women’s Soccer League’s Portland Thorns. The team is part of US Soccer’s new Development Academy initiative.

“I want to start with one of our younger national teams because I feel the experience I’ve had would be wasted if I didn’t have the chance to work with a national team and give back what I’ve been given. But it’s not easy to break into that environment, even for someone who has 192 caps.

“I look around the world and I see a lot of women who have played for their national teams getting back into coaching and giving back to their national teams, and we don’t have enough of that here. It’s a mystery.”

The only former women’s national team player to serve as head coach was April Heinrichs, who was captain of the first World Cup-winning team in 1991. Heinrichs coached from 2000-’04, which included the US’ third-place finish at the 2003 World Cup, and now serves as US women’s technical director under coach Jill Ellis. Other than her, the team has been led by either men or women of different nationalities.

Heinrichs said US Soccer is more than open to adding former US women’s players to their coaching ranks, but experience is key. She pointed out that Michelle French, who won silver as a member of the 2000 Olympic team, recently was head coach of the Under-20 team and was an assistant to Ellis. According to a policy implemented in the past year, US Soccer expects their coaches at each age group to be full-time employees.

“We certainly target former female players and we’ve hired some of the best coaches that we know,” Heinrichs told The Post.

Chastain, 49, plans to dedicate herself to improving the game in the US from the ground up. Her playing career directly benefited from the ‘99 heroics with the second iteration of a domestic women’s professional league, the Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA), being created a year later. She understands how important the World Cup — awarded to the US, Mexico and Canada in 2026 — can be in addressing the sports’ biggest need: making it more financially accessible for families. It’s an issue former star goalkeeper Hope Solo has taken up repeatedly and forcefully.

“The most important reason why we should be hosting the World Cup is that the money earned goes back into soccer at the grassroots level,” Chastain said. “We will start with our youngest kids and we will support them in playing this game because in the long run, that’s our investment we’re making and that’s the only reason we should be hosting the World Cup.”

Chastain has pledged her brain to concussion research after death (“I won’t need it,” she says). In life, she spearheaded the effort that pushed US Soccer to increase the age at which heading should be allowed to 11.

“I have the player in me, the coach in me and the parent in me,” said Chastain, who has a 12-year-old son with husband Jerry Smith, head coach of the Santa Clara women’s soccer team.

“So when people say what’s your legacy, instead of my legacy being I scored a goal one time in a World Cup and it got some attention, the legacy can be I helped make soccer a safer place for my kids, the kids I coach and generations to come.”

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