Record crowds, unprecedented shirt sales and award nominations make it a great week for the women’s game.
If you’re on Twitter, or for some reason you like to watch Piers Morgan on Talk TV, then you may have seen some recent comments made by a former Premier League footballer about the role of women in football. This ex-player, who was recently sacked from managing a League One club due to poor results, argued that women commentating on football is evidence of a ‘woke agenda’ and that they should stick to netball and knitting.
It’s not the first time this former footballer has been in the news recently – he went viral on social media last week for describing a racially motivated murder involving his brother as ‘a scrap’. In fact, most of the headlines generated by him have been off the field, having been convicted of violent crimes on two separate occasions, as well as receiving a number of suspensions from football for violent conduct.
But I don’t want to talk about him. His comments have already garnered him the attention he craves, and another person talking about why he’s wrong only serves to spread his name to a wider audience. Words will certainly not have any impact on his behaviour – beyond the fact that he clearly doesn’t care about being either wrong or sexist, his opinions on women in football are so reminiscent of a caveman that it would be no surprise if he couldn’t read.
A much more rewarding, and deserving, topic of conversation would be what a great week it has been for women’s football in England. Arsenal’s win against Chelsea on Sunday was significant both on the field and off it: not only have the Gunners blown the WSL title race wide open by going level on points with the champions at the top of the table, they did so in front of a record crowd of 59,042 at the Emirates.
The next day saw women’s football vindicated once again, as Nike made the shirt of Lionesses goalkeeper Mary Earps available for sale online due to ‘unprecedented demand’ after previously opting against doing so during the Women’s World Cup. The shirts sold out in five minutes.
It’s yet another landmark moment for the impressive shot-stopper, who has enjoyed quite a year with both England and Manchester United. On top of winning the FIFA World Cup Golden Glove, the BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year, and England’s Player of the Year in 2023, she has now been nominated this week for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. If she were to win, she would be the second consecutive England women’s footballer to be awarded the prize after Beth Mead’s success in 2022.
With all of this good news, it does a disservice to the women’s game to allow a man seeking to promote his podcast (yes, another one) by stirring up headlines about women in football to dominate the sports news. Why should we let him, when women have been making such good headlines themselves?
Instead, here’s some exciting moments in women’s football to enjoy this week: Under Pressure, the documentary following the USWNT as they fell short at the World Cup this summer, is now available on Netflix after its release on December 12th; this weekend throws up some unmissable fixtures in the WSL, with Tottenham taking on Arsenal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday, while Sunday sees Man United host Liverpool at Leigh Sports Village; and the winner of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, for which Mary Earps is nominated, is due to be announced on December 19th. Make sure you tune in.
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