One of the things I find most amusing about women’s football in England is the absolute level of fume and bristle that arises whenever a contentious refereeing decision occurs. “We need VAR now,” goes the seething howl. To which the only possible response is: maybe be careful what you wish for? And if you set aside the obvious corollary that perhaps people just like being furious, this is a situation that encapsulates the women’s game in this country quite well at the moment. Proud to be different from men’s football. But also, insulted and a bit outraged.
This is perhaps the central tension in a sport trapped between two competing, almost paradoxical forces: the urge to be a distinctive counterpoint and an alternative space to men’s football, with all its greed and toxicity and rapacious disaster capitalism, and the urge to emulate its growth and wealth, to thrive and prosper. Right now, those two forces are colliding in strange and unpredictable ways.
