Football is football whether men, women or children are playing the game. Cricket and rugby don't have different rules dependant upon the sex o0f the competitors, so why should football?
Speedway and F1 is a particularly daft comparison - bikes and cars are totally different modes of transport!
It is not a good idea to introduce different rules to the women's game that make it an inferior sport. (eg: indoor football or shorter halves). Some women probably struggle for fitness in the latter stages of games because they are not professionals (mainly). Just as male pub players (or even part-timers) struggle with fitness in the latter stages of games. Women are quite capable of running marathons - I am sure that they are not inherently too weak to play football for 90 minutes or 120 minutes.
Its already an inferior sport, the changes would be an attempt to make it different.
Women's Rugby and Women's Cricket don't change the rules? Great, and of course they are wildly successful and never off our TV screens aren't they?
Men's Pub Players aren't ever trying to pass themselves off as professional athletes on a TV sport that is apparently looking for further "resources" in order to improve. THAT is a particularly daft comparison.
Once again, changes are being suggested because there seems to be a desire to increase the games popularity, get it further TV coverage, more money/resources and raise standards. If people are happy for this to happen "whenever it happens" and leave the game as it is then thats fine but it will remain a minority sport. That in itself is not a bad thing if that is the will of the sport. However if there is a desire for this to happen more quickly then its no going to happen in its current form and there is nothing wrong with looking at fresh ideas.
Its already an inferior sport, the changes would be an attempt to make it different.
Women's Rugby and Women's Cricket don't change the rules? Great, and of course they are wildly successful and never off our TV screens aren't they?
Men's Pub Players aren't ever trying to pass themselves off as professional athletes on a TV sport that is apparently looking for further "resources" in order to improve. THAT is a particularly daft comparison.
Once again, changes are being suggested because there seems to be a desire to increase the games popularity, get it further TV coverage, more money/resources and raise standards. If people are happy for this to happen "whenever it happens" and leave the game as it is then thats fine but it will remain a minority sport. That in itself is not a bad thing if that is the will of the sport. However if there is a desire for this to happen more quickly then its no going to happen in its current form and there is nothing wrong with looking at fresh ideas.
No - increased exposure will come from players becoming better. Which has happened in the women's game over the last thirty to forty years and can continue in the future.
There is more scope for progress with female footballers compared to male players simply because they are improving from a lower base.
No - increased exposure will come from players becoming better. Which has happened in the women's game over the last thirty to forty years and can continue in the future.
There is more scope for progress with female footballers compared to male players simply because they are improving from a lower base.
Thats genuinely not going to happen. You are saying because they are so much worse than men they have more potential to reach the same level. Well no. They will improve over time as you suggest but by your own admission its taken them 30 to 40 years to get to this level and its massively inferior to the standard of mens football.
The problem is there is far too much other football out there for the women's game to get any sort of foothold as it stands.
I would say I watch quite a lot of football on tv and subscribe to Sky Sports and BT Sport but within that choices have to be made and women's football will always be at the very bottom of the pile because quality-wise it just doesn't stack up. It used to be the case that in a summer of no Euro's or World Cup there was a break from football but that no longer applies. Even right now there is the U21s and the Copa American being shown. Truth is I cant really watch much of any of it because frankly I have other stuff to do. I think most people are like that.
There are obviously a couple of people on here and on other forums who have no partner, no kids and no job and seem to spend ALL their time watching any sort of football. They may well add women's football to the list of games to watch but they are not typical. Most people watch football when they can or have some downtime. For women's football to truly be successful on tv they need to attract these type of people, the average football fan, to watch, not just the people who either have a vested interest or those who watch all and any football.
At the current standard and format it will be a long time before that happens.
Women's Rugby and Women's Cricket don't change the rules? Great, and of course they are wildly successful and never off our TV screens aren't they?
The women's ashes will be screened live on Sky, and there is a new Women's 20/20 league going to be set up, so the future there for women's cricketers is looking very rosey indeed.
And as for being wildy successful, the women are way more successful than the men in cricket, and the same the female rugby union players, as the women are the current world cup winners/holders.
The women's ashes will be screened live on Sky, and there is a new Women's 20/20 league going to be set up, so the future there for women's cricketers is looking very rosey indeed.
And as for being wildy successful, the women are way more successful than the men in cricket, and the same the female rugby union players, as the women are the current world cup winners/holders.
They are both minority sports compared to the male equivalent. I am talking about "success" in terms of coverage of the sport not how a team is performing. I presume you are talking about just the English women when you say that they are more successful than men. There are more countries than England in the UK.
They are both minority sports compared to the male equivalent. I am talking about "success" in terms of coverage of the sport not how a team is performing. I presume you are talking about just the English women when you say that they are more successful than men. There are more countries than England in the UK.
The coverage of the sport in terms of female cricket is improving year on year, and with the ashes being shown live, and this new league being set-up, then that is surely good news, wouldn't you agree?
As for the English women, sorry my bad, yes there are more countries in the UK than England, I was just using that as an example.
The coverage of the sport in terms of female cricket is improving year on year, and with the ashes being shown live, and this new league being set-up, then that is surely good news, wouldn't you agree?
As for the English women, sorry my bad, yes there are more countries in the UK than England, I was just using that as an example.
I have no idea. I don't watch cricket male or female so I can't really comment on the comparison between the male and female game to be honest. Another poster used it as an example of the fact that these sports didn't change their rules. Thats was all. Its not hugely relevant to the overall discussion about women's football, it was just an example.
