A decade of progress
The past 10 years have seen huge positive developments for the women’s game
The decade was only four weeks old when Los Angeles Sol, regular-season champions of Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), and home to Marta, the world’s best player, announced they were folding. As a symbol of where the women’s game was 10 years ago it was sadly apt. The one-year-old WPS – the second attempt to establish a professional competition in the USA, the sport’s strongest nation – was already struggling. It would fold in 2012.
Across the Atlantic things were no better. UEFA had rebranded the Women’s Cup as the Champions League, but while 10,372 fans saw Turbine Potsdam beat Lyon in the Final, a more typical gate was the 724 who watched Arsenal, perennial winners of England’s FA Women’s Premier League, go out. Not that anyone knew. Media coverage of these events was all but non-existent, especially outside the US. Banned in most parts of the world for half a century, the sport was no longer an underground movement but it was still very much in the shadows.
At least Marta was getting paid, handsomely, and many Arsenal players were given jobs at their club, albeit sometimes in the laundry, washing the kit of the men. For most female players the situation at neighbours Tottenham was more typical: players training in their spare time, paying subs and taking their kit home to wash. The coach, Karen Hills, even drove the minibus to matches.
Ten years on, Hills recalled those days as she sat at the podium in the impressive media auditorium in the swanky new Tottenham Hotspur stadium. Her team had just played Arsenal in the WSL’s first North London derby in front of 38,262 – a new record for a women’s league match in England. The stage underscored the growing seriousness with which England’s big men’s clubs now take the women’s game. Manchester United did not even have a women’s team until 2018. Now, like every other WSL team, they are full-time.
Chelsea, West Ham United, Liverpool and Manchester City have also drawn 20,000-plus crowds at the men’s stadia this season, something that was barely imaginable when WSL kicked off in April 2011 with a curious 2,510 – a record at that time – watching Arsenal beat Chelsea at Tooting & Mitcham. Nor would many have dreamed the national team, on a grim winter’s day, could draw 77,768 to Wembley, as they did in November.
If progress in England has been most dramatic it is by no means alone. Though WPS collapsed after three years, the void was swiftly filled by the National Women’s Soccer League. NWSL has advanced cautiously and there have been setbacks, but the competition has completed seven seasons and growth is steady. In Portland Thorns the league has the first women’s club to average 20,000-plus gates.
The majority of NWSL clubs are offshoots of, or partners with, Major League Soccer franchises. This mirrors a global development with women’s teams increasingly part of men’s clubs, usually subsidised by them. Like Manchester United, marquee names such as Real Madrid, Juventus, Milan and Roma have either founded a women’s team or taken over an existing independent one. Others, like Barcelona and Manchester City, have begun to invest seriously in what were previously sidelines or community enterprises.
Porto and Borussia Dortmund are now the biggest clubs without a women’s side, and fans of the latter hoisted a banner at a men’s home game in November stating: “Football is for all: Women’s team now.”
Elsewhere, new leagues have sprung up from India, Jordan and Sudan, to Mexico, Argentina and Australia, and there are new competitions, with the UEFA Champions League expanding and an Asian version launched.
The Mexican league has attracted gates in excess of 30,000 for some championship matches, while setpiece fixtures in Spain and Italy, at Atletico Madrid and Juventus, have pulled in crowds of 60,739 and 39,027 respectively.
Another symbolic development is the creation of female divisions in awards such as the Ballon d’Or. Blue-chip sponsors are now interested and broadcast deals are growing in scope and value.
However, there remains a long way to go. Flourishing, even surviving, without the backing of a wealthy men’s club can be difficult. Regular attendances, as against one-off
Manchester United did not have a women’s team until 2018. Now, like every WSL team, they are full-time
events, remain poor in most countries, including England. And there still remains stiff resistance to women’s football in parts of the world; FIFA rank 210 men’s teams but only 161 women’s teams with many African and Asian nations without female representation.
In England and the United States, and at the bigger clubs in Germany and France, it is now possible to make a living from the game, but even in the west many players remain part-time, while in the developing world most are effectively amateur.
Players are realistic and aware that a sport which requires subsidies is going to be less well remunerated. The exception, however, is revealing.
The US team are currently suing US Soccer for gender discrimination in a bid for equal pay and conditions – the backto-back World Cup winners generate more income for the governing body than the men’s team, which failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.