I'm sure we all know about Jess Carter during the Euros, but the issue is bigger. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6844594/2025/11/28/england-keira-walsh-online-abuse/ https://archive.is/cIKF4 Keira Walsh says ‘you’d struggle to find’ any WSL player that hasn’t been abused online Chelsea midfielder Keira Walsh has said that players want to see more action taken to prevent online abuse directed towards women’s football players. The 28-year-old added that the majority of players in the Women’s Super League (WSL), the top level of women’s football in England, had received abuse online. UK-based threat monitoring service Moonshot said 3,000 social media posts containing “hostile or concerning content” were directed at England players and head coach Sarina Wiegman during the 2025 European Championship final alone.
There's a simple solution, make every abuse cost the abuser 10,000€€, and if the person is not found or can't pay, make the platform pay that fine.
Related to the above. And while this is about abuse in general, it does cover players and manager in the WSL. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c4g98zkx518o Premier League bosses Ruben Amorim, Arne Slot and Eddie Howe were the most common targets of abuse in the men's top flight, while Chelsea and their manager Sonia Bompastor faced 50% of all abuse in the WSL. A total of 61% of all abusive messages were sent from accounts in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and the data suggests the overall number is on the rise. ... Controversy during Chelsea's 1-1 draw at Arsenal on 8 November sparked the vast majority of the 97 verified abusive messages posted about WSL matches. More than half targeted Chelsea boss Bompastor, including a threat of violence and a homophobic slur. "People think they can say anything they want from behind a screen," Bompastor said. "It's scary - I want to raise my voice against that.
Wow, Paukenschlag im Frauenfußball: Bundesliga will Ligaverband ohne DFB gründen Der Tagesspiegel 1 day ago Einen Tag nach der EM-Vergabe 2029 brechen die Proficlubs öffentlich mit dem DFB. Es geht um den geplanten Liga-Verband der Frauen. Die Bosse aus München und Frankfurt werden deutlich. German women's clubs to form their own league body without DFB DPA International 1 day ago The 14 women's Bundesliga clubs will found their own league organization FBL without the German Football Federation (DFB), several clubs said in a statements on Thursday. The FBL was originally planned to be set up together with the DFB at the DFB campus on
New FIFPRO report highlights precarious realities of two-speed calendar in women’s professional football - article REPORT (link) A two-speed industry is emerging in women’s football.New FIFPRO data shows a small group faces intense workload pressures, while most have too little competitive football to progress.— FIFPRO (@FIFPRO) December 12, 2025
What is crazy is we end up in situation where a minority of players are overloaded and huge majority are underloaded. Hard to find a solution that will satisfy everyone.
We need to talk about the Korea women’s national team and the misleading 'boycott' narrative.On September 26, 2025, 20 players from the Korea women’s national team submitted a confidential letter to the Korea Football Association (KFA), through the Korea Pro-Footballers… pic.twitter.com/oX2qbQiZmQ— FIFPRO (@FIFPRO) January 29, 2026
Lifted from another thread: https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/know-where-park-car-online-063107300.html
The issues with women’s soccer: any negative publicity is still considered good publicity. I say f*** that.
Players call for AFC partnership as FIFPRO Asia/Oceania research indicates 2026 Women’s Asian Cup will be biggest ever. (article on FIFPro) The 2026 AFC Women’s Asian Cup prize pool currently represents just 12 percent of the men’s equivalent and is the lowest among comparable continental tournaments. (AFC Club Championship 2024 data): 25% said football was not their primary source of income 58% earned less than $10,000 from football annually only 32% dedicated at least 20 hours per week to football (2024 SAFF Women's Championship data): 38% of players said football was not their full-time occupation 32% had other employment outside football 62% felt additional financial support would improve preparation for future international competitions Opportunities of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2026 (pre-tournament report)
Beyond the AFC number, what strikes me is how low CONFACAF is, only slightly above CAF. Yeah, I would not expect numbers anywhere near UEFA numbers, but still, with both the US and Canada involved, that just seems very low.
Yup. The rest together about 1/4 of UEFA's money, while Canada and USA are involved, is an eye opener. Any reason to the why of the USA/Canada tournement being so low?
It's the newest of the confederation championships; its inaugural year was the 2024 one. For comparison, AFC Women's Asian Cup is the oldest of all the confederation championships. I think it's even more enlightening to look at the comparison between the men's and women's tournaments in each confederation as it shows what a confederation is willing to spend on any tournament. CONCACAF has, by far, the best percentage comparison between the prize purse between the men's and women's tournaments. The women's total prize purse is 75% of the men's, and it's between fewer teams. The champions and runners-up of each tournament actually won the same in the most recent versions of each tournament. None of the other confederations come close to a similar parity, looking at either the totals or even if adjusted for the number of participants. Why is the total still so much lower than UEFA? Less money in CONCACAF, lower attendance in the tournaments, etc. Probably lots of reasons.
