Monday: v Mexico (Wolfsburg, 5pm).
July 1: v N Zealand (Dresden, 5.15pm).
July 5: v Japan (Augsburg, 5.15pm)

Rachel Yankey has blazed a trail for women’s football ever since she became the first registered professional female footballer in England. After 109 appearances, she is England’s most capped player, having collected an MBE in 2006. The Arsenal winger, now 31, was left out of the Euro 2009 squad but is a central part of coach Hope Powell’s plans for this campaign.

Preparations have gone well for coach Hope Powell - England overcame World Cup favourites the United States in an April friendly, and then beat Sweden ahead of this tournament.

Groups

GROUP A: Germany, Canada, Nigeria, France
GROUP B: Japan, New Zealand, Mexico, ENGLAND
GROUP C: US, N Korea, Colombia, Sweden
GROUP D: Brazil, Australia, Norway, Equatorial Guinea

Weekend matches:

Sunday:
Grp A: Germany v Canada (Berlin 5pm), Nigeria v France (Sinsheim 2pm)

TV: BBC Red Button/British Eurosport/BBC 3 (final only)

QTR-FINALS: July 9/10
SEMI-FINALS: July 13
FINAL: July 17, Frankfurt, 7.45pm
HOLDERS: Germany

Powell says she would have been sacked as England manager by now if the same cut-throat attitudes prevalent in the men’s game existed in women’s football.

Powell starts her second World Cup campaign - and fifth major finals - tomorrow, 13 years after being handed the coaching reins by the Football Association.

However, much like Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, it took Powell some time to get a grip on the enormity of the job.

Seven years elapsed before she steered England to the European Championship quarter-finals, during which time she laid the platform for a more progressive period that culminated with a final appearance at the last Euros in 2009.

That improvement has continued, allowing Powell to repay the faith her employers have shown in her.

“The good thing about women’s football is that we are given time to work, nurture and embed a philosophy,” said Powell.

“If it was the same attitude some people in men’s football have, certainly on my initial results in the very beginning, I am sure I would have been sacked.”

The debate over whether the U.S. should abandon its long-standing accounting standards and adopt international rules that are used by most other countries often misses an important point.

While the economic case for the switch isn’t strong, failure to act carries substantial political risks for the U.S. It could also imperil the push for a global reporting regime and weaken efforts to reform other areas of global financial regulation.

At the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh in 2009, the international accounting bodies were charged with devising a single set of high quality, global accounting standards by June 2011. This deadline is fast approaching, but the two key players, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the U.S.'s Financial Accounting Standards Board, have recently indicated they will need more time. Moreover, there is still no decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission as to whether the U.S. will give up Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, known as GAAP, and instead use International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which are applied by over 100 countries.

By rejecting IFRS, the U.S. would deal a major blow to the prospect of unified global accounting standards -- a goal that is widely endorsed, including by many American companies and investors. The U.S. would almost certainly lose its current major influence on the setting of international rules including its role in the oversight of the IASB. That would be a loss: The U.S. has been a positive influence bringing authority and expertise in accounting matters. That influence would also benefit global capital markets and investors by countering the growing clout of countries that may pursue less capital-market oriented goals with financial reporting.

Perhaps even more importantly, a perceived unwillingness by the U.S. to cooperate in accounting matters could spill over into other areas of global financial regulation where reforms and international coordination are much needed. This could happen not only because accounting numbers are a mainstay for other financial regulation, but also because the world’s reporting convergence project is one of the longest and most advanced attempts to build a global regime. If it were to fail, it would undermine other efforts to create global standards, for example, in banking or capital-market regulation.

So what is holding the U.S. back?

The possibility that the U.S. could give up GAAP, which Larry Summers called the single-most important innovation shaping U.S. capital markets, has stirred a heated debate. Yet many of the arguments aren't convincing. Proponents of IFRS often claim that the new standards will deliver significant capital-market benefits. For instance, the international rules are said to improve the transparency and comparability of corporate reporting around the world, which, in turn, could lower firms’ capital costs and increase market liquidity. These alleged benefits are almost certainly overstated, at least, as far as U.S. firms are concerned. The U.S. already has a system of high-quality accounting standards and it is unlikely that financial reporting practices by U.S. firms will improve significantly as a result of IFRS adoption.

