First things first, chapeau to England. The best team in the tournament triumphant over the second best team in a pulsating final in front of a record Euro final crowd, one watched at home by the largest numbers for any event this year, sporting or otherwise – full stop. And that full stop is significant.
We overuse terms like historic, game-changing, revolutionary when often we just mean dramatic, exciting or significant. No such accusations with regard to events at Wembley last Sunday. I was lucky enough to be present to witness a tournament finale that’ll have reverberations for our sport and beyond. This was the long overdue normalisation of what many of us have always considered ‘normal’.
Yet for those of us in our middle age, us playing football was seen as, at best, quirky and, at worst, weird and subversive. That’s because the very act of women kicking a ball was a threat to the male monopoly of the game (and much else in society during that 50-year ban on women’s football).
The reality is that, while there are plenty of fine role models in football, men still control our game, certainly in the boardroom where most important decisions are made. I’ve said it before, but what other sector would tolerate a governance model from the dark ages where, at best, there’s a token woman or two around the board table and scarcely a non-white or younger face?
That needs to change – and fast – if we’re to make the current appetite for the game sustainable and secure. If the change is to have synergy with the unique values of the women’s game, it needs to be articulated and decided upon by both women and men.
If you were surprised by what you saw in England over these past few weeks, you’re probably new to our sport. Those of us who know that women’s football has always been box office, it’s just it’s been men selling the tickets. Across Europe, women’s football has been growing at four times the pace of men’s. Unsurprisingly, many large corporates like Visa regard women’s football as a more attractive investment than men’s. The records that tumbled throughout this Euros follow on from a record-breaking Women’s Champions League tournament with an attendance of 91,533 at Barcelona’s famous Nou Camp stadium.
And it’s beyond Europe too – the Africa Cup of Nations for Women in Morocco last month saw crowds of 50,000-plus.
The fans are different too. No drunkenness and no storming of the Wembley turnstiles. Instead, smiling families with children – boys and girls – with painted faces and wearing England tops revelling in the experience. UEFA reported that stadium crowds have been 53% male and 47% female. I’ve been going to football matches since I was a toddler, as have our girls, but that doesn’t mean it’s always felt safe or welcoming. Cymru’s own famous Red Wall/Wal Goch is challenging some of this with efforts to attract more women and LGBT fans, but the fan base is still overwhelmingly white, so let’s acknowledge that we’ve all got plenty more to do.
Sport rarely stands still – neither does it dwell on success, rather it’s about the drive for constant improvement. So, now’s not the time to sit back and bask in England’s glory. Let them enjoy their well-deserved party but here in Cymru we get back to work.
Let’s be honest, the Euros was just what we needed four weeks away from some of the biggest games in our nation’s history. Beat Greece in Volos on September 2 and victory over Slovenia the following Tuesday will mean Cymru will be in a play-off to reach the biggest sporting event in the women’s football calendar – the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next summer.
I don’t know about you, but every Euro game I watched felt like salt in the wound for Cymru narrowly missing out, particularly as we would have held our own against many of the nations there. Let’s use that pain and disappointment to our advantage – no sitting on the sidelines next time around, Cymru needs to be centre stage.
This Euro tournament attracted scores of new fans and virgin television viewers from across Wales like elsewhere. And they liked what they saw. Football played skilfully and joyously in the right spirit, with real tenacity and competitiveness, but mostly without cheating and sullen faces.
So this is a call to arms. When Cymru plays Slovenia, imagine what a boost it would be for Sophie Ingle to lead the team out in front of a packed-out stadium. Now some will say, hold on Laura, you’re getting carried away in the euphoria, but I can assure you we’re not. We’ve already broken the record for ticket sales and there are four weeks to go!
In a UEFA conference before last Sunday’s final, Angel City FC of Los Angeles, a brand new club formed by women for women, spoke of their mission. Sure, they boast the pulling power and wealth of Natalie Portman and Serena Williams but, from nothing, the team sold out its stadium last weekend. Cymru fans are more passionate than those in LA, so you’d need a very good excuse not to be at the Cardiff City Stadium on September 6.
In terms of football’s development, money talks, of course. UEFA has doubled its investment in women’s football, while it was the generous resourcing by the English FA that made the Lionesses’ success possible. These are uber rich organisations which can rightly throw money at programmes to engineer progress. We don’t have that luxury in Cymru (mind you, if there is a single medium-to-large business in Wales not planning to invest in women’s football here, they might need to ask what their marketing and commercial teams are doing?).