Tennis is probably the only sport (outside 'athletics') where people view the men and the women on par, with many preferring the women's game. Yet there are differences. The matches are shorter, being best of 3 sets; the rackets are often more lightweight to suit the physical needs of the woman as opposed to the physical need of the men. The aim is the same yet the approach is different. They're physically different. Tennis gets it. Women's football (or at least those who think any suggestion of change is chauvinistic) seems to think that full-sized goals are appropriate because in the mindset of the female football fan the suggestion of change is inexplicably egregious.
Women's tennis is more precision-driven. With the exception of the William's sisters, not many have the power to compete with the men so it adapts itself.
Everyone accepts these differences and everyone, presumably, wouldn't change them. They wouldn't like to see females obliged to play with the same rackets men used, nobody thinks it's sexist unless they go to best of 5 - nobody watches a women's tennis match and compares them to the men. There's no need to. As it's own, because of the adaptations it's a fantastically successful sport.
Already if it was to emulate tennis there would be differences in the length of match and the equipment used. If it were to emulate golf the field area would be reduced in size, women teeing off as they do closer than men to address the physical differences. Suggest it for football? "Sexist"
Women's football won't ever get to that same level if people who're defending it constantly ignore pragmatism. The solution seems to be that we seek to make women's football a more attractive spectacle by waiting for everyone else to realise how wrong they are.
Get back to me in 10 years and let me know how that's working out for you.
Its already an inferior sport, the changes would be an attempt to make it different.
Whether its an inferior sport per se is a matter of opinion. It might be of an inferior technical standard - I doubt that even the most ardent female footballer would argue otherwise. However there are many different parameters apart from absolute technical quality that define spectator value in a particular sport or pastime - competitiveness within the sport, the attitude of its participants and so on. For example I've enjoyed the womens World Cup in general far more than I enjoy the Premier League, largely because I loathe many of the immoral and venal aspects of the latter, such as the greed, the background of some of its owners and so on. Others seem to think the Premier League is all that matters. It's not a black and white issue in the way those sneering at women's football would like it to be.
I don't recognise this appalling womens football that everyone is talking about. Granted its not as technically good as the best men's football and admittedly some of the minor nations are poor - just as the likes of Zaire/DR Congo were once comically bad at the men's World Cup - but there absolutely is some great technique and entertaining football on view.
The absolute technical standard of one sector of a sport relative to another is not the only important characteristic defining its value, otherwise people would have ignored men's football in the days when the likes of Sheffield Wednesday and Wimbledon were playing a version of rugby with forward passing and a modified offside rule, with the ball bouncing of the shins of the likes of the Carlton Palmers of this world and waited for the advent of the modern era.
For example I've seen games in the Conference that had far greater entertanment value than some of the tedious dross that gets served up among the minor Premier League teams on more than a few occasions even today. Gary Johnson was Sky's pundit at our first Conference play-off Semi-Final and described it as the best game of football he'd seen anywhere all year, yet even a fanatic like me would never dispute that our players were significantly below even the average Championship standard at the time.
Women's Rugby and Women's Cricket don't change the rules? Great, and of course they are wildly successful and never off our TV screens aren't they?
There are many sports that have relatively little media coverage - does that invalidate those as well?
As i've indicated I support a team that spent a few years in the Conference. When we were relegated there was no TV coverage whatsoever (although Setanta began broadcasting games in our second or third season). Does that mean Conference football should be dismissed and mocked as "inferior" to real football? After all there are plenty of misplaced passes and goalkeeping errors made by male footballers even up to League One, which is the highest standard I've regularly experienced live. (I imagine the blinkered afficionados of the Greed-Is-Good League would probably answer in the affirmative).
Men's Pub Players aren't ever trying to pass themselves off as professional athletes on a TV sport that is apparently looking for further "resources" in order to improve. THAT is a particularly daft comparison.
But its not daft to point out that arguing on the basis of absolute comparisons between womens and mens football as they stand today, when there have been and always will be relative differences between both, within each and from one era to another is idiotic. Moreover, the women internationals I've been watching are of a far higher standard than any male "pub players" I've ever seen and are certainly not trying to "pass themselves off" as anything - some of them really are professional athletes. That you should imply otherwise is illuminating.
I can personally remember English football very well going all the way back to the mid-seventies and regardless of the misty-eyed nostalgia that is ofen indulged in these days there have been considerable periods in the past where the average technical standard of men's professional football in this country has been absolutely appalling. I can particuarly recall watching the nine o'clock news (as it was then) in the eighties or early nineties about an international ex-sprinter (I think it was Jason Gardener) trying to get into football (at Walsall?). The manager or coach told the reporter that he wasn't a particularly talented footballer, but he was quick and unfortunately such was the poor technical state of English football at the time that his extreme pace was all he really needed to succeed.
Once again, changes are being suggested because there seems to be a desire to increase the games popularity, get it further TV coverage, more money/resources and raise standards.
That's the ostensible reason. However I suspect that regardless of the injured air of protest, a lot of the rationale behind essentially creating a different game for women really does come from a chauvinistic attitude and a desire for the women's game to know its place.
In the seventies it was commonplace for the lack of top black footballers to be explained away by the same sort of pseudo-science that says women can't last ninety minutes in a football match when they can successfully complete triathlons. Pundits in international games and managers interviewed on the highlights programmes would regularly and quite openly attribute the phenomenon to the fact that black people couldn't perform well in European weather and didn't have the same heart and fighting spirit of the indigineous population. In my experience that kind of prejudiced BS was fairly widely accepted as axiomatically true. I stand to be corrected, but I think it was Terry Venables who I once heard on the Big Match explaining that while Vince Hilaire was a talented footballer and a good lad, like all the "coloured boys" he couldn't be relied upon on a wet, cold and muddy evening in Grimsby or wherever.
