Football? It’s a woman’s world now

On July 16 I wrote:

I was going to write about my interest in women’s football a couple of weeks ago but I fear I’ve missed the boat because if England continue their current form it will look like I’m jumping on the bandwagon. I am tempted however because I recently read a book, The History of Women’s Football by Jean Williams, and it was quite an eye-opener.

I’m still torn and I wish I had written this before the UEFA Women's Championship rather than on the eve of the final - in which England will play Germany at Wembley - but I’m going to post it anyway.

First, some context.

When my son first played football for his village team he was six-years-old. At that age teams were seven-a-side and they played on small pitches.

Girls could play football with the boys but very few did. In Ruari’s team there was one girl and she was at least as good and probably better than several of the boys but at the age of eleven, when the boys moved up to 11-a-side and full-size pitches, she was no longer allowed to play with them.

The local village clubs didn’t have teams for girls so I don’t know if she was able to continue playing the game, although I vaguely remember speaking to her mother who said they’d found a club in Bedford, I think, 20 miles away, where there was a girl’s team she could play for.

My daughter on the other hand had little interest in football (she liked dancing and went to dancing classes) but there was a girl in her primary (and later secondary) school who was not only keen on football, she excelled at it.

I won’t mention her name but she is currently a professional footballer in the Women’s Super League (WSL). I only saw her play once, in an after school practice match while I was waiting for my daughter, and to say she stood out is an understatement.

One moment in particular has stuck with me. Frustrated by her team conceding yet another goal, she ran back to the goalkeeper who was holding the ball, took it from her, and ran back to the centre circle to restart the game.

It reminded me of a scene in the film Gregory’s Girl when the star footballer, Dorothy, did exactly the same to Gregory, who had just conceded another rather tame goal.

This girl’s competitive spirit was just like Dorothy’s but so too was her skill and talent and it didn’t surprise me when I heard later that she was training with Arsenal. (She plays for another WSL club now.)

I mention this because that’s what woke me up to the fact that girls had the potential to play football at a high level, albeit not with the boys when they are older because the physical differences are just too great.

It was several more years though before I began taking an interest in the women’s game at club or international level. I was aware that for many years Arsenal had been the best ladies team in England by far, but it was only when Chelsea began to invest in its women’s team that I sat up and took serious notice.

As I have mentioned before I’ve supported Chelsea since 1967. The name has always resonated with me, largely because of childhood trips to London to visit my aunt. In the Sixties she lived near Kensington High Street, in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, so I was familiar with the name and the area although Chelsea actually play in Fulham.

In the Seventies, when there was no football in the summer (and it was a much longer off season than it is now), the pools’ coupon would be filled with Australian football matches and I saw there was another team called Chelsea playing in division six of the Victoria state league. So I ‘supported’ them too, for a while.

Chelsea, I later discovered, is a suburb of Melbourne but the current Chelsea Football Club (Australia) was only founded in 2009 so goodness knows what happened to its predecessor.

Anyway, given this irrational attachment to the word ‘Chelsea’, it was a no brainer to support Chelsea Ladies (or Chelsea Women as they are now known) but when I say ‘support’ I mean following their results or watching them on TV. I haven’t been to a match yet so my ‘support’ is of the strictly armchair variety.

Nevertheless I watched the team getting better and better, eventually winning multiple trophies under current head coach and manager Emma Hayes and eclipsing Arsenal as the top women’s team in England.

I followed the Women’s World Cup in France in 2019 and as more women’s matches began to be shown on TV or iPlayer I became a regular viewer, to the bemusement of my wife who found my burgeoning interest in women’s football hard to comprehend.

Like many men I was initially sceptical of the standard of women’s football but it’s important not to compare the two games directly.

That’s why I hate it when journalists and broadcasters talk of Manchester City striker Ellen White being poised to break Wayne Rooney’s record of goals for England. No she’s not!!!

Within the context of women’s football White’s goal scoring prowess is a great achievement but you can’t equate it to Rooney’s. They have been playing at a different level and against a different standard of opponent. It is not the same.

Likewise the number of international caps awarded to women is not directly comparable to the number of caps awarded to men. I’m sorry but it’s not.

That said, at the top level - by which I mean Barcelona, Lyon, Wolfsburg, Bayern Munich, Chelsea and Manchester City to name six European clubs (I could probably add a few more including Juventus, PSG and Real Madrid) - the skill factor in women’s football is undeniably high and is sometimes a joy to watch.

From watching Chelsea in recent years my favourite players are the more technical ones - Fran Kirby, the England midfielder who has been bedevilled by health problems, and Guro Reiten, the Norwegian midfielder who has a great left foot but arguably lacks a little physicality.

I also enjoy watching Melanie Leupolz, an incredibly stylish German midfielder who should probably score more goals but is a wonderful passer of the ball. She too lacks a bit of physicality which cannot be said of Millie Bright, the Chelsea and England central defender.

