The more beautiful game?

tiej · Feb 15, 2003

Talking about women's football(soccer) with English men is like giving a Frenchman a bottle of Jacob's Greek - except with more references to flies-on-walls-in-changing-rooms and butch birds.

http://football.guardian.co.uk/womensfootball/story/0,12783,884529,00.html

The media, or lack of it, doesn't help of course. TV's Gary Newbon made himself a sworn enemy of the game just this week by saying that no one in their right mind would pay to watch the sport. Even Gary Lineker, who should know better, admitted on a recent Question of Sport that the only female player he knew was Fulham striker Marianne Spacey. Still, that's one more than most people could mention.
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FC Carolina · Feb 15, 2003

In the article, Julie Fletcher made the point that I've been saying for a long time. Soccer is established as a "male sport" in many countries. If you look at the major world powers of women's soccer, with the except of Germany and Brazil, they're not exactly known for the success of their men's teams.

America benefited from a lack of pre-conceived notions when youth soccer programs were starting to crank up in the 1970s. Nobody thought of soccer as a "boy's game" or a "girl's game," so why wouldn't the opportunities be available for both? The result is an entire generation of women (now working on a second) growing up knowing "it's OK" to play soccer, whatever that means. That's something that England doesn't have.

I do think that the author overstated (sadly) the extent of coverage of women's soccer in the American press. I'd be freakin' estatic if women's soccer, or for that matter, soccer in general, "regularly feature on page three and higher still" in the sports pages.