Cindy Parlow Cone has a soft spot in her heart for World Cups, having played in two and won one. Fewer than a couple of hundred people in history can make that claim.
But next June, Cone, president of U.S. Soccer, will do something that has never been done before when she becomes the first female national federation head to preside over soccer’s biggest tournament.
“You will see a lot of me. Being the host country, we will be very visible,” Cone said of an event the U.S. will share with Mexico and Canada. “It’s FIFA’s show; they’re running the tournament. We will be largely focused on the impact of the World Cup and growing our game.”
The first time the World Cup was held in the U.S., it had quite an impact on growing the game since its legacy included the birth of a first-division league in MLS and a $60-million surplus that was invested in soccer development at the grassroots level.
It was also the first World Cup a 16-year-old Cone watched on television. Inspired by the experience, she wound up playing in one five years later, scoring two goals and assisting on two others to help the U.S. win its second of four championships.
That 1999 team, which saw 12 of its 20 members inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame, is widely considered to be the best women’s team of all-time. And Cone, who is one of those 12 hall of famers, said being part of it changed the direction of her life.
“I don’t think I’ll ever grow tired of talking about the ‘99 team,” she said. “I don’t think I would be the person that I am or in the leadership position that I am without having played on the women’s national team and literally grew up with some of the best leaders I’ve ever been around.
“Just watching and learning from all of my teammates was hugely impactful in terms of shaping me as a person.”
Cone arrived at the World Cup just six weeks past her 21st birthday, making her the second-youngest player on the team. So she mostly kept her mouth shut and her eyes open, drinking in a master class on leadership.
“Mia [Hamm] led very differently than Carla [Overbeck] and Carla led very differently than Julie Foudy and so on,” she said. “As a young player [I] was quiet and reserved, trying to figure out what was going to be my style. They just let me be me and grow into my voice in my own time.”
And that education has proven invaluable during a career than has taken her from World Cup and Olympic player, to coach — she guided the Portland Thorns to the first NWSL title in 2013 — to the top of U.S. Soccer as the federation’s first women president, a title she assumed in 2020.
“I’ve learned throughout my career leadership is leadership,” she said. “So regardless of the audience or situation, transitioning from being a player to then a coach and now on the executive side, all the same principles of leadership apply.”
Cone is quick to admit she doesn’t know everything so her leadership style is straightforward and transparent, relying on collaboration and empowerment while emphasizing teamwork and communication. But she is also results-oriented and not afraid to take on large or complicated issues.
Those are all traits she learned as a player. Yet she’s not the only one whose life was transformed by the laurels and the lessons that came from the 1999 World Cup.
Brandi Chastain, who delivered the penalty kick that defeated China in the final, wound up on the Wheaties box, became a pitchwoman for shoes, beer and inflammatory bowel disease awareness, then helped found an NWSL expansion team in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hamm started a foundation, served on the board of AS Roma, a top-flight men’s team in Italy, and was a founding investor in two professional soccer teams in Los Angeles, LAFC and Angel City.
Then there’s Joy Fawcett, who gave up teaching to coach at Long Beach City College before founding the women’s program at UCLA. She is now an assistant coach with the U.S. deaf national team.
“We did create opportunities for ourselves and each other,” Fawcett said. “And yeah, it changed a lot of our lives.”
None of that happens, goalkeeper Briana Scurry said, if the Americans don’t win that World Cup final before the largest crowd to watch a women’s game in the U.S.
“If we don’t win, yeah, we’re not talking now,” said Scurry, who went on to become a general manager, coach, club investor and author. “There’s a lot of things that had to happen in the right order, in the right way for this to occur. We bullied our way in there by winning that title.
“It was a really big launch pad for me.”
Yet none of the women from the ‘99 team have flown higher than Cone, who also made history when, as federation president, she negotiated the 2022 accord that made the men’s and women’s national teams the first in the world to agree to parity in pay and working conditions. She was also instrumental in making U.S. Soccer’s modern 200-acre training center in Georgia happen and in launching a probe into harassment and sexual abuse that threatened to end the NWSL but wound up making the league stronger and healthier.
She’ll break another barrier next summer when the largest, longest and most complicated World Cup in history kicks in the U.S. Only nine other FIFA members — there are 211 in all — have women presidents and none of them have played host to a World Cup. For Cone, 47, it will be another slice of history — but she hopes it won’t be the last one.
“I think I’m still pretty young,” she said. “So I hope that I’m not done yet. I don’t know what my legacy is going to be.”
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