You can't simply dismiss the fact that the social context of the mens and women's game is enormously different - men's football has more social status and value than womens football. In many countries women still face overt societal barriers to playing football - its illuminating and depressing to hear of the obstacles and prejudice the Brazilian women have spoken of for example. That has far more effect on the progression and popularity of the womens game than the size of the goals or nonsense like that. After all the environment players grow up in is itself hugely important for their development and the development of the game in general. Even the youngsters at my league Two club are hugely cosseted relative to their peers - by contrast Fara Williams was a homeless down-and-out for six years while still playing women's international football.
This sort of thing has a thousand different and complex effects on the development of the game - for one thing social value often translates into material value and so the men's game has a vastly greater pool of human and material resources to draw upon before you even begin to consider anything else. Of course the mere fact of the existence of men's football alone will affect the popularity of the women's game, just as it affects a vast range of other mens sports. That won't change in a hurry, no matter how small you make the goals.
If people are happy for this to happen "whenever it happens" and leave the game as it is then thats fine but it will remain a minority sport...
All women's sport will remain a minority sport as long as attitudes to men and women in society are different. Posters critical of the WWC have cited women's tennis as an example of a sport that has more equality with the men's game, but apart from that being hugely overstated (how many people asked at random could name ten female players or tell you who won any of the WTA tournaments, as opposed to Grand Slams, in the last ten years?) that increase in popularity only occured relatively recently. In any case it has far more to do with the likes of Billie Jean King fighting tooth and nail for a change in the status and treatment of women in the sport in general than it does with differences in equipment and so on. Such as differences that do exist are minor, in most cases are circumstantial rather than codified (i.e there is no "women's tennis racket" in the way some posters have advocated "women's goals") and existed even when womens tennis was taken far less seriously.
That in itself is not a bad thing if that is the will of the sport. However if there is a desire for this to happen more quickly then its no going to happen in its current form and there is nothing wrong with looking at fresh ideas.
There is nothing wrong with looking at fresh ideas to improve the game, but not if those ideas are founded on misguided and patronising ideas of female fragility and inferiority and unreasonable and hugely simplistic comparisons with the men's game.
Women's football has definitely improved and hopefully will continue to do so despite the obstacles in its path. Of course it's unlikely to ever surpass the men's game in absolute terms (speed, strength etc) or popularity, but so what? Can't people simply enjoy it in its own right, just as those who don't believe the Premier League is the be-all-and-end-all of sport endeavour enjoy mens football played at lower levels and enjoy other mens' sports whose profiles are similarly obliterated by the popularty of mens football?
There is absolutely no intrinsic reason why it can't be just as entertaining to watch twenty-two women play football as it can be to watch twenty two men doing the same thing. In fact as I've already said I've genuinely found more pleasure watching the WWC than I have found in watching the PL for years - not to mention the fact that since the 1982 World Cup the great majority of mens international tournaments have often been about as entertaining as a root canal.
I heard one of the players the other day complain that the artificial pitch is making the games slower than usual.
Yet in the DS thread, everyone thinks the football is wonderful and exciting. Nobody has a poor word to say about it. When even the players are complaining about their ability to put on a good match due to the artificial pitches yet here people are wonderfully impressed with everything, you do have to wonder quite how sincere people are in their praise.
If you're a football fan and say that you're enjoying the women's world cup more than you have the PL in years or a World Cup since 1982 - a women's world cup where even the women acknowledging conditions are making efforts to put on a show case difficult, then I'm sorry but I question your integrity and honesty.
I think this is what winds people up, together with efforts to get any critical comment in that thread banned. I don't think people believe it's sincere and there's a certain irony of people wanting it to be treated the same as the men's game yet you go into the thread and all you see is wall to wall near-patronising praise. It doesn't ring true and probably isn't genuine.
If people who are playing are admitting that the conditions aren't conducive to the ideal way they'd want to play you have to wonder if this cheerleading isn't just mindless 'say it's great whatever happensism'
Whether its an inferior sport per se is a matter of opinion. It might be of an inferior technical standard - I doubt that even the most ardent female footballer would argue otherwise. However there are many different parameters apart from absolute technical quality that define spectator value in a particular sport or pastime - competitiveness within the sport, the attitude of its participants and so on. For example I've enjoyed the womens World Cup in general far more than I enjoy the Premier League, largely because I loathe many of the immoral and venal aspects of the latter, such as the greed, the background of some of its owners and so on. Others seem to think the Premier League is all that matters. It's not a black and white issue in the way those sneering at women's football would like it to be.
Well we can pretty much stop right there if thats the benchmark you are using. If you judge an Aguero goal by the morals of his clubs owners then that makes being a spectator impossible.
I have repeated myself constantly. The vast majority of people impartially watching women's football will recognise that it is of a hugely inferior standard, regardless of however many legitimate reasons there may be for that.
I don't recognise this appalling womens football that everyone is talking about. Granted its not as technically good as the best men's football and admittedly some of the minor nations are poor - just as the likes of Zaire/DR Congo were once comically bad at the men's World Cup - but there absolutely is some great technique and entertaining football on view.
I can't say Ive noticed but then i am only a very casual viewer because what I have watched has been poor.
The absolute technical standard of one sector of a sport relative to another is not the only important characteristic defining its value, otherwise people would have ignored men's football in the days when the likes of Sheffield Wednesday and Wimbledon were playing a version of rugby with forward passing and a modified offside rule, with the ball bouncing of the shins of the likes of the Carlton Palmers of this world and waited for the advent of the modern era.
Many did.
For example I've seen games in the Conference that had far greater entertanment value than some of the tedious dross that gets served up among the minor Premier League teams on more than a few occasions even today. Gary Johnson was Sky's pundit at our first Conference play-off Semi-Final and described it as the best game of football he'd seen anywhere all year, yet even a fanatic like me would never dispute that our players were significantly below even the average Championship standard at the time.