A few years ago Bright was the epitome of what many considered to be a fundamental flaw in the women’s game, even at the top level - an accident waiting to happen.

I lost count of the number of goals Bright seemed to give away, and she wasn’t alone. (To be fair there are also top male defenders – John Stones, I'm looking at you – who have done the same and have still enjoyed a top class career.)

Today Bright is a brilliant and immensely brave defender who makes very few mistakes, gets her head to almost every cross and is an astute passer of the ball. (I hope I haven’t jinxed her for the final!)

Meanwhile, had it not been for her pregnancy - which was announced in March - Melanie Leupolz would almost certainly have been in the Germany squad for Euro 2022. Instead she’s on maternity leave, which is another difference between the men’s and women’s games!

Aside from Chelsea (and I haven’t even mentioned leading goalscorer Sam Kerr who is a tour de force as a striker but plays for Australia), another skilful player - with a bit more body strength than Guro Reiten - is Manchester City and England’s Lauren Hemp.

Hemp has arguably not been at her best in the current tournament but how sublime was that curling cross to Beth Mead from which the England striker scored in the 8-0 defeat of Norway? What a beautifully floated ball, right on to Mead's head, and she did something similar in the match against Spain that allowed Alessia Russo to nod the ball down for Ella Toone to score the equaliser. (Cue pandemonium on the pitch and in the stands!)

I’ve been watching men’s football for over 50 years and I don’t recall seeing many balls crossed with such pinpoint accuracy and trajectory in a competitive match. Do they never practice or is the men's game just too quick for perfection?!

As I say, I do wish I’d written this post before the tournament started because several matches (not all by any means) have been a revelation and I like to think I would have predicted that because I’ve seen enough matches at club level to know how far the women’s game at the very top has progressed in recent years, even if it has a way to go to justify regular exposure on prime time TV.

As for the final at Wembley, I want England to win but in some ways the result doesn’t matter. After 100 years of struggle the winner will be women’s football.

I just hope some of the things I hate about the men’s game - the diving, time wasting and arguing with officials - don’t enter and spoil the woman’s game too. Arguably they are creeping in already because I’ve seen a little bit of each in several matches.

(As an aside the refereeing during Euro 2022 has been pretty good with the all-female officials refusing to grandstand, as some male officials are prone to do. In general they have also allowed the game to flow without blowing their whistle for every minor contact between players.)

Funnily enough the player I’ve most enjoyed watching at Euro 2022 has been the German defensive midfielder Lena Oberdorf. Others have praised her too and if she is on the winning side in the final I won’t complain.

The great thing about Oberdorf, 20, is that she isn’t a ‘showy’ player. She jogs around the pitch, makes the occasional sprint to get her side out of trouble, repeatedly breaks up the opponents’ play and passes the ball without fuss to a teammate.

I'm no expert but her positional play is exceptional and she’s also got a bit of steel in her, hence the bookings against Denmark and Spain in the group stage and against France in the semi-final.

It was suggested by some commentators that her booking late in the game against Spain was deliberate because it meant she would miss the next group game but not the quarter-finals for which Germany had already qualified. So she’s smart too!

Her compatriot, Alexandra Popp, has been impressive as well bearing in mind she missed the two previous Euro tournaments through injury.

As for England, two of the regular second half subs - Ella Toone and Alessia Russo - have also been a revelation and not just for their impact and goals but for the sheer joy and enthusiasm they bring to the pitch and to the stands.

How often, in the men’s game, do you see footballers clearly having fun and transmitting that to the supporters?

As it happens, had I written about Euro 2022 and the woman’s game before the tournament I wouldn’t have mentioned any of those players because I knew very little about them.

Popp, 31, may have retired when the next Women’s Euro comes around but let’s hope that Oberdorf, Toone and Russo - who will be 23, 25 and 26 respectively in 2025 - are still enjoying the game and at the same high level.

What I’ve also liked about Euro 2022 is the absence of mindless, aggressive chanting from the stands and neanderthal baiting of opposition fans.

Of course there’s a long way to go before women’s club football in particular can consistently match the men’s game in terms of attendances and commercial appeal, and for that reason it’s ridiculous to expect or demand immediate financial parity between men and women.

Another reason I like Melanie Leupolz, btw, is because of her realistic attitude to equal pay. Speaking last year she said:

“I don’t think equal pay is appropriate because you have to see what money men bring in and what women bring in.

“What justification do I have to earn millions when on the weekends I play in front of 3,000 people?

“Clubs are making losses for women’s teams. You have to invest now so that women’s football can support itself in a few years and bring in profits.”

[Update: Average attendances in the WSL are currently 2,000. In the Women’s Bundesliga in Germany they are half that so before people demand financial equality for women they should bear that in mind.]

