Women's Football: My Thoughts

Two weeks ago, Birmingham City Ladies’ beat FK Zorkiy Ladies 5-2 on aggregate to reach the Women’s Champions League quarter-finals. I thought this was a good opportunity to discuss my thoughts on women’s football generally. Although I often like to think of myself as young and liberal-minded, I have to say that I am not a fan. I don’t hate the sport, and I don’t mind other people taking an interest in it. But whenever I have casually put this to an ardent supporter, I get a bizarre reaction. They look at me as if I’m some kind of chauvinistic pig, just because I choose not to follow a sport. It makes me wonder why.

I have watched a few games of women’s football, and in all honesty, I cannot see the appeal. The matches are played at a slow tempo, players are often slipping over, whilst struggling to control the ball. Women don’t seem to be built to play football. If you watch the woman’s game, you need to understand that the quality won’t be as high, and embrace it as an entirely different sport. But if this is the case, why watch it in the first place?

Given the choice, I would prefer to see a match played at a high speed, where players are making crunching tackles and being competitive. Equally, I would prefer to watch a game of basketball than a game of wheelchair basketball, without being disrespectful. Taking the emotional, sentimental side out of it, I would rather see two teams playing with the maximum physical capability.

You may say: “Is it a choice? You can watch men’s football as well.” It is not a direct choice, but the sport takes a certain amount of time out of your day to watch, and you would need to watch it regularly to develop an interest. Let’s not forget that a lot of people have a full-time job, a family and a football team already - it’s not as if we’re all in desperate need of another hobby.

This, and the fact that the standard of football is not so good, makes me wonder why certain fans are so adamant that others should follow it. People talk about getting into women’s football as if it is some kind of moral obligation, which I don’t understand. There’s a sense that if you don’t like women’s football, you’re not supporting equality, and women as a gender. Let's be honest, we no longer live in a society in which women are in need of an equal footing. If anything, women seem marginally more respected than men. For example, if you go into most households, it tends to be the woman being the decision-maker. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, I’m simply proving how equality between genders is no longer an issue. This can be taken out of the equation.

I want to make it clear that I am in no way resentful of women’s involvement in football, yet I don’t feel passionate about it either. The majority of women I know don't care about football, because from an early age they developed different interests, due to certain cultural expectations. Similarly, as a bloke I don’t really care about going shopping or watching the X Factor, at the risk of sounding reliant on stereotypes. If women generally have different interests to men, fine. If some women choose to play football, fine. Fair play to them. But I don’t see why I ‘ought’ to watch the matches, simply because it’s women who have bucked the social trend.

At this point, you might ask why I’m even writing an article on women’s football if I feel indifferent about it. It is not the sport itself which annoys me; women have a right to play football and people have a right to watch them. What does annoy me however, is fans who insist that everyone should follow it as some kind of social responsibility. They seem to cover themselves in paranoia, thinking that modern football has a sexist culture. This is not true. The reason women’s football draws low crowds, is not because football fans have pre-historic attitudes and believe that women should ‘stay in the kitchen’. Rather, it is because the sport simply isn’t that good. For me, that is the core truth of it. 

I am open to disagreements on this. Feel free to drop a comment here, or ping me a tweet @_thescore and let me know your thoughts.