Random examples will always happen. I have been at pains to point out I am talking about an overall standard. You will see exciting games at any level played by either sex. You can watch your kids playing for their school team and be entertained too,it doesn't get it a tv deal. Again all I am saying is that the overall standard is poor.
There are many sports that have relatively little media coverage - does that invalidate those as well?
Not if they are happy enough with their lot. Not if people are realistic about where they are and how good they are rather than proclaiming them to be so much better than those with eyes can see.
As i've indicated I support a team that spent a few years in the Conference. When we were relegated there was no TV coverage whatsoever (although Setanta began broadcasting games in our second or third season). Does that mean Conference football should be dismissed and mocked as "inferior" to real football? After all there are plenty of misplaced passes and goalkeeping errors made by male footballers even up to League One, which is the highest standard I've regularly experienced live. (I imagine the blinkered afficionados of the Greed-Is-Good League would probably answer in the affirmative).
I have answered this at least 3 times already yet it is ignored by those who don't want to see it.
Conference football is at a particular level by its very nature. Its isn't a sport in its own right, its a level within a sport. You don't go and watch the 5th tier of English football and expect to see the best the game has to offer. You DO expect to watch the World Cup and expect to see the game has to offer. Of course that doesn't always happen but that is why expectations are different. The World Cup should be the pinnacle of the Women's game. With respect to your team, the Conference is not the pinnacle of the mens.
But its not daft to point out that arguing on the basis of absolute comparisons between womens and mens football as they stand today, when there have been and always will be relative differences between both, within each and from one era to another is idiotic. Moreover, the women internationals I've been watching are of a far higher standard than any male "pub players" I've ever seen and are certainly not trying to "pass themselves off" as anything - some of them really are professional athletes. That you should imply otherwise is illuminating.
Not at all. I didn't make the "Pub Players" comparison. I was responding to another poster who did in yet another desperate attempt to use a lesser level in the mens game to compare to the top level in the womens.
The comparison between men's and women's football will be made if both are being shown on TV and both are played to the exact same standard. If I want to watch a game of football tonight as a casual viewer and there is a Copa America game an U21 Championship game and a Women's World Cup game, I don't see a huge reason to pick the women's game based on *potential* quality on view. That is the reality of the market that the womens game is in. Hence why there are people making suggestions to set it apart in a crowded marketplace.
I can personally remember English football very well going all the way back to the mid-seventies and regardless of the misty-eyed nostalgia that is ofen indulged in these days there have been considerable periods in the past where the average technical standard of men's professional football in this country has been absolutely appalling. I can particuarly recall watching the nine o'clock news (as it was then) in the eighties or early nineties about an international ex-sprinter (I think it was Jason Gardener) trying to get into football (at Walsall?). The manager or coach told the reporter that he wasn't a particularly talented footballer, but he was quick and unfortunately such was the poor technical state of English football at the time that his extreme pace was all he really needed to succeed.
And that is when football was in the doldrums. I don't see why referencing that has much relevance to the discussion.
That's the ostensible reason. However I suspect that regardless of the injured air of protest, a lot of the rationale behind essentially creating a different game for women really does come from a chauvinistic attitude and a desire for the women's game to know its place.
That attitude REALLY pisses me off. I have no axe to grind either way. I think the women's game is poor so I say it therefore I am sexist or a chauvinist. I am neither. Criticise any other type of football and its fair game but mention the women's game and all sorts of nonsense allegations are being flung around. Such an overly precious mentality will make the game an even bigger turn off if you must simply applaud everything as if its genius for fear of what you will be called.
Its no skin of my nose what happens to the women's game. Its an interesting talking point to me but nothing more. I am just kicking around genuine suggestions to make things better.
In the seventies it was commonplace for the lack of top black footballers to be explained away by the same sort of pseudo-science that says women can't last ninety minutes in a football match when they can successfully complete triathlons. Pundits in international games and managers interviewed on the highlights programmes would regularly and quite openly attribute the phenomenon to the fact that black people couldn't perform well in European weather and didn't have the same heart and fighting spirit of the indigineous population. In my experience that kind of prejudiced BS was fairly widely accepted as axiomatically true. I stand to be corrected, but I think it was Terry Venables who I once heard on the Big Match explaining that while Vince Hilaire was a talented footballer and a good lad, like all the "coloured boys" he couldn't be relied upon on a wet, cold and muddy evening in Grimsby or wherever.
Brilliant.
So pointing out that women are actually physically smaller than men is now akin to the racist or at least ignorant attitude to black players in the 70s. I'm pretty if you gave me a tape measure I could actually demonstrate for you what women's goalkeepers cover less of the goal by volume that their male counterparts. That is different to questioning the mentality of a black man compared to a white man.
In fact now that you have thrown the sexist, chauvinistic a racist card in my direction I think I'll just leave it there.
Tennis is probably the only sport (outside 'athletics') where people view the men and the women on par, with many preferring the women's game.
Your whole tennis analogy is wrong on almost every level - in fact it supports a diametrically opposite argument to that which you expound on this thread.
Women's tennis is not seen as "on par" with the mens. Nowhere in the world will a women's final be the centrepiece of a tournament, nowhere in the world will a broadcaster or media outlet give pride place of place to a women's final and nowhere in the world will it cost the same to see a women's Grand Slam finals match as it will cost to see a men's ( it is three times more expensive to watch a men's match at Wimbledon from the quarter-finals onwards).