Truth is, women’s football may never compete with men’s football on equal terms but does that matter? It’s a different form of the game, like women’s tennis is to men’s tennis, but no less appealing if the skill factor and competitiveness is there, and that’s where there is room for improvement.

The good news is that the WSL is becoming more competitive. Where the women’s game in England was once dominated by Arsenal there are now three teams regularly in the hunt for trophies (Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal) with Manchester United catching them up (if they can hold on to their best players and add new ones).

Likewise at international level the Germans used to dominate in Europe, winning six UEFA Women’s Championships in a row from 1995 to 2013. That stat alone should be a warning to England supporters ahead of the 2022 final but other countries have been catching up so a German victory is no longer a foregone conclusion.

England, Spain and France are part of that group while Sweden, despite England’s slightly flattering 4-0 win on Tuesday, remain the second ranked team in the world behind the USA.

Spain’s first half performance against England was arguably one of the best of the tournament but - and I’m keen to point this out - their clever inter-passing style of play failed to find the net.

Like Barcelona’s men’s team it was also quite boring to watch. Heresy, I know, but possession football for the sake of it can be very tedious.

Did you see how indignant the Spanish players were when England equalised after 84 minutes? It was as if they felt they had the right to win the match because for 80 minutes they played the ‘better’ football.

God knows I have no wish to go back to the old British style of lumping the ball up the park in the hope that some bruiser of a centre-forward will flick it on with his head with the ball spending more time in the air than on the grass.

But there has to be a happy medium and for me the most watchable matches in Euro 2022 were those in which teams tried to push forward with a combination of driving runs and short and longer passes.

Inevitably they will lose possession more often than not but that leads to counter-attacks and the result is goals and entertainment, often at both ends of the pitch.

For that reason England-Norway and England-Sweden were both hugely entertaining games, albeit with slightly freak results. Spain? It’s a yawn from me, I’m afraid.

Overall though the women’s game is in good shape and getting better.

For a better perspective of the modern game I recommend A History of Woman’s Football by Jean Williams.

Published last year it’s quite a scholarly work, full of detail, but worth reading. In particular I had no idea that women’s football was so popular before the First World War when tens of thousands of people would watch women’s matches.

I knew that the Football Association (run by men) effectively banned women’s football between 1920 and 1970 (correction: 1921 and 1971) but I was unaware that women continued to play the game, despite being refused permission to play matches on any ground owned by clubs affiliated to the FA.

Overseas there was more encouragement for the women’s game and a Women’s World Cup held in Italy in 1970 is reported to have attracted crowds of 30,000 or more.

According to Wikipedia a second Women’s World Cup, in Mexico in 1971, had estimated attendances of 100,000 for the opening game between Mexico and Argentina, 80,000 for the Mexico-England group game, and 110,000 for the final between Mexico and Denmark.

Whether those estimates are accurate it nevertheless shows that interest in women’s football is nothing new and the UK, like many other countries, is actually playing catch-up after decades of neglect.

Funnily enough, when I was 15 I had some experience of the stubborn autocratic mind of the British football administrator.

Football wasn’t played at my school, which preferred rugby, so to play football I had to create a team with friends from my village. We called ourselves Wormit Bilbao (don’t ask) and played in Arsenal replica strips. (There were no club badges or sponsors’ logos on them in those days.)

We played on local pitches but there weren’t many teams to play against because there were no adults involved and we weren’t in a league so the teams we played against - from Newport and St Andrews - were generally made up of people we knew from school.

Bored with playing the same teams over and over again I wrote to the Scottish Football Association requesting a list of clubs we might contact.

If I remember the Scottish FA suggested I write to the Scottish Amateur Football Association but what surprised me was this.

One of the two (I can't remember which although I have the letter somewhere) asked whether our players were ‘registered’ and warned that if we weren’t registered we could be banned from playing football.

I was 15 at the time and just wanted to organise some games against boys of the same age with a similar interest in football. Banned for not being 'registered'? What did that mean?

I did manage to organise a ‘friendly’ against an U16 club side in Dundee (it might have been Celtic Boys Club) but they were visibly unimpressed when we turned up without a football for the pre-match warm up and with only ten players.

We had to borrow one of their players (who scored both our goals in a 6-2 defeat) and they refused to let us have even one of their balls for our warm-up so we were forced to stand around aimlessly until the game started.

The match was also played not on grass but on a black ash surface that encouraged neither tackling nor diving. I was in goal and it’s fair to say I didn’t fancy it. Nor did anyone else in our team so we didn’t lay a glove on them.

I can therefore empathise with the women’s game for the many obstacles and humiliations it endured for at least half a century and probably more.

Let’s hope those days are over and any girl (or boy) who wants to play football can do so without restriction or the threat of being banned.