Similarly, the benefits of IFRS in creating cross-country comparability are exaggerated. With or without IFRS, there will be divergent reporting practices around the world because accounting standards are only one of many inputs that determine companies’ reporting practices. Other factors include countries’ legal institutions, their capital markets, firms’ business and governance practices, and managers’ personal motives. As long as these factors continue to vary across companies, industries and countries, reporting practices will differ, too. Worldwide, IFRS adoption would narrow the set of accounting rules and treatments that investors need to follow, which would yield savings for investors. But it won't bring true comparability of reported numbers across companies and countries.

The argument that IFRS adoption would allow U.S. multinationals to move to a single reporting system for their global operations, leading to substantial cost savings, has limitations as well. Foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms still have statutory reporting requirements to the local authorities that often aren't based on IFRS. This means separate accounts or some reconciliation to local standards regardless of the company’s global reporting system. Thus, while there can be cost savings for U.S. multinationals, they will be limited until IFRS are more widely accepted for statutory reporting purposes around the world.

Still, even if many of the selling points of IFRS are overstated, the risks to the U.S. of adopting those rules are exaggerated, too. For instance, opponents of adopting IFRS often claim that those standards are inferior to GAAP. They point out that IFRS offer more discretion and less guidance than GAAP. Again, these arguments miss the crucial point that factors beyond the accounting standards play a significant role in determining companies’ reporting practices. That is, even if IFRS were inferior to GAAP, the standards would be applied within the U.S. institutional infrastructure, which features strong capital markets, SEC enforcement and private securities litigation. This environment provides many incentives for transparent and truthful reporting, and these safeguards would remain in place after the adoption of IFRS. As a result, it is unlikely that U.S. reporting quality would deteriorate significantly. Similarly, the frequently voiced concern that the IASB could set new IFRS that may not suit U.S. firms or investors could be addressed by having a national endorsement protocol for new and amended IFRS, which is what most countries that already follow international standards have in place as well.

From an economic perspective, the decision to adopt IFRS in the U.S. involves mainly a cost-benefit tradeoff of three factors, as I and other contributors have argued in a research report for FASB: (1) recurring, albeit modest, comparability benefits for investors, (2) recurring future cost savings that will largely accrue to multinational companies, and (3) one-time transition costs borne by all firms and the U.S. economy as a whole. Their net effect depends on how one weighs the future benefits against the current costs. Moreover, these factors likely differ across firms and industries.

In light of these economic and political considerations, one way for the SEC to move forward is to offer U.S. companies a choice for some time. That is, the regulator could give U.S. firms an option to apply IFRS, perhaps even starting in 2012, and then set a longer deadline for IFRS adoption for the rest of the economy. Having some U.S. firms report under the international standards wouldn't have dramatic comparability consequences. Moreover, American investors are already familiar with IFRS reports from foreign firms that list on U.S. exchanges. But such a move by the SEC would be viewed as a commitment to IFRS, which would help the U.S. politically. It also would give American companies more time to adjust: Firms for which the benefits outweigh the costs would move first, which would allow auditors and others to learn from the process, which in turn should bring down the costs of IFRS adoption for other firms with smaller benefits.

While the SEC would probably prefer to study the matter further, it is time to decide. The case in favor of IFRS is largely political and the U.S. cannot afford to sit on the sidelines of this global effort.

(Christian Leuz is a professor of international economics, finance and accounting at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a co-director of its Initiative on Global Markets. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Christian.leuz@chicagobooth.edu

To contact the editor repsponsible for this column: Max Berley at mberley@bloomberg.net

At first, she played at recess and after school with her older brother. Secretly, she joined a club team, using equipment lent by her brother and cleats borrowed from a teammate that she returned after each practice and game.

“My father wanted me to be a singer or an actress,” Bajramaj, who is known as Lira, said in a recent telephone interview, speaking through an interpreter. “He told me that football was for men, not for women.”

Yet today, at 23, Bajramaj (pronounced BUY-rah-mye) is a star midfielder on the German women’s national team, the lone Muslim player on a squad that is seeking its third consecutive World Cup title, beginning with Sunday’s opening match against Canada before a crowd of 70,000-plus at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. The 16-team tournament, which features the United States and Brazil as the expected top challengers, will end July 17 in Frankfurt.

German soccer officials hope the World Cup will provide a marketing boon for the women’s game and will also enhance their efforts to promote the country’s national sport as a means of social integration. In Germany, a third of all children are born to immigrant families, and the issue of assimilation — or the lack thereof — has become an urgent political concern.

