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I think the concept of seeking fame and fortune in women's football in the States is a bit idyllic.

And of course in America you've got American football and baseball and all those other ball games, soccer has become a little niche that the women have kind of filled.

In recent generations, women's sports have been a blessing. Some of us can remember the bad old days in the '50s, when we would discover in casual schoolyard play that a girl could outrun most of us or hold her own in basketball or hit a softball - but there were no teams, no coaches, for girls.

But the reason that women's football is still unknown is because it's not on television and not widely publicised for a wide majority of the leagues in the world.

When it comes to women, there has been a tendency to define women in sports in the context of their relationships - they watch games because their husbands watch. They're interested because their kids play a sport. They buy tickets to a sporting event because it's a way to spend time with family.

I find it fascinating that sport has such a strong connection to success in business. Arguably, C-suite women are some of the most successful women, and more than half of them played at a more advanced level than just the general population of women in business that had sport in their background.

When the Olympics and World Cups come around, that's when you see the real outpouring of support that there really is for female football.

I don't think there's anything that is a greater area of discrimination against women today than the fact that nowhere in the world is there a female role model in team sports that more than half of a general audience would recognize.

When they take surveys of women in business, of the Fortune 500, the successful women, 80% of them, say they were in sports as a young woman.