It is true to say that women's tennis is more respected and has a higher status relative to the men's game than in some other sports, but that is a very recent phenomenon - even as little as thirty years or so ago Pat Cash was on the BBC openly sneering at women's tennis while still a player. That greater respect has little to do with the weight of racquets and whatnot - it has far more to do with the concerted campaign undertaken by feminist players in the seventies - particularly Billie-Jean King , who fought hard for equal treatment, equal status and to change the negative attitude towards women's tennis which was once just as disparaging and patronising as that directed towards women's football from some quarters today. In fact the WTA tour and the Virginia Slims tournament was originally a breakaway Kerry Packer-style tournament set up by her as a direct result of that campaign.
It was the chipping away of those barriers (along with general changes in society) that elevated women's tennis to the status it has today. As I indicated it was once subject to similar sneering as that directed towards womens football today, even though the number of sets and the weight of racquets has not changed. If I went into it here this post would be even longer, but look up the Bobby Riggs - Billie-Jean King match and the Virginia Slims story. The BBC did an excellent documentary which used the Riggs match as a framework to tell the story of Billie Jean King's fight against discrimination and ther battle to change negative attitudes towards women's tennis. It's available on Amazon (and possibly in dark corners of the internet).
Yet there are the womens differences. The matches are shorter, being best of 3 sets...
Five set matches for men only take place at four tournaments out of the many played on the tour - at all the ATP and WTA tournaments women and men both play three set matches. The reason for this is not due to any kind of enlightened thinking by the authorities as you make out, but is ironically a traditional hangover from the days when sexist beliefs in female delicacy and fragility were the norm.
Women are no more physically incapable of playing five set matches than men - in fact the WTA has asked for five set matches at Grand slams. However the ITF, rather than the ATP/WTA runs these and it has refused, largely because it would create scheduling havoc rather than any fanciful notions of putative entertainment value and so on. In any case there is a growing call among male players for three set matches across the board due to the increasingly injury toll on the men as the intensity of play increases. (The comptetiveness of sports - say women's football - tends to improve over time you see). Players like Nadal would probably not have suffered the sort of problems they have if all matches were three sets.
...the rackets(sic) are often more lightweight to suit the physical needs of the woman as opposed to the physical need of the men...
Racquets tend to be more lightweight among women in general. However the weight of racquets varies within and across womens and mens tennis. There have been some women who used heavier racquets than some men - there is no such thing as a "women's" tennis racquet in the way you imply.
In other words any difference in racquet weight between individual players is a matter of personal choice. It is not codified in the way you are arguing for a difference in men's and women's goals and pitches to be codified. A better analogy would be some bright spark popping up and suggesting nets should be lower and courts should be smaller in women's tennis as a matter of regulation. I suspect that would rightly be condemned as demeaning and patronising.
The aim is the same yet the approach is different
.
Nope - the aim is the same but the attitude towards the sport is different. That is the critical issue, not nonsense designed to create a different game.
They're physically different.
Which is undoubtedly true on an average basis but immaterial for the purposes of your argument.
Given that women are capable competing in triathlons against other women, the proposition that competing for ninety minutes on a full-size football pitch somehow stretches the limits of female human endurance is an absurdity. 16-year olds can play on full-size pitches but women can't? Please.
Tennis gets it...
Yes. Tennis understands that attitudes towards the sport, such as equal treatment - for example in terms of equal prize money and whatnot - and promoting the sport equally (i.e "over-hyping by the BBC" in the way that some of us would say the nauseating Premier League is also over-hyped) thereby giving it an increased profile and so on is more important to growing the sport than implying that its participants are delicate little flowers who need looking after in case they strain themselves.
Women's football (or at least those who think any suggestion of change is chauvinistic) seems to think that full-sized goals are appropriate because in the mindset of the female football fan the suggestion of change is inexplicably egregious.
I can't speak for women's football, but I suspect they think that imposing small-sized goals and similar specious changes are unnecessary - after all women play basketball on the same courts with the same height baskets as men. I'm not a basketball afficionado, but the sport doesn't seem to have a major problem in that regard. Of course it isn't as popular as the men's game, but I doubt that has anything to with the dimensions of the apparatus.
I personally haven't seen any issue with the size of goals at the WWC - its not as if the number of goals scored has been wildy out of kilter with the men's game. There has only been one cricket score I can think of, but that almost certainly has more to do with the unequal development of the game in different countries than anything else. On that basis we should make the goals smaller for Brazilian men because they got hammered at a World cup by Germany.
The Swiss goalkeeper is the only one I've seen where height has been an obvious problem, but according to the pundits she is unusally small even for the women's game. We have a young goalkeeper in League Two who has played for the England under-20 side and is roughly the same height as Hope Solo and Nadine Angerer, the German womens goalkeeper. Can we have smaller goals next season as well please?
If we're going to have goal sizes regulated to acccount for differences in average height between genders then why not go the whole hog and impose different goal sizes in each country? After all the average male height in the likes of India and parts of Africa and Asia is 5'5", which is about the average female height in the UK and an inch or two smaller than the average female height in the Netherlands. Come to think of it average male height in the UK has increased by over four inches since the Football League was formed, so by your rationale we should demand bigger goals and bigger pitches in the men's game from now on.
Horribly artificial measures like changing the size of goals and so on would only make superficial differences to the women's game - they would not fundamentally change its status and would do more harm than good in termsof its image. Positive change will only come after a lot of time and effort, not just on the field but in wider society. Making fundamental and unnecessary changes that set differences between the gender codes in stone would send out an unhelpful message about the status of the sport. "y'know, under-15s boys play on smaller pitches too".
Women's tennis is more precision-driven. With the exception of the William's sisters, not many have the power to compete with the men so it adapts itself.