Building on the success of the 2006 men’s World Cup in Germany, German soccer officials said the sport’s national federation had spent more than $27 million on a project to encourage integration. The program includes the building of 1,000 small fields, developing a joint arrangement between soccer clubs and 17,000 chosen schools and devising an ambassador campaign featuring star German players like Bajramaj and Mesut Özil, a midfielder of Turkish descent on the men’s team.

A parallel program started by a university professor, called Football Without Offsides, encourages girls, most from Turkish, Arabic and Eastern European backgrounds, to play soccer at school at ages 9, 10 and 11 — sometimes with their mothers playing alongside them.

Theo Zwanziger, the president of the German soccer federation, is fond of saying, “It does not bother the ball who hits it.”

Heike Ullrich, the head of women’s soccer in the German federation, said this means: “Football is for everybody, man, woman, black, white, green, all races, all religions. Everyone should have a chance to come in contact with the ball. It unites people.”

When the Bajramaj family arrived in Germany from Kosovo in 1993 and settled in a refugee center, Lira was 5. She said she felt resentment from some locals as she went to and from kindergarten, hearing taunts like “gypsies” and “go back where you came from.” At 6, she joined a soccer club in Giesenkirchen, and later played in nearby Mönchengladbach.

“I was the only girl,” Bajramaj said. “At first, the boys didn’t accept me. When they saw I could play football, they decided to play with me. Then they were fighting about which team I should play with.”

Two years after she began playing, Bajramaj said, her father, Ismet, attended a match to watch her older brother, Fatos, and by accident learned that his daughter had also taken up soccer. His response was surprise and acceptance, she said, not disapproval.

“He told me I was very good,” she said. “Now he is my biggest supporter.”

In 2007, Bajramaj came on as a late substitute as Germany won the Women’s World Cup final over Brazil. A year later, she scored both of Germany’s goals in a victory over Japan for the bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics. In 2010, her club team, Turbine Potsdam, won the inaugural European women’s Champions League title.

“Playing football is what helped me integrate,” Bajramaj said. “First, the language. And later I learned a lot about the culture and the cities. In Germany, I am welcome because I play football. And Muslims can see that even though I’m in football, I’m very religious.”

In addition to Bajramaj, three other players on Germany’s Women’s World Cup team have immigrant roots from Cameroon, Italy and Romania. Germany also has about 30 female players from immigrant backgrounds on its youth national teams, soccer officials said. A handful of Muslim women also play in Germany’s professional league, Bajramaj said. Still, cultural and religious barriers exist.

Many Muslim families do not want their daughters playing in shorts, with their arms and legs and heads uncovered. Yet, at the elite level, head scarves that also cover the neck are prohibited by FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, for reasons of player safety. The governing body also bans the expression of religious beliefs on uniforms.

Three years ago, a German girl was given a red-card expulsion from a youth match for wearing a head scarf, said Ulf Gebken, the founder of Football Without Offsides and a specialist in sport and social integration at Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany.

The German soccer federation was petitioned, and it amended its rules to allow head coverings for lower-level leagues, Gebken said. Ullrich, the head of women’s soccer in the federation, said: “When we get this question, I say to people, ‘Just let them play.’ If it’s not the highest league, it’s not a problem.”

Football Without Offsides has expanded to about 300 schools and 80 club teams in 120 German cities, Gebken said. A key element of the program is inviting young girls from immigrant families to play at school with their mothers — outside the presence of boys.

“We’re not going to solve all the problems,” Gebken said. “But when we make tournaments of daughters and mothers, the mothers are very happy their daughters are playing football. Then we have a chance. If a girl is a very good swimmer or runner, hardly anyone notices. But if the girl is good in football, the family is proud. The girls will come out and play, and there is the chance for integration and emancipation.”

So far, five Muslim women in their late teens and early 20s have become referees, Gebken said. What is needed, he said, are many more female coaches. Half of the club teams in his program still have male coaches.

As of now, most German girls from immigrant families wear the jerseys of their favorite players on the men’s national team, not the women’s team, Gebken said. Players like Özil and Sami Khedira, a midfielder with a Tunisian father. At the 2010 men’s World Cup in South Africa, 11 of Germany’s 23 players came from immigrant backgrounds and the team was widely celebrated for its multiculturalism.

“Last summer, many Turkish people were proud,” Gebken said. “If Lira Bajramaj is a star in this World Cup, a lot of people will look at her. This is very good marketing for women’s football. Will it help integration? We will see. Maybe girls will start wearing the jerseys of the women’s players in Germany.”