IT’S GLIB TO SNEER AT UNITED FOR JOINING WOMEN’S REVOLUTION

TRACEY CROUCH, another in a long line of over-promoted Ministers for Sport, took to the Commons floor and welcomed the news with a sneer. ‘May I just actually take this opportunity to congratulate Manchester United Football Club, who have finally dragged themselves into the 21st century and announced that they will be having a women’s football team,’ she said. It was pretty much the standard, unthinking reaction. Better late than never, was the consensus; or, about time too. There is, however, another way of looking at it. That Manchester United Women was an idea whose time had come; a perfect example of the organic growth the women’s game needs if it is to become lastingly successful. Too much of the debate around women’s football is spent in dead ends: wage parity with men’s teams that generate revenue in tens, sometimes hundreds, of millions. Prime-time broadcast slots for games with crowds measured in the hundreds. This is genuine, attainable, growth. Manchester United feel they are missing out. They have seen the rising popularity and interest in women’s football and think they need to be part of that. Equally, there is a pragmatic concern. Once the two-tier Women’s Super League is up and running next season, any club wishing to join will have to start down the pyramid. This is the last chance for a club with good facilities and a ready-made professional structure to get in on the ground floor. Manchester United have applied to join the second tier: organic growth there, too. They know it will take time to build a club who can compete with the best in the country. Manchester United need to walk before they can run. The club must develop in their own time, at their own speed. So this is a very good thing for women’s football, a sign that the game cannot be ignored, but also that like all sports it must be allowed to progress and mature. The news deserved more thought than it got from the Minister for Sport, a sentence that could have been written many times across many decades.