But do not despair, what we do have in Cymru is a clear, ambitious strategy and an energetic and passionate workforce determined to capture the massive latent interest in our beautiful game.
Girls’ football is already the biggest team sport here with 12,500 players and recent Nielsen research for the FAW revealed that football is the highest interest sport for girls, a statistic backed up by Sport Wales’ school sport survey. Yet, the reality is that football is not offered consistently and regularly for all girls across many Welsh primary and secondary schools. That’s unforgivable and something we need to remedy right away if we’re to make sure the game belongs to girls as well as boys. Because, make no mistake, improvements won’t happen naturally and organically.
As England captain Leah Williamson said, this isn’t the end, it’s the start of the journey. We are at an important crossroads for the women’s game with some major structural and cultural decisions ahead, all with opportunities but also accompanied with challenges and risks. We need to take a Burkean view to progress, preserving what’s best and unique about our game while propelling it forward to become more equal and more sustainable.
People talk of sports-washing (using sport to conceal distasteful political regimes), but there is a risk of what my FIFPRO colleague Sarah Gregorius has called “progress-washing” too. She’s referring to the danger of assuming that a successful tournament means the battles have been won thus deflecting from the major structural work that lies ahead.
As we plan that progress, women’s football shouldn’t imitate men’s nor divide into the haves and have nots. Instead, let’s adopt the principle of competitive balance so that we bring along all nations in a journey of shared success. As of now, only 36 nations have ever played in the Women’s World Cup – that’s just 17% of the world, reflecting an inequality and disparity in football competitiveness. To change this, we need to spread the professionalisation of the game deeper and wider.
Look at the improvements witnessed in goalkeeping during this tournament (helpfully removing one of men’s traditional criticisms of our game!) – all the result of professionalisation and improved technical coaching. And the refereeing standards were much higher too, culminating in that proud moment when former Cymru international Cheryl Foster refereed the semi-final between France and Germany.
At grassroots level, the focus has to be on more and better facilities, ones that are appropriate and welcoming to girls, with basic things like proper toilets, not just urinals, with sanitary products and hot showers.
We need to have the confidence to do this our way and on our own terms. Women’s football has its own distinctive identity based on relatable players and an accessible and inclusive lifetime offer. There is a bigger purpose to women’s sport too, as its glorious role models have shown. Players like Pernille Harder, Lucy Bronze, Megan Rapinoe, Sam Kerr and our own Jess Fishlock are sharp, sassy and skilful with bags of attitude. In talking politically about our sport – about racism, sexism and LGBT rights – they are influencing wider societal equality too. Let’s face it, football as a whole would be improved through a transfusion of values from the women’s game into the men’s.
Ask any of us over 40 involved in football and we’ll all say that’s it’s been a constant battle – to get our voices heard, to gain respect, even just to get a pitch and referees. Wouldn’t it be nice not to face a battle each day just to have the same rights as men who play football?
Men have never owned football, they’ve just behaved like they do. Well, that genuine game changing moment is here. We need to raise our voices and use the agency that comes from the new-found status of the women’s game. No more being grateful for any interest or investment – on the contrary, we should be demanding much more. The truth is that if all available funding was tilted towards women’s sport, and broadcasters covered women’s sport 24/7, it still wouldn’t compensate for a century of neglect.
Our history of battling will stand us in good stead for what comes next – ‘if you know your history’ and all that. We all recognise that we stand on the shoulders of women who had to fight much harder with far less. The Welsh women in the 1970s (when the game was banned here too), who organised their own international team, paying for kit and caps from their own pockets – women like Sue Lopez, one of our early Cymru managers and one of first semi pro players in Italy, who demanded and expected far more from the FAW for us as players.
It’s a joyous breakthrough that women in football are now an asset not a liability. Women’s football is no longer an afterthought – it’s now centre stage. But, if we are to capitalise on this golden moment, we’ll need to be feisty and what I’ve described as positively disruptive. Among other things, that’ll mean asking – always in a positive and polite way – the challenging questions, not taking no for an answer and expecting more urgency and commitment from our male allies who still overwhelmingly control the game.
Euro 2022 in England can be a springboard for achieving a proper level playing field. The tournament may be over, but the journey has just begun. The difference is that we now travel on our own terms buoyed by a sense that the world has finally woken up to what we’ve known for a long time – football is a beautiful game and it belongs to us all.
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* Laura McAllister is a sports-mad academic from Bridgend. She is Professor at Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre and former captain of Wales Women’s international football team.
