Women's World Cup 2019 six months on: How life has changed for three of the tournaments underdogs

Six months on from the Women's World Cup final, Telegraph Women's Sport reports on what effect, if any, global progress in the game has had on three of the teams.

Argentina

For anyone with a penchant for an underdog story, a lasting image from the World Cup was that of the Argentina squad sinking to their knees and weeping as they held 2011 champions Japan to a draw in their group-stage opener.

This was a team that in their last appearance at the tournament, in 2007, had lost 11-0 to Germany – then the worst loss in World Cup history. Now they had gained their first point.

What happened in those 12 years is a story familiar to struggling nations in the women’s game. While Argentina’s men’s side boasts a rich history, their women were inactive between 2015 and 2017, and travelled to France as unexpected qualifiers.

Vanina Correa was goalkeeper both against Germany in 2007 and last year in France, and she recalls the moment the final whistle blew against Japan with emotion. “In drawing with Japan, it wasn’t a huge moment in the world, but for us it was incredible,” Correa, 36, says. “We were motivated by all that had happened to us. We came from nothing, with little support in economic terms, in terms of international matches. We were fighting to be seen and known, demonstrating all the sacrifices we’d done over many years.”

Those sacrifices included sleeping on a coach after a friendly against Uruguay three years ago because the Argentine football association would not pay for overnight accommodation; having a request for a £6.70 daily allowance rejected; being recognised as professionals by their clubs only last year following player legal action.

Correa, who plays for San Lorenzo in Buenos Aires, says Argentina’s burgeoning feminist movement gave them “the push” to keep going.

Their much-improved performance in France earned draws against Japan and Scotland. They lost 1-0 to England and finished third in the group. Correa was named the player of the match against England, after saving Nikita Parris’s penalty in what Phil Neville, head coach of the Lionesses, described as an “incredible performance”. She has since returned to her job as a cashier and, though Argentina did not qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, she says the impact of their campaign has improved relations with their association.

“Now there’s more interest and the president of the association asked us what we needed for the year to come,” she says. “We have at least five dates for matches this year. From the association, we only ask to give us opponents so we can compete, and carry on as we have for the next World Cup.”

Cameroon

“It’s just a moment to forget,” Ajara Nchout says of Cameroon’s tumultuous World Cup last-16 exit. But few who watched can forget the 3-0 England win, which was punctuated by two instances when the Cameroon players seemed on the brink of walking off the field after the video-assistant-referee system ruled against them. Public outcry followed.

“I’m completely and utterly ashamed of the opposition,” Phil Neville, the England head coach, said in a damning post-match press conference. “Think of all those young girls and boys watching. It didn’t feel like football.”

The scenes were dramatic, including an alleged spitting incident from a Cameroon player, and some members of the team have since voiced their regrets. But the fallout was wildly overblown, says journalist Julia Wanjeri, founder of JWSports 1, a website dedicated to women’s football across Africa.

“The media in England made it seem like it was the worst thing that had ever happened in football. One commentator put it like her daughter watching the match had been scarred for life.”

Giving context to the footballing reality experienced by women in Cameroon alongside quotes from Neville, who had his views on the game and professionalism pruned from childhood at the biggest club in the world, seems only fair.

“Between the English and Cameroon game, due to lack of investment, the gulf is very wide,” says Samuel Ahmadu, who writes for Goal.com about women’s football across the continent.

Wanjeri agrees, saying that although conditions have improved – Cameroon now generally receive pay on time – their £13 daily player allowance contrasts with England’s (well-deserved) central contracts. Though some of the squad play abroad, grassroots and domestic football in Cameroon paints even starker differences with England’s professional Women’s Super League: no contracts, players mostly only paid if they win and just a handful of girls’ academies in the entire country.

Much is made of the expectation carried by players in the women’s game globally, but Wanjeri says the African nations at the World Cup carry much more, as investment “is still very dependent on how you perform”. Cameroon are proven performers, with two trips to the knockouts at consecutive World Cups and a win over Zambia later this month all they need to guarantee their second Olympics appearance. Both Ahmadu and Wanjeri say Tokyo offers the chance to rebuild their reputation.

“Back home there was no hard feelings about the way they crashed out,” Ahmadu says. “And post-World Cup they’ve looked like the best on the continent.”

“No one is saying how they reacted was OK, but a lot of Africans are not OK with how the story was told,” Wanjeri adds. “That’s the fire in their belly to return to the international stage – tell a different story.”

Jamaica

"#NoPayNoPlay" the hashtag read. Not even three months on from making their historic World Cup debut, as the first Caribbean nation to do so, Jamaica's Reggae Girlz were threatening boycott.

Despite minimal support from the Jamaican Football Federation they qualified for the World Cup and the feat earned them player contracts. But the federation failed to live up to their end of the bargain: after the players' bank accounts remained empty for the third consecutive month they had had enough.

Midfielder Chinyelu Asher says the federation's previous failings, including disbanding the team back in 2011 due to funding shortfalls, meant the players had been prepared. The #NoPayNoPlay collective campaign they began on social media last September brought them worldwide media attention, and so the JFF finally coughed up. Cedella Marley - reggae legend Bob Marley's daughter - had been the team's independent financial backer since 2014, but the players refused her offer of help in order to make a statement.

"I tried a couple of times and the girls said to me, 'C, no, you're not going to bail out the federation this time,'" Marley says. "Thankfully, because they've been on the world stage, it's harder to just brush them under the carpet now."

Though the boycott threat did the trick then, three Olympic qualifiers loom in the next month and the Reggae Girlz are again in limbo. Longstanding coach Hue Menzies quit in December, still unpaid from the World Cup, and no replacement has been announced. It means qualifier training camps had still not been organised and new player contracts yet to be finalised when the Daily Telegraph spoke to Asher in mid December.

Asher says she is worried about the future of the team post-Olympics, with no major tournament on the horizon, and Marley stresses the programme's importance as a pathway for young Jamaican women to be lifted to better opportunities after the team was struck by tragedy late last year when 20-year-old striker Tarania 'Plum Plum' Clarke was stabbed to death in Kingston.

Marley is blunt about the JFF's poor planning ("There's a lack of vision, everybody's just walking around blind in their Armani suits") while Asher, who plays her club football in Norway, is more sympathetic to the federation's financial situation. But she admits all the uncertainty takes its toll: "I'm not saying it's always us against the federation but [it] is stressful. We accomplished something amazing [qualifying for the World Cup], I'm sure many coaches would want to take over. But who is going to come in and not get paid?

"We'll definitely be there competing - we show up regardless. But that's all I can account for, which is unfortunate. The battle is not over."