Neville says the job is a stepping stone . . . that is the real problem
SO Joe Jackson was right? It is, after all, different for girls. There are many reasonable arguments against Phil Neville getting the job as manager of the England women’s team, but the one that crops up most frequently is actually the most harmful and flawed. He has zero experience of the women’s game.
For wasn’t that supposed to be irrelevant? Men’s game, women’s game, a distinction between the two? Hadn’t we evolved to the stage where football was football and while men and women did not compete against each other physically for obvious reasons, in terms of understanding, ancient barriers had been broken down.
Alex Scott, 140 caps for England women, is a regular pundit for the BBC, commenting mainly on men’s football. Rachel BrownFinnis, 82 caps for England, performs similar duties for BT Sport. Nobody questions their knowledge. We accept Scott knows a good performance from a bad one; we understand BrownFinnis’s experiences in goal will be relevant to the form of Joe Hart.
There may be differences in athleticism, the pressure of playing in the Premier League, the speed and technical levels of the participants, but only an ignoramus would claim that gender precludes understanding. An ignoramus or the chief executive of the leading organisation tackling equality and discrimination in football.
A statement on Neville from Roisin Wood of Kick It Out read: ‘Kick It Out have serious concerns over a recruitment process that has resulted in the appointment of someone with no record of management or experience in women’s football . . . ’
Maybe it was just poorly worded. Neville has no great record of management in football, full stop. Not just women’s football. The major weakness in this decision is that by appointing a manager with such scant experience, the Football Association have treated the women’s team, ranked three in the world, as if it is a development project.
Long before his Twitter history caused embarrassment, Neville struck the wrong tone by telling Radio 5 Live that the job was the ‘right development path for me’. He is in charge of a team trying to win a World Cup, the pinnacle of the sport, yet speaks of it as a training exercise, a stepping stone on his path to a proper job.
That is the problem. Not a lack of experience in women’s football, specifically. Why would that matter — unless we intend pulling at a thread that ends with a return to the day when broadcasters were bullied for daring to give women a voice in men’s sport?
Wood, in particular, should have been alert to the obvious flaw in
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her argument. Yet others went even further. Pauline CopeBoanas, 60 caps for England, was very gender-specific. ‘He’s never worked within the women’s game,’ she said. ‘It is different. We deal with emotional things, women have women’s problems, monthly problems, relationship problems.’ And that may be true. Anyone with experience of life knows that women and men face different challenges.
Yet remember what happened when Martin Glenn, chief executive of the Football Association, attempted to make a distinction earlier this month? He was portrayed as a sexist dinosaur. ‘I think culturally what women will be prepared to put up with has been a bit different from guys,’ said Glenn. ‘I guess banter would be a case in point. Our coaching guidelines are common across men’s and women’s teams. But I think it’s fair to say from what we’ve seen that there are probably some differences in what they would expect to hear or say.’
Depends which way you look at it. Groups of women banter, no different from men. Maybe, however, to a woman, banter sounds different coming from a man in a position of authority. Certainly, if Glenn was merely acknowledging the potential for discomfort, offence or misunderstanding, his words were harmless. And unlike Cope-Boanas, Glenn did not bring hormones, or emotions or — God forbid — relationships into it. Yet put Cope-Boanas’s words into his mouth, and all hell would let loose. It is unlikely Glenn would be in his job now.
Meanwhile, if a member of the women’s team had said her team-mates were less tolerant of the infantile exchanges that pass as banter in many male changing rooms, she would rightly have been lauded for her common sense.
Sound judgment was certainly in short supply when Neville took to Twitter some years ago, cracking wise about gender roles in the home, with a leitmotif of domestic violence. Little sounds amusing with context removed and there is a suggestion that the ‘ just battered the wife’ comment referred to nothing more harmful than an inter-spousal table tennis match. Neville won’t be opening at the Apollo any time soon, but it is wrong to say there can never be humour in the darkest subjects — even misogyny, if scripted by Caroline Aherne.
Jim Royle: ‘Right, I’m going down The Feathers. Get your coat on, Barb.’
Barbara Royle: ‘ Ooh, am I coming too?’ Jim: ‘No, I’m turning the fire off.’ Yet we all knew Jim. He was a curmudgeon, he was a miser, he was a misanthrope, but beneath? Watch the scene with pregnant Denise in the bathroom. The
character was more than his acid one-liners, just as the women closest to Neville now — his wife Julie, his sister Tracey — have rallied to his defence in recent days, to say the man they know is more than the sum of his tweets.
THE problem the FA have is that for all the advancements in the women’s game, managing the England team really isn’t much of a job. The gap between those at the elite level and the rest is too big, meaning qualifying campaigns are long processions of walkovers.
England’s current record in 2019 World Cup qualifiers is three straight wins, with a goal difference of 15-0. The previous qualifying path to the 2017 European Championship was eight wins, one draw and a goal difference of 32-1. It’s boring. Neville will have close to 18 months to wait for proper competition. That is among the reasons so many candidates, male and female, turned the job down. The FA had a shortlist of four and all pulled out in quick succession. Caretakermanager Mo Marley did not want the job full time, either. At least Neville was interested enough to take the role, for all the flaws in his appointment. Should the job have gone to a woman? Yes, but not because understanding is genderspecific. There are not many elite positions for female coaches in England. Here was an opportunity to fill one and the FA should have tried their utmost to do that. Maybe they thought no qualified female candidate was available — yet Neville’s credentials are surely not superior.
So what will he bring? Perhaps this. Despite their high world ranking, despite their progress deep into tournaments, England’s women are not among the best in the world in terms of technique. They give the ball away, they hoof it too much, they play into channels. They are organised and athletic but the better teams still pass them off the park.
Neville’s background is Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson. Ability was valued, skill was encouraged. If he can bring that to England’s women, then it won’t just be his development that has been served.
And while that is not liberation in its truest sense, it’s not the worst outcome, either.