It’s England’s summer of coming second. Second in the Ashes test series against Australia. And now second in the Women’s World Cup. Both were followed keenly and enthusiastically across the country – a rebirth of competitive sport as national communion. But it was the women who caught the mood and won the acclaim.
On the cricket pitch, Ben Stokes and co played in swashbuckling bazball style – and if hadn’t been for the rain, England would (well, might) have won the series. As it was, it finished two tests a piece with the fifth drawn and so the Aussies, as the current holders, retain the trophy.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
But the World Cup has been the summer’s big event, even though the hosting of the series by Australia and New Zealand led to very early kick-offs British time. The Lionesses, the moniker given to the England women, were European champions last year. Lucy Bronze, Lauren James, Mary Earps and Millie Bright have become household names. And in Australia on Sunday, they took England – the nation which likes to believe that it invented all the main team sports – to its first World Cup final for almost 60 years.
Yes, they lost – by the only goal to Spain, who were the deserved winners. Tears were shed in homes, pubs, halls and even churches across the country where fans gathered at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning to watch the game. It would have been so much sweeter to have won – as the men’s team famously did back in 1966, convincing a tattered post-imperial nation that we still had something going for us.
But the defeat in Sydney was still a victory – for women’s team sport. For the first time, a Women’s World Cup attracted big money corporate sponsorship and was watched eagerly around the world. The play was flowing and exciting to watch. Football, so often called the ‘beautiful game’, lived up to that description. A sport which has so often been vulgar and sexist has been in part redeemed.
For fully half-a-century, women’s football was banned in England. The women’s game developed in the 1880s, and some early matches attracted a crowd in the tens of thousands. But in 1921 the Football Association outlawed the use of any of its grounds and facilities for women declaring that ‘the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged’. Women’s football withered away.
The ban was only lifted in 1970. And the Women’s Super League – the top tier of women’s football in England, with 12 professional teams – was established as recently as 2010.
Also read: Seven Ways the FIFA World Cup Can Move the Dial on Women’s Sport Forever
Attendances at women’s games are not as high as in the men’s Premier League; transfer fees and salaries are more modest. But that is starting to change. Arsenal now stage as many of their women’s team games as they can at their main venue, the Emirates stadium, rather than their training ground on the outskirts of London – and with clever marketing and competitive ticket pricing, they can fill the ground.
The shining star of England’s World Cup performance is a 53-year-old Dutch woman, Sarina Wiegman. As manager of the England team, she took the Lionesses to European glory last year and to the World Cup final this year. She has moulded a talented group of players into a stylish team. She is not only calm; she’s kind. That’s not something you can say of many football managers. She’s also a master tactician – so much so that some have suggested she take over as manager of England’s men’s team.
Sarina Wiegman has coached at four major tournaments and reached the final EVERY time:
▪️ Euro 2017 🇳🇱🏆
▪️ World Cup 2019 🇳🇱
▪️ Euro 2022 🏴🏆
▪️ World Cup 2023 🏴⏳ pic.twitter.com/WxCxTqZiGvAdvertisement— B/R Football (@brfootball) August 16, 2023
Wiegman is still the exception in the top flight of women’s football – a woman managing a women’s team. Most of the national teams in the World Cup, including the Spanish winners, had men managing them. In the Women’s Super League in the UK, only three of the 12 teams have women managers. But that too is starting to change. Women are increasingly making their mark in the back room as well as on the pitch.
And that’s not simply in the women’s game. There are women assistant referees in the men’s Premier League – though we haven’t yet had a woman refereeing a top flight game in England. But at last year’s men’s World Cup, Stephanie Frappart became the first woman to referee, in a match in which Germany defeated Costa Rica. Her two assistants in that game were also women.
The England football team. Photo: Twitter/@_esmemorgan
So could a woman manage a men’s professional football team? It’s already happened. Last month, Forest Green Rovers in the fourth tier of English football appointed Hannah Dingley as caretaker manager. She had already made history as being the first woman to manage a men’s academy football team – the youth teams assembled and trained by many clubs. Her spell as manager was brief, but that glass ceiling has at least been cracked.
Full gender parity in sport is some way away. On Sunday, neither Prince William, the president of the Football Association, nor the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, took the trouble to be present in Sydney to support the England team in person. If it had been a men’s World Cup final – even on the other side of the globe – they would have been in their seats.
But everyone in England has noticed that the women’s football team simply do better than the men, who have won diddly squat since that much hallowed World Cup success back when I was a boy.
Andrew Whitehead is an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham in the UK and a former BBC India Correspondent.
