World Cup Women

I Magine the super Bowl, the World Series and the N.C.A.A. finals rolled into a ball. Bounce the ball across five continents and onto nearly a billion TV screens. That's soccer's World Cup--the championship of a game the rest of the world considers "real" football. To salute this year's tourney, we jetted our own team--11 international beauties--to Italy, the 1990 cup's host country. At Castello di Montegufoni, a Tuscan castle once frequented by a Pope, they sun-bathed, partied, talked soccer in nine languages and even staged a Foosball tourney, the World Cup Women's World Cup. "Beneath naked cherubs, for centuries playing games on the ceilings," reports our breathless observer, "they spun little plastic players--painted in their national colors--against the white ball. People hearing their cries of delight might well have thought that these beauties devoted themselves, like the cherubs above, to the game of love." Miss Holland won. But, judging by his cries of delight, our Tuscany correspondent loved each player. Here's hoping that you, like him and "the many sexually mature Italian youngsters" he saw every night "crowded around the castle's crumbling walls to gel a glimpse," find our World Cup Women a kick in the head.