Julie Foudy's Rant About 'Lack Of Respect' For Women's Sports Was Huge Swing And Miss

There may not be another American alive who knows more about women's soccer, from both on and off the field perspectives, than Julie Foudy. Her 16-year career as a member of the U.S. women's national team, and even longer run as a broadcaster covering the sport, doesn't mean that she's perfect in her analysis of a situation.

Foudy's ability to miss, and miss badly, was on full display during TNT's post-match show following the USWNT's 1-0 win over Colombia to win the SheBelieves Cup over the weekend.

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Instead of keeping things lighthearted and in a celebratory mood following the Americans' eighth SheBelieves title in 11 years, Foudy decided it was an opportune time to complain about the lack of respect women receive in sports and everyday life.

It wasn't just that Foudy's lengthy on-air complaint was awkward due to its overall randomness, but the way she began her rant by using the lack of statistics provided on her prep sheet as an ‘in’ to complain about things from a broader perspective was over the top.

"Here’s the thing. When we go and we come and broadcast games, we get rosters. And on that roster, there’s a number, there’s a player, there’s caps and goals, and they put all those things down," Foudy stated. 

"When we get the Argentina roster, there’s never any caps and goals. When we get the Colombia roster, there’s never any caps and goals. And for so many years I’ve said, ‘Why don’t we have caps and goals for these players? Why not?’ And they said, ‘We don’t have them.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’

"Now at home, you might be thinking, ‘That’s a minor deal.’ It is not a minor deal, and here’s why. For years, we have been fighting for stuff, and what this says to me is, ‘I don’t care enough to keep track of your caps and goals. I don’t care enough to write down the achievements of these women, and how many games they’ve played and how many goals they’ve scored.’ 

"They do it for the men. They have caps and goals every time for the men. They never have them for the women. So if you think this is minor, this is not minor, because this isn’t about caps and goals. This is about a lack of respect for the women’s teams globally. And it’s not just about soccer, mind you. It’s in every industry, it’s in every day."

Julie Foudy Is Complaining Just To Complain

Foudy very clearly went into Saturday's broadcast bound and determined to voice her opinion that women are facing disrespect on and off the field. She was successful in her action, but not in her message.

For starters, her moaning about the lack of caps and goals next to the names of players on certain teams isn't anyone's fault but the federations of each nation and tournament organizers. TNT or any other network isn't responsible to track and archive the statistics of every national team, men's or women's side.

Foudy bringing up the lack of statistics was a grasping at straws, and she missed.

Predictably, Awful Announcing called Foudy pointing to the lack of statistics on a sheet as a "smart" way to raise the issue of disrespect in women's sports and life as a whole. In reality, women's national soccer teams not tracking statistics is a simple issue of laziness from those who should be responsible for tracking those numbers, it's not, in any way, a representation of what women face "in every industry" or "in every day" as Foudy claimed.

Two things can be true at once: women's sports have never been covered more closely or more extensively than they are today, but there is still serious work to be done.