The chapter examines a match from the last days of the Cold War. For forty-plus years of East–West conflict, men’s football had mattered more than women’s football. This began to change when China played Norway in the first match of the first Women’s World Cup in November 1991. The tournament in China marked the end of one era, and the start of several new ones, in women’s sport and sports diplomacy. China’s hosting of the tournament, its close relationship with FIFA, and its thrashing of Norway announced a new Asian sporting superpower. But while China won the opener in Guangzhou on 16 November, the West won the tournament, as the USA beat Norway 2–1 to claim the inaugural World Cup two weeks later. These three countries dominated women’s football in the 1990s, a vital decade in the game’s development, which ended with the USA beating China in front of 90,000 people in California to win the third World Cup. The 1991 tournament didn’t overturn male domination of the world’s biggest sport. But it suggested new directions at the end of the Cold War, a bright future where women footballers helped reshape politics and society on both sides of the torn Iron Curtain.