In 2015, I interviewed the manager of Chelsea FC Women, Emma Hayes. The interview got off to a bad start when I asked her the seemingly innocuous question: “Can women ever achieve equality with men?” The women’s game was some way off achieving parity with the men’s, she told me.
Seven years later, this is still the case (but they did also have a 50-year head start – more on that later). But what she really seemed frustrated by, I sensed, were the constant comparisons with the men’s game. Could we not “appreciate [women’s football] in its own right”, she asked, and recognise it as “a great product” regardless?