It "adapts itself" organically, without having codified differences between the genders imposed by the governing body, as you advocate for football. No-one I know of is advocating smaller courts or lower nets and they would rightly be lambasted as patronising if they did.
People have gradually come to accept that women's tennis should be respected for what it is and that making direct and unfavourable comparisons with the men's game, as you and others seem to be trying to do between man's and women's football, is bogus.
Unfortunately the women's game is not there yet as many of the posts on this thread clearly demonstrate,, but hopefully that day is not too far off. However if it takes twenty or thirty years, then so be it. I can well remember a time thirty years ago when men's football in this country was thought to be dying - when I was at University and fancied a girl I would avoid telling her I went to football at all costs for fear of being thought of as an oafish chav pariah.
Everyone accepts these differences and everyone, presumably, wouldn't change them. They wouldn't like to see females obliged to play with the same rackets men used.
They're not obliged to play with different rackets either. There is no gender-based regulation concerning the issue and that is the fundamentally important thing.
nobody thinks it's sexist unless they go to best of 5..
Women only play different numbers of sets in a tiny minority of matches. In any case the reason they don't is not because they couldn't, but for historical reasons and the logistical problems involved in changing the status quo.
nobody watches a women's tennis match and compares them to the men.
Even though they play with the same size balls, on the same size courts, with the same height nets, and over the same number of sets 99 per cent of the time.
[quoteThere's no need to....[/quote]
Exactly, yet ironically time and again you and your fellow travellers judge womens football by comparing it unfavourably to a men's game with vastly greater resources operating in a staggeringly more favourable social environment.
(women's tennis is valued in it's own right).. because of the adaptations it's a fantastically successful sport.
The exact same conditions existed when women's tennis was widely derided as a joke, so your specious argument about "adaptations" falls at the first hurdle. Moreover as I've already explained, the only codified difference between men's and women's tennis is the greater number of sets at four out of many tournaments for purely historical reasons.
Already if it was to emulate tennis there would be differences in the length of match and the equipment used.
Nope. There would be shorter matches at the Euros and WC alone, for historical reasons and out of personal choice they would use different equipment to strike the same size ball across the same sixe court over the same height nets. I imagine women footballers already use lighter and smaller boots in general so I guess that part of it is sorted.
If it were to emulate golf the field area would be reduced in size, women teeing off as they do closer than men to address the physical differences.
Golf is a game of dimensions and limits - the aim is to hit the ball as far towards the hole as you can in order to sink it in the fewest possible shots. Golf courses have evolved to make the distances long enough to provide a meanigful challenge to the player. When a system is designed with the physical limits of men in mind it will not be appropriate for women and it is not sexist to accept that. There is nothing to suggest that the size of a football pitch is particularly arduous or detrimental for women to play on that I have seen.
Football and tennis are fundamentally different - if football involved lining up on your own goal line and trying to kick the ball into a goal 500 yards away, or if you were penalised for making more than two passes once your goalkeeper had released the ball then you might have a point about imposing different size pitches , but it isn't and you don't.
Suggest it for football? "Sexist"
Sometimes it is sexist - or are you one of those who argue that sexism died the day Margaret Thatcher was elected and racism died the day Trevor MacDonald was hired to present the News At Ten? At other times it's just ill thought-out nonsense.
Women's football won't ever get to that same level if people who're defending it constantly ignore pragmatism.
It will never be an identical game to men's football and will probably never have an identical status. Given the rotten, greed-laden, amoral abomination that men's top-flight football has turned into that is a shame in my opinion. As you yourself said iwomen's football needs to be valued in its own right and respected on its own merits and then it will eventually become successful enough. Hopefully that is not too unrealistic an ambition.
The solution seems to be that we seek to make women's football a more attractive spectacle by waiting for everyone else to realise how wrong they are.
I've seen plenty of attractive football, but it doesn't get me in the same way as watching my own team does purely for reasons of context - it has nothing to do with the size of pitches or whatnot.
I'm confident that one day women's football will be given more respect than it is now and will be far more generally popular, but thinly-veiled and patronising sexism will have to change first - giving those delicate little flowers their own set of rules will be a hindrance rather than a help in changing perceptions.
Do appreciate the irony of being accused of being condescending and patronising by someone who condescendingly and patronisingly (and incorrectly) corrected my spelling of the word racket.
They're not obliged to play with different rackets either. There is no gender-based regulation concerning the issue and that is the fundamentally important thing.
Especially when the same poster used the same spelling themselves...
Well we can pretty much stop right there if thats the benchmark you are using. If you judge an Aguero goal by the morals of his clubs owners then that makes being a spectator impossible.
Oh come off it. I never said anything of the sort - I judge my enjoyment of the Premier League itself based on the morals of its owners and administrators - just as I would loathe the Bundesliga if say, Hitler owned Bayern Munich - I'm not commenting on the technical ability of its participants.
I have repeated myself constantly. The vast majority of people impartially watching women's football will recognise that it is of a hugely inferior standard, regardless of however many legitimate reasons there may be for that.
I've never heard anyone argue that like-for-like it isn't technically inferior. That said there are definitely some international women players who are better than at least some League Two and non-league men's players I have seen
I can't say Ive noticed but then i am only a very casual viewer because what I have watched has been poor.
If you don't really watch it then your opinion is hardly very objective.
Many did (ignore the appalling men's football of the eighties)
Exactly - and it wasn't artificial changes in the size of goals and whatnot that brought them back. Changes in the offside rule and the 1994 moves to stop the organised GBH that football in the country was beginning to resemble may have helped, but those are not gender specific issues.
