Footballiversity Issue #8 – Footballiverse 66

Women’s World Cup… and Beyond

Footballiverse 66 is a place where England football teams get lucky. Lampard’s goal would have been allowed, all those missed penalties would have been scored, and Paul Scholes would have been played in central midfield before ascending to his rightful position as an actual irl deity. The narrative picks up in the Women’s World Cup semi-final, at the point where Laura Bassett had the misfortune of seeing her interception go into her own net, putting Japan ahead with only seconds of the game to spare. But it was only an own goal in our Footballiverse. In Footballiverse 66, this is what happened…….

[BBC Live Text]

90’ Japan counter-attack down the right wing. A cross is played behind the line of the defence as they are running back to their own goal, aiming for one of several Japanese forwards to run onto it. Laura Bassett sticks out a leg, the ball loops up, up, up… And out for a corner.

90’+ Japan’s bus-stop corner comes to nothing. The referee blows for the end of the match. We’re into extra-time here.

96’ Japan keeping the ball well here. Quite boring tho tbqh.

112’ England shoot wide from a good move. Still level.

120’ ENGLAND SCORE!!!11!11!!! A foul by the Japanese left-back gave England a free-kick in a good position. Karen Bardsley, the goalkeeper, was waved forwards by England manager Mark Sampson and a fantastic delivery by Fara Williams found Bardsley unmarked. There were suspicions of handball as Bardsley bundled it into the net, but the goal stands, and Bardsley becomes the first goalkeeper to score in any senior football World Cup [Ed: This may not be true. Sounds legit though]. England are into the final.

FINAL

-5’ Boos and cries of ‘Freedom’ and ‘USA’ ring out from American supporters as God Save the Queen plays. Bloody Yanks.

1’ So here we go, England against the United States of America in the World Cup final on Independence Day weekend.

2’ Abby Wambach, the talismanic American forward, who has insisted on wearing a bald eagle costume for the match, misses a sitter. The ball squirms off one of the talons and hits her in the face. There is a long delay as she is helped back to her feet.

9’ The referee refuses America a penalty for a ‘foul’ (dive) from an American player. A Republican senator takes to Twitter to call the ref a ‘commie’.

10’ The Republican senator claims their account was hacked. In the match, still 0-0.

11’ ENGLAND SCORE!!!!

12’ ENGLAND SCORE!!!!!!

13’ ENGLAND SCORE!!!!!

…..

90’ ENGLAND SCORE AGAIN!!! THAT’S A GOAL FOR EACH STATE OF THE U.S. OF LOSING A!!!!! 51-0!!!! YOU CAN TAKE YOUR INDEPENDENCE AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASSININE PATRIOTISM. GEORGE WASHINGTON, ABE LINCOLN, TOM SAWYER, GEORGE W BUSH, HOMER SIMPSON, YOUR GIRLS HAVE TAKEN ONE HELLLL OF A BEATING!!!

FINAL WHISTLE +180’ America comes crawling back to England, praying that we can teach them how to be a better nation. Discussions ongoing.

FINAL WHISTLE +200’ Snap UK election called bc David Cameron and the Conservatives can’t be trusted to teach America how to be nice.

FINAL WHISTLE +200’ +2 months Bifurcated wins the election and implements good policies. All is well. All because we smashed the living hell out of the USA.

——————————————–

Footballiversity #9 will be out on the 5^th of August. Probably. But the football is over for the summer, so it might be back in September. Whichever.

In 2005 our beloved Manchester United scrapped their women’s team because there was no financial sense in it continuing for the club. Forgetting thousands of years of institutionalised sexism (as a man, I’m well practiced in this), this is an important new factor in the stunted growth of the women’s game. Business, as football now is, for the most part does not often regard lateral thinking as an essential tool for its own perpetuation: if something is making you shed loads of money you carry on doing it. If it isn’t, you stop. The men’s game sees individual club revenues reaching consistently over 400 million. The women’s game does not. It’s of course hard to simply put a figure on how much it would cost to really push the women’s game, especially when there is an absolute absence of inclination, but it would be probably amount to no more than the average Premier League Chairperson’s pocket change.

Only one or two mainstream sports have a thriving women’s game, one of which is tennis. This is pure speculation and founded in nothing other than an uneducated guess, but this could be down to tennis throughout the century being a social ‘double-dating’ pastime for the middle and upper classes. Women were ‘allowed’ to play tennis. An alternative explanation for its near parity with the men’s game may actually be simply that it’s young females running around in short skirts. Whatever the reasons behind the success it provides evidence that women’s competitive sport can be lucrative.

When we stopped blinking for long enough and saw some women’s football coverage on TV in 2005, when the England team played in the European Championships hosted in this country, viewing figures averaged at around 2 million. Attendance at the grounds during the tournament averaged around the 20,000 mark. Both roughly just below a quarter of what the equivalent fixture achieved for the men during Euro 96. Albeit a big drop, this suggests that there is a ‘market’ for it. Most other sports would bite your hand off for those figures. There is money to be made.

Women have threatened to enter the men’s game but have been met with a reaction akin to that of a stag do infiltrated by an inquisitive fiancée. In 2003, Perugia were hoping to sign Birgit Prinz, a footballer for the national German women’s team. The Perugia president Luciano Gaucci said their investigation had led them to believe, “There was no regulation that would limit Birgit from playing with men”. He also felt the need to add, “She is very beautiful, and has a great figure. I can assure you that as a player, she’s very good.” I’ll let you pick yourself up off the floor and dust yourself off after that one. Birgit Prinz apparently declined the offer to join the club amid fears FIFA were about to throw their toys out the pram. The following year when Maribel Dominguez signed for Mexico’s second-division club Atletico Celaya, FIFA in a written statement acted swiftly, “The gender-separation principle in football should be maintained…this is laid down in league football and in international matches by the existence of gender-specific competitions, and the Laws of the Game and FIFA’s regulations do not provide for any exception…there must be a clear separation between men’s and women’s football”. Well, what did you expect? A clear, progressive, straight answer?

Of course, the women’s game does amble along in the background around the world. In America they give it a good go, but more often than not clubs claim they can’t maintain professional status due to poor revenue streams – which sadly means no-ones making enough profit from it, and not that it couldn’t be sustainable.

Here the Super League launch this year will see the financially stable women’s teams attempting to push the game into professional waters. The F.A however have already raised concerns about the financial climate and have admitted to struggling to find all the investment required. “We’ve got less money. We have to be clear about putting money behind priority programmes – and the Women’s Super League is a priority programme.”

Football is not run by historians, philosophers, psychologists, mathematicians nor scientists and so is not equipped to offer a solution to gender inequality. Sexism is not an issue football can tackle. It can assist somewhat if it changes it’s tact from sporadically mentioning the women’s game in brackets. But it won’t. It could, if it really, really wanted to, perpetually reinforce a well considered campaign of being a well adjusted institution. But it won’t.

You can’t undo His-Story.