Women's World Cup Teams Held to a Double Standard

by Christopher Clark

Unfortunately, the England Women’s Football team just lost the semi-final of the World Cup to the juggernaut that is the US. 

Firstly, it showed that the curse of England sport does not just apply to men’s teams and we will never make another World Cup Final in any team sport for as long as I live - apart from the Netball. 

It also took me back to the match against Cameroon in the Round of 16. Cameroon were not expected to win, and did not, but they felt frustration and started fouling some England players. This is not unexpected in any sporting match; no one feels happy when they are losing, but the backlash was immense. Newspapers were declaring it ‘Shameful’, ‘This wasn’t football’, ‘Shaming the game’ and calling the team ‘Camerloons’. The England manager Phil Neville wondered if this event had ruined the game for millions of little girls all over the globe and English journalists decided not to ask questions in the press conference, but instead have a go at the Cameroonian Manager. Obviously the same standards are in place for the men’s game; they never abuse the referee, go in for overzealous challenges or just racially abuse many of their opponents.

That is not true at all. The standards of the men’s game are much lower; whole crowds racially abuse players, violent tackles are fairly standard and players often get in the referee’s face. For example, the 2006 World Cup match between Portugal and the Netherlands, called the ‘Battle of Nürnburg’, had 16 yellow cards and 4 reds; the teams were never accused of ruining the game for millions of young boys. The same applies to Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt later in the tournament, which rather than being vilified, now is a statue that was once shown in Paris. Even worse is that Phil Neville himself admitted in a documentary that he and his brother repeatedly and deliberately fouled Jose Antonio Reyes in a match against Arsenal in order to intimidate him. He is possibly not the man to be preaching about fouling and vilifying the Cameroon team. 

There are obviously occasions when male footballers are put to justice, such as Luis Suarez biting people for a mid-game snack, but they are rarely accused of shaming the sport and have not had the charge of putting boys off the game. Furthermore, the Cameroon team are only part-time, they will have little chance of reaching this level again, due to much greater levels of investment going into Western teams. The frustration that they felt is very understandable to any of us that has played in a game against a much better team, with feelings that refereeing decisions were going against us. Indeed, the many problems with VAR (including many decisions that went against the England team) is an important topic - though one for another day. 

The women’s teams should be allowed to get irritated without these silly accusations being levelled on them. Finally, if you want to watch some decent football without the players jumping on the floor when any slight gust of wind hit them, the World Cup final is coming soon, and the US team is going to be virtually unstoppable. Hopefully the brilliant Megan Rapinoe will be back in time and be wonderfully outspoken in the post-match interviews again.