Random examples will always happen. I have been at pains to point out I am talking about an overall standard. You will see exciting games at any level played by either sex. You can watch your kids playing for their school team and be entertained too,it doesn't get it a tv deal. Again all I am saying is that the overall standard is poor.
They are not random examples. I've seen just as many entertaining matches in the WWC than in many men's tournaments in the past - especially the likes of Italia 90 and the truly abysmal Euro 1996. Anyway, if you hardly watch how do you what is random and what isn't?
Not if they are happy enough with their lot. Not if people are realistic about where they are and how good they are rather than proclaiming them to be so much better than those with eyes can see.
Who is making exaggerated claims about the absolute standard? Not me - although neither am Ilooking to find fault at every turn in the way some other male posters seem to be doing. I simply don't accept that its as bad or irrelevant as they try to imply
Conference football is at a particular level by its very nature. Its isn't a sport in its own right, its a level within a sport. You don't go and watch the 5th tier of English football and expect to see the best the game has to offer. You DO expect to watch the World Cup and expect to see the game has to offer. Of course that doesn't always happen but that is why expectations are different. The World Cup should be the pinnacle of the Women's game. With respect to your team, the Conference is not the pinnacle of the mens.
That's a bogus and fallacious argument - you don't seem to understand the difference between the relative and the absolute.
You probably are seeing the best the women's game has to offer, notwithstanding the fact that even the men's tournament doesn't always give a completely accurate impression in this regard. What you are really complaining about is that the standard isn't as good as the men's . Well no s**t sherlock - but again, so what? As I've said before, in an absolute sense all that matters is that whether or not someone finds it entertaining to watch or not. I have personally find the WWC and lower-league football often just as entertaining - if not more entertaining - than the Premier League, with all its empty glitz and glamour.
Not at all. I didn't make the "Pub Players" comparison. I was responding to another poster who did in yet another desperate attempt to use a lesser level in the mens game to compare to the top level in the womens.
You're missing the point yet again. The issue is whether or not women's football is a worhtwhile pursuit in its own right, not whether it compares to the Premier League. By that rationale we should abolish the Football League and every other professional division in the UK.
The comparison between the WWC and lower-league football is not being made as a false analogy, but in order to refute the idea that the WWC should be disparaged as pointless just because it doesn't reach the standard of the best Men's football.
The comparison between men's and women's football will be made if both are being shown on TV and both are played to the exact same standard. If I want to watch a game of football tonight as a casual viewer and there is a Copa America game an U21 Championship game and a Women's World Cup game, I don't see a huge reason to pick the women's game based on *potential* quality on view. That is the reality of the market that the womens game is in. Hence why there are people making suggestions to set it apart in a crowded marketplace.
They aren't being played to the exact same standard - it's a question of taking a particular iteration of a sport on its own merits. By your reasoning watching the IPL is completely pointless when Test Match cricket is often of a higher standard.
And that is when football was in the doldrums. I don't see why referencing that has much relevance to the disc
ussion.
Of course you don't see why - because you don't understand the difference between the relative and the absolute. If men's football was taken seriously and was popular when the technical standard of the elite was far worse than it is today then achieving the highest pinnacle of absolute technical quality is not essential for a particular iteration of a sport - i.e women's football to be considered legitmate and to be successful .
That attitude REALLY pisses me off. I have no axe to grind either way. I think the women's game is poor so I say it therefore I am sexist or a chauvinist. I am neither. Criticise any other type of football and its fair game but mention the women's game and all sorts of nonsense allegations are being flung around. Such an overly precious mentality will make the game an even bigger turn off if you must simply applaud everything as if its genius for fear of what you will be called.
And your attitude of constantly finding fault with the women's game really pisses me off as well, so I guess we're even. (Don't get me started on Premier League fetishists who know the price of everything and the value of nothing otherwise we'll be here all night).
Its no skin of my nose what happens to the women's game. Its an interesting talking point to me but nothing more. I am just kicking around genuine suggestions to make things better.
And while you may not be sexist your arguments read like the sort of suggestions a sexist would make so I've dealt with them on that basis.
So pointing out that women are actually physically smaller than men is now akin to the racist or at least ignorant attitude to black players in the 70s. I'm pretty if you gave me a tape measure I could actually demonstrate for you what women's goalkeepers cover less of the goal by volume that their male counterparts. That is different to questioning the mentality of a black man compared to a white man.
Pointing out that a woman is on average smaller than a man is a fact. Claiming that this means they can't play on a full-sized pitch successfully and therefore need to be treated differently to men when there is no evidence to support this assertion comes fromthe same same sort of pseudo-scientific playbook that was used to disparage black players in the olden days. If you don't want to be called out on it then don't make such ludicrously flimsy arguments.
In fact now that you have thrown the sexist, chauvinistic a racist card in my direction I think I'll just leave it there.
Is a paragraph reply to every 4 to 7 words really necessary?
It looks horrendous, nobody will read it and it's impossible to respond to.
Nobody's forced to read or respond to it if they lack the attention span or to do soor if it offends their aesthetic sensibiltity. It isn't necessary for you to comment on the style rather than the substance of posts.
Do appreciate the irony of being accused of being condescending and patronising by someone who condescendingly and patronisingly (and incorrectly) corrected my spelling of the word racket.
Well you do come across as condescending and patronising towards womens football from my point of view, just as many others on this thread have been.
Having said that it would still have been wrong and petty of me to pull you up on such a minor spelling issue even if I had been technically correct. As I wasn't I apologise on both counts.
I heard one of the players the other day complain that the artificial pitch is making the games slower than usual.
Yet in the DS thread, everyone thinks the football is wonderful and exciting. Nobody has a poor word to say about it. When even the players are complaining about their ability to put on a good match due to the artificial pitches yet here people are wonderfully impressed with everything, you do have to wonder quite how sincere people are in their praise.
