The World Cup-winning 1999 United States Women’s National Team will be featured in a new film on Netflix.
Several players from the squad announced the movie in a social media video. The film will be adapted from Jere Longman’s book: The Girls of Summer: The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team and How It Changed the World. Netflix has not announced a release date for the film.
“What’s the 1999 World Cup winning U.S. women’s soccer team up to now? We checked in with Julie Foudy, Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, Joy Fawcett, Kristine Lilly, Briana Scurry, Carla Overbeck, and Brandi Chastain to find out,” Netflix wrote for the caption on the video.
The video featured the retired soccer stars juggling a soccer ball before they each passed the ball off the screen to a player in another location. It ended with Chastain taking a penalty kick shot.
The film will be about the World Cup run, the lives of the players and their decade-long journey to the 1999 World Cup victory.
“I remember that,” Overbeck said. “It was a packed stadium at the Rose Bowl final. Millions of people were watching. It came down to the final penalty kick.”
The U.S. won the 1991 Women’s World Cup before they failed to advance to the 1995 World Cup final. Several members of the 1999 team were on those two teams. The 1999 squad cruised through the group stage, outscoring opponents 13-1. The Americans edged Germany 3-2 in the quarterfinals before topping Brazil 2-0 in the semifinals.
The U.S. and China played a scoreless regulation in the final before they advanced to a penalty kick session. Chastain make the game-winning kick to give the World Cup trophy to the Americans on July 10, 1999, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.
“Watching the USA team that summer made me forget I had no money and little more than a dream to feed me,” Tendo Nagenda, vice president of original film at Netflix, said in a statement.
“That team, that goal, and Brandi Chastain’s unforgettable reaction, in which she ripped off her shirt and dropped to her knees in astonishment, made me believe I could do anything, and do it my way,”
