Women's Football. It is time to take it seriously

June 7th saw the opening of the Woman's world cup and for the past two weeks I have been toying with writing about it. Of course, as a man, I procrastinated to the point where last night the group stages finished and tomorrow sees the start of the knock out phase of the tournament, but hey, better late than never.

This is actually rather difficult for me to write as regular readers will know, I am not known for being a fan of politically correctness, so I will strive to maintain that approach while tackling the subject with the seriousness it merits.

Women's football does not receive enough coverage, more importantly, most men when hearing about it just laugh and make derisory comments such as " how can women play football?" or "getting women back in the kitchen" or "what they do know of the beautiful game ?".

This probably comes from an insecurity born from a fear of another bastion of masculinity falling prey to equal opportunities, which of course is baseless as we are unlikely to see a men against women or a mixed teams match in the near future.

To a lot of people, when they think about women's football the first thing that probably comes to mind is Bend it like Beckham, the very popular 2002 film that dealt with a girl's dream to get to play at University in the USA.

it's not just men who think women shouldn't play football

It is unfortunate, as by pooh poohing this form of the game, they are missing out on an opportunity to watch some good football during the close season for European leagues and also no World cup or European championship to distract them.

However, there does seem to be some light at the end of the tunnel, the viewing figures in the UK for the England Scotland (women's) game last week was 4 million more than for the England v Holland (men's) game.

So to the tournament itself.  A very quick overview before we get to some match previews. This year, FIFA (the governing body of world football) expanded the tournament to 24 teams which lead to a number of what could be termed as minnows being included for the first time, such as Thailand, S Africa and Jamaica.

There were six groups of four teams, with the top two from each group plus the four best third placed teams going through, leaving us with sixteen teams in the regular knock out format.

I was surprised by how many people not interested in football had heard of the noise generated by  America thrashing the poor Thais 13-0  (thirteen!! ) I felt sorry for Thailand,  the Thai goalkeeper only stood at 5 ft 5 (165 cm). Following are the official dimensions for a goal.

The inner edges of the posts must be 7.32 metres (8 yd) apart, and the lower edge of the crossbar must be 2.44 metres (8 ft) above the ground. 

She did not stand a chance and of course in the interests of equality, the goals have to be the same size that the men play in. A massive debate ensued and as everyone is stepping on tip toes so as not to offend anyone it is very difficult to say anything without being accused of sexism or the like.

Hit the ball in the air = goal ?

One of the other memorable incidents from the first round was this tackle in the S Africa v Spain game The highlights are only two minutes but you can jump to one minute ten seconds to see the incident I am referring to.

Ouch, that's hurts

Tomorrow, as stated above, sees the beginning of the knock out stages with two games being played. First up, we have the Mannschaft der Frauen (Shermany) who of course do not have a nickname because that would be frivolous and amusing, both traits the Shermans are not known for, playing one of the surprise packages of the tournament, Nigeria, (Super Falcons). Nigeria's mens team are known as the super Eagles. This will be followed by a heavyweight clash in the literal sense between Norway (aka the grasshoppers) and Australia (aka Matildas)

Personally, I fell that the Australians should be called the Sheilas rather than the Maltidas. Obviously Matilda is a reference to the famous Australian song Waltzing Matilda, but I believe Matilda refers to a sack of swag, while waltzing refers to travelling on foot, so perhaps they should be called the Waltzers. Hence, that is why Sheilas would be a better name for whilst it is not a particularly positive name at least it conjures up the image of a strong Australian female. I know a number of formidable Australian women who I would not want to anger in a hurry.

This Australian team does not lack for character as they showed in coming back from two goals down to beat Brazil in the group stages. They are ranked number six in the world and in Sam Kerr have one of the leading strikers in women's football who is currently joint top scorer with five goals so far.

Australia stun Brazil

Grasshoppers is a rather misleading team name for Norway, as they are more Viking like than small insects. Norway (12th ranked) hold the record for the most consecutive victories in World cup history with ten on the trot in the 1990's.

Both teams won two and lost one in the group stages so this has the makings of a very good game. I am going to go with the sheilas here, just because they have more firepower.

Between 1955 and 1970, Women's football was banned in the then West Shermany as being "fundamentally foreign to the nature of women" and "that the body and soul would inevitably suffer damage".  Of course in East Shermany this was not so, which is why maybe the team is known as the Mannschaft becomes as we know there was a definite question as to the sexuality of most East Sherman so called female athletes.

It should come as no surprise that the Shermans are ranked number two in the world, they play in a style we have come to expect from Sherman teams, efficiently. However in this tournament they were really stretched by the Chinese and probably should have lost if the Chinese had more self belief that they could beat Shermany, so of course in the end as in men's football it was 1-0 to the Shermans.

Nigeria are an interesting story, Women's football in Africa is very under developed which is a subject we shall come back to another day. It is fantastic for the game in Africa that both they and Cameroon have advanced to the last 16 as they were both probably not expected to do so.

On paper Nigeria do not stand a chance, but as we know football is a funny old game and they have in Asisat Oshoala, a very powerful and skillful striker who now plays for Barcelona in her club career having already played for Liverpool. She has already scored one very good goal and if the Nigerian's can hold their defensive shape they could perhaps catch the Shermans on the break. We can but only hope.

Oshoala, can she swoop as a falcon and catch her prey by surprise ?

So there we have it, I will be back on Sunday to preview EnGerLand v Cameroon and hosts France v Brasil which should be an absolute cracker of a game. We will also look at another issue which has arisen, the use of VAR (video assistant referee for the uninitiated)  in general and on penalty kicks in particular.

As ever please feel free to comment and share with anyone you feel might be interested.