I would expect the tournement with the USA/Canada in it would pull more sponsor money, because of the USA being a superpower in soccer and with the commercial base of the USA to profit from.
In an inaugural year of a tournament? And, again, it's the confederation, not just the USWNT which is a powerhouse for the women's side, but not as much on the men's. You have to look at what CONCACAF can pull, not the USWNT. Although, if we talking the USWNT influence here, I would place a huge bet on it being because of the USSF lobbying for it that the men's and women's tournaments have the same prize purse; that was something that came out of the equal pay CBA. Plus, the women's tournaments where CONCACAF controls the ticketing are never as well-attended compared to USSF-controlled matches. The US has almost always hosted these CONCACAF tournaments to give them a fighting chance, but CONCACAF does so little to promote them that they have had historically poor attendance numbers. The W Gold Cup though did do better than previous CONCACAF tournaments. I'm not usually a CONCACAF defender, so this a strange position for me to be in, but I kind of feel like I've given multiple reasons here, and somehow I'm not communicating that there is a vast difference in how much money CONCACAF has and is willing to spend on their continental championships as opposed to UEFA. If we were really to point out the glaring "issue in women's football" in that chart above, it wouldn't be the CONCACAF tournament anyway. It would be the huge difference between CONMEBOL's men's and women's prize purse.
Putting a thought here, in context, partially because it is based on something Emma Hayes said in response to a question at the recent pre-match press conference before the 3rd US v. Japan match, but also in the recent appointment of Marie-Louise Eta. Here's the presser. The question is the last one asked (current the live version is up, but will switch to it being recorded, so not sure of the timing). To paraphrase, the question was asked can women coach men effectively, and can men coach women effectively, and what is the difference there? Hayes' answer reminded me of something I heard Nell Irvin Painter say in a lecture on her book "The History of White People." The context is Painter is Black. And one of the things she said is that there is nothing wrong with a White person writing a book on the history of Black people, or her writing a book on the history of White people, as long as it is done is a way that focuses on the top-line thesis: "The History of..." and supported by religiously explored evidence. I say that because of what Hayes said, which was interesting. Yes, males can effectively coach females. And females can effectively coach males. The reason is that, at the end of the day, coaches coach people. And she started to say, "teaching." And I'm sure @blissett will confirm my own experience, males can teach females, and females can teach males. So, why can't females coach males? And why can't males coach females? Anyway, I thought it was an interesting answer, particularly in context of the appointment of Eta.
As a male, I most often teach both males and females in my classes, but, for a pair years or three, it happened to me to teach to only-females classes (it was not a segregated school: it was just an high-school whose particular course of studies made it easy to only have few and sparses male students, who didn't happen to be in my classes). I dare to think that I was a decent-to-good teacher to them (or anyway not a different teacher compared to what I've been to other classes in my career). I indeed noticed some differences in the day-to-day approach, compared to only-males classes (that I also happened to have, although less often, in my career), but it doesn't seem worth to me to elaborate, since I guess it would mostly be off-topic in a discussion about coaching.
If I can translate this to the NFL: if Super Bowl–winning head coach Mike Macdonald, who never played a single down of American football, but was given an enormous shot to enter the coaching ranks as a graduate assistant at the University of Georgia while still a student—and rise to the highest level of the game—why can’t a woman one day become a head coach in the NFL?
Actually I think it's on topic. I don't know how it is in other European countries, but in the Netherlands girls tend to have better school results compared to their same age boys, because girls tend to be more task orientated and more accepting of what the teacher expects from them behaviorally, while boys tend to be more distracted and also more disruptive in class towards teachers. From my own memory of school long, long ago I can't remember any girl being sent to the head master for punishment. The percentage of women in higher education has been growing and now is higher than that of men and funny enough (the issue has been on the table in another thread/forum, can't remember which, one poster searched about it worldwide and saw that that occurred even in countries like Saoudi Arabia. I suppose the same phenomenon extends to coaching girls or boys.
The coaches I know who have coached in men and women football all said the same. The women are much better at being taught football and they have more discipline. They have also more wilingness to understand the exercices in training. LIke they want to know why the exercice is for rather than just executing it.
We have long discussed stuff like this in the Education thread in the politics forum. We have also discussed this in Politics and Current Events forum (various threads), and a bunch of this is about promoting more access to females in non-trandional female fields (such as tech). I hope so, but I think there can be a lesson learned from what we are seeing in education, and in society in various corners (US and UK specifically). We are seeing a black lash against women entering higher education and earning advanced degrees because of the promotion of access. But it has been at the cost of not thinking about how this effects males, and how it sometimes comes across as females replacing males rather than females being better at a given area than males. In that regard, it is male privilege being threatened, even if I don't think that some think of it like that. I can very much see that the same can happen in football, the men's game specifically, when a female coach replaces a male coach and not enough support by the administration/leadership is provided. And saying this I'm not suggesting that clubs tread lightly. I'm suggesting that when they do this, they need to do so thoughtfully.