Women's Football.
Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:19 pm
I thought this was an interesting post, on Twatter.To save smothering the "Jokes & funnies," thread, I thought we could continue the discussion here if there is to be a discussion.
Regular "humiliation" is never going to attract more players to the game, which is what it needs, and I think "seeded" pre-competition groups would be the way to go. There is likely to be more driver to succeed if, at the end of it,l you know you stand the chance of actually winning a game or two, and, in the process, getting closer to the bigger nations, skill-wise.
I love football, and I enjoy the women's game. I follow Liverpool FC Women and watch whenever one of their games is available, live on their Facebook page for instance. The problem is, even England, as 20 - 0 winners, mostly don't get the funding and support at club level or at an international level, that is required to help players develop to their true potential. Speaking about England specifically, loads of girls and women are now playing the sport, let's encourage them as much as we possibly can, and let's be the best in the world. It is an attainable goal once the (mostly) Premier League Clubs, FA, UEFA and FIFA are dragged, screaming, into the 21st century. Women's teams need to be more closely integrated into the parent clubs, not just an add-on, or a bolted-on afterthought.
The problems are manifold and manifest, to me anyway, but here are just a couple that I see almost daily...
#1 - People are spoiled. These days there is wall-to-wall coverage of football of the highest calibre. The Premier League, La Liga, League 1 etc. are all available for the price of a subscription, or in the case of Sky, your eternal soul. I don't want to drift into "when I was a lad..." territory, but when I was a lad, I used to support the biggest really local team to me, Tonbridge FC, now Tonbridge Angels. I used to be at every home match, and I was even a program seller (program sellers got in for free) before I started drifting away because music, pubs, and darts was taking up more of my time, oh, and girls too.
. Very few kids do that these days, or at least, a far smaller percentage compared to 50 years ago, which is what I'm talking about. All they see these days is Liverpool, United, The Arse, PSG, Real, Atletico, etc. Why on earth would you go out to watch Spennymoor in the Vanarama National League North. When you can sit at home, in the comfort of your own bedroom, and wank over the likes of Messi and Ronaldo? Proper grass-roots football is dying on its arse due to lack of funding from the top of the pyramid, and lack of investment from the government. Almost gone are the days of players like Malcolm McDonald being plucked from the obscurity of Knole Juniors in Sevenoaks to play full back for Tonbridge and end up being a legendary striker for Newcastle, The Arse, and England. These days it's much easier for top echelon clubs to buy a promising Bulgarian 17-year old. I can't say foreign players have ruined the game because they haven't, they've brought some amazing skills, and spectacle to it, but when you see English National League clubs importing foreign players you do have to ask yourself where it all ends, and how many "local" players have been overlooked. How many careers have ended before they've even started?#2 - FIFA22 and the other top console/computer games. Kids today play these rather than playing football in the park - which has probably been concreted over to make a car park anyway - and, again, they don't leave the house. I'm part of a pretty lively Liverpool FC "community" on Twatter, and they're so easy to spot. They're full of technical jargon and, to be honest, bollocks usually.
They've never actually kicked a ball in their life, but a few fingers and a thumb turn them into Mo Salah, or so they think, and they "know" the game inside out from playing Football Manager. They'll bang on about "no depth in the squad" while not understanding the skills and strengths of individual players except as numbers on a spreadsheet. You can see them scrambling for the latest updates when a youth player makes it into the first-team squad. A player many of us have followed via his development with the U17s, U19s, U23s etc. that they've never heard of before. They're the ones who post about those players breathlessly, "telling" us about the "new lad" who's going to be brilliant. "Earth to Twats, come in please... we've known that for years. lads."
So there you go. People are spoiled, and people have never so much as put in a slide tackle or kicked a football in anger. Why on earth would they watch women's football? They are football snobs, and just like every other form of a snob, they are as misguided as all fuck and about as pleasant to converse with as Jacob Ree-Smogg (I should imagine). Yes, I know, that's probably REVERSE snobbery, and I can't force them to watch women's football or even football from the lower leagues, but it worries me that eventually there might not be any lower leagues for them to ignore. Women's football will, in all likelihood, survive, but it won't grow, and it won't improve as much and as fast as it should without huge dollops of belief in the game.
I believe that unless you know where football came from you cannot truly appreciate where it's going, and like the "blue wall" ignoring its roots, today's generation of non-footballing football fans are happy to ignore the roots of the game for a quick thrill and a glimpse of the shiny-shiny being offered to them.
Ramble over. Carry on. Nothing to see here.
