John Meyer: For the love of soccer, daughters and the women of Denver Summit FC

John Meyer, The Denver Post on Apr 7, 2026

Published in Soccer

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DENVER — When 63,000 fans turned out for the home debut of Denver Summit FC at Empower Field a couple of weekends ago, Colorado soccer fans got to celebrate the arrival of the National Women’s Soccer League with an epic experience far beyond what we could have imagined a generation ago.

Like so many, I got to savor a historic day for women’s sports with a daughter who inherited my deep love for the game. But for me, it was also a day to reminisce on 50 years of observing the slow but irrepressible U.S. growth of the world’s most popular sport.

My introduction to soccer came while covering the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the old North American Soccer League as a young sportswriter in the 1970s when the Brazilian star Pelé — still the only player to win three World Cups — played for the New York Cosmos.

He and boxer Muhammad Ali were the world’s most popular athletes at the time, and his signing in 1975 at the end of his career made many Americans pay attention to soccer for the first time. Other international soccer stars would soon sign with NASL teams as the league fought to elbow its way into the American sports consciousness.

I covered multiple Cosmos games in Giants Stadium that attracted more than 75,000 when, for an all-too-brief heyday, soccer was big in New York, Tampa Bay and a handful of other NASL cities. I ran into Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones in the Cosmos locker room after a game. I covered Pelé’s last game, a retirement celebration, when the sellout crowd included Muhammad Ali, Henry Kissinger and many other Big Apple A-list celebrities.

Pelé scored an unforgettable goal that day on a free kick from 35 yards out, struck with so much power that the follow-through lifted him up into the air. I watched a video of that goal last week, and it’s exactly as I remember it.

I actually had brunch the day after Pelé’s retirement game with him and his immediate family. How that came about is a long story, too long to explain here, but I swear it’s true.

We who fell in love with what Pelé famously called “the beautiful game” thought it was just a matter of time before soccer would be acknowledged as a major sport in the U.S. Instead, it took decades.

The NASL folded in 1985, and the U.S. would go eight years without another national soccer league. My love for soccer only grew over the ensuing decades, though. It even became a family affair.

Soccer at the youth level boomed, especially among girls, and I watched one of my daughters fall in love with the game and the stars of the women’s national team. She was jubilant when she got Brandi Chastain to autograph her USA jersey at a national team game in Denver. Chastain had scored the penalty kick shootout goal to clinch the 1999 World Cup title. My daughter still has the jersey.

I had tears in my eyes covering the championship game of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, which was the final national team appearance for Chastain, Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy, because of the inspiration those women gave my daughter and millions like her. The U.S. beat Brazil that night for the second of its five Olympic gold medals in soccer.

The girls Chastain, Hamm and Foudy inspired now are in their 30s, raising more girls who love soccer, and in Denver, they finally have a women’s home team to call their own.

My daughter has season tickets, and she’s spent a small fortune on Summit FC merch.

If you’re a soccer fan, you know the game requires strength, speed, technique, endurance, toughness, agility, creativity and sound tactical decisions made on the fly. All were on display at Empower Field. If you’re not already a soccer fan, maybe this team will make you one.

You probably heard we were part of the largest crowd ever to see a women’s professional sports event in the U.S. I’m excited to watch Denver Summit evolve through its inaugural season in the NWSL. I’m eager to see Lindsey Heaps, the Golden High School product who is captain of the current women’s national team, when she arrives in June after finishing her contract with a team in France.

My daughter already has her jersey, of course.

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