Women’s Football comes of Age
Women’s football has really come of age. Yesterday a match was being shown on TV between the under 20 side from Mexico playing against the under 20 side from Korea Republic. The interesting aspect was how similar it was to the men’s under 20 game. 3 brilliant goals were scored by the Korean side against Mexico’s single goal. The play was very similar to watching the men’s game at that level and this seems to be one of the reasons why the women’s game has grown so popular in the last few years. It does not seem to matter whether it is women’s football or men’s football; it is all the same; very exciting and entertaining football at the end of the day.
Women’s football has been around for a long time but the first time it actually started to gain some prominence amongst fans was in 1917 with the emergence of d**k, Kerr’s Ladies Football Club that was formed by munitions workers at d**k, Kerr and Co. Ltd. These pioneering women in the sport became very popular and by 1921 were playing regularly in front of average crowds of 25,000. On the 6th of December of that same year, the English Football Association, FA, banned all women’s games from taking place in the grounds of FA member clubs. This effectively banned women from playing football in front of any real spectators in England. This one move of the FA’s ended up banning women’s football in England for 50 years. It was only revived in 1971 and by that time the men’s game had become extremely popular while the women’s version had been pushed into the shadows. There were many reasons why the FA implemented this ban; they thought women playing football was unladylike, they wanted to promote the men’s game where they thought they could earn more money or maybe they succumbed to societal pressures of the time.
From those rocky starts and stops, women’s football has really progressed by leaps and bounds. This has been achieved even though there was not any sort of support from the governing body of the sport or the government at the time. Today’s football is a very different game and watching a men’s final or a women’s final is all the same. The problem that women’s football even in these so called enlightened times had to deal with is the fact that a lot of men out there are terrified of women playing football. They equate football with masculinity and women playing football taints the game in their minds. The problem for them though is the fact that a lot of women footballers are now actually better than the men. This was proven a little while ago when Mia Hamm, the legend of US soccer, turned up at a college in the States and played a game with some local men. Not even a single one of them could get near her or take the ball away from her.
Another brilliant female footballer was actually so good that she almost played in a men’s team. Mexican football star Maribel Dominguez was offered a place on a men’s team, Celaya, in Mexico’s second division. The team was lacking a centre forward and Maribel seemed like the perfect choice. The only problem for her and for her new team was FIFA. When asked if it was alright to include a woman in a men’s team they immediately said that it was not possible and she could not play for them. Maribel has not given up though; she still dreams of playing club football and is looking into sponsorship deals and maybe moving to Europe to play for a club there. There are still division lines drawn in regards to women playing on men’s teams. People cannot seem to swallow the concept; it is just too much for them to bear. Well maybe today it is, in 20 years time, who knows. We might see a mixed football team yet; if they can do it in tennis they can do it in football as well.
Battling through unbelievable hardships, being banned and dealing with societal pressure has made the women who play football even more determined to prove their worth and fight for their rights. It will be a few years still, but one day soon we will see a truly global female football team with millions of supporters.
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