People are saying that the pitch has caused problems and may have affected the quality relative to that which might normally have been expected. I have never heard anyone say that it has prevented good and entertaining football being played at all, merely that things would have been better on a grass pitch. You're simply twisting their words to suit your agenda. I'm afraid its that pesky difference between the relative and the absoute rearing its ugly head again.
If you're a football fan and say that you're enjoying the women's world cup more than you have the PL in years or a World Cup since 1982 - a women's world cup where even the women acknowledging conditions are making efforts to put on a show case difficult, then I'm sorry but I question your integrity and honesty....
Question away. As I tried to explain, enjoyment of a particular sport or pastime is not completely dependent on the level of technical ability involved otherwise nobody would watch anything else but Barcelona v Bayern Munich every week.
I appreciate football for a whole range of reasons which I suppose all add up to considerations of culture and context in the end. That's why I feel a ridiculous level of emotion around a struggling League Two club that will never remotely approach the Premier League under the current system. The act of supporting it involves other things I find important such as social value, a sense of community and identity and its representative meaning - i.e I value what I think it stands for, along with a whole heap of other things which mean I can overlook the fact that our defence might be sh*t in a particular season and so on.
The Premier League has abandoned any pretence of that - it is theatre for a community of human rights-abusing oil-sheikhs the equal of any of the scumbags in Qatar and for dubious robber-barons of the worst kind, rather than football for a community of ordinary people as it used to be.
It is increasingly becoming the case that I can't watch it without metaphorically holding my nose - where MOTD was once esential viewing, I often don't bother these days. Even when I do watch it I often find it difficult to decide who I want to lose more.
I say again - I often get far more out of watching the WWC, free of a lot of the venal BS that surrounds top-flight men's football, or from watching League Two and Conference Football than I get from watching the venal Premier League. In fact if the latter folded tomorrow I genuinely couldn't care less - in fact depending on how it affected football in general I'd probably even be glad.
I know a lot of people who have the same distaste for the Premier League that I do. The fact that you find that so impossible to even begin to fathom explains a lot.
I think this is what winds people up, together with efforts to get any critical comment in that thread banned. I don't think people believe it's sincere and there's a certain irony of people wanting it to be treated the same as the men's game yet you go into the thread and all you see is wall to wall near-patronising praise. It doesn't ring true and probably isn't genuine.
I think your problem is that you can't fathom how anyone could possibly judge the worth of something by different parameters to yourself. "If they don't just love the shiny, glitzy supersoaraway Premier League just as I do they must be lying". Well believe what you like.
Of course there's also a certain irony in the same people who complain of being accused of having a (chauvinistic) agenda for criticising women's football themselves acccusing others of having an agenda for praising it. (Technically its hypocrisy rather than irony but I'm not pointing that out to belittle anyone before the anti-WWC brigade start)
If people who are playing are admitting that the conditions aren't conducive to the ideal way they'd want to play you have to wonder if this cheerleading isn't just mindless 'say it's great whatever happensism'
You're dealing in absolutes on top of a strawman.
Saying that the surface has adversely affected the tournament (whether or not that is true) is not the same as saying that it has been poor. To put it another way they could simply be saying that it would have been even better on grass.
Of course if the genera opinion of the player's statements suggest that it has been a bad tournament in an absolute sense, with little quality, then you might have a point. Could you link me to statements of that nature?
It seems that I've been so keen to defend women's football that I've missed the live games and will have to watch my recordings all night. Now that really is ironic.
Oh come off it. I never said anything of the sort - I judge my enjoyment of the Premier League itself based on the morals of its owners and administrators - just as I would loathe the Bundesliga if say, Hitler owned Bayern Munich - I'm not commenting on the technical ability of its participants.
In every post you have made you make some form of attack on the Premier League - you clearly hate it for your own reasons. Maybe you just look favourably on everything that isn't Premier League.
If you don't really watch it then your opinion is hardly very objective.
It is COMPLETELY objective, that's the entire point. If you want to grow something then the only way to do it is to get people who previously weren't interested to become so. I am a football fan, despite allegations I am not sexist and I am happy to make my selection of what football to watch from the vast quantity available based on what I think will be the best. I am exactly the sort of person who should be watching the WWC right now and I am very much the target market for anything that comes under the "football" banner.
Exactly - and it wasn't artificial changes in the size of goals and whatnot that brought them back. Changes in the offside rule and the 1994 moves to stop the organised GBH that football in the country was beginning to resemble may have helped, but those are not gender specific issues.
The backpass rule changed
The offside rule changed
Tackling rules changed
Stadiums were made all- seater
Pitches were improved
Families were targeted
Names were put on shirts
Glamour was added
Presentation was altered
Now you can argue totally about what you like of dislike about any of the above the there is no doubt that decisions were taken to make the game better, more appealing and more entertaining both to the supporter in the ground and the viewer on tv. That is all I am saying. Altering goals and pitches in the women's game are simply a starting point and talking point for the women's game in order to make it more appealing in a crowded market. People are free to make their own suggestions.
They are not random examples. I've seen just as many entertaining matches in the WWC than in many men's tournaments in the past - especially the likes of Italia 90 and the truly abysmal Euro 1996. Anyway, if you hardly watch how do you what is random and what isn't?
I read, I see what other say and its backed up by what I see myself. If an opinion is only valid if Ive done an in-depth study by watching many many many hours then that's fine but if you disregard the views of people who are fans of the sport in general but dare to be critical of this area then there is little scope for improvement. Ask the people who are already watching in depth then of course you are going to get a differing view.
If you enter into a discussion about the merits of Scottish Football and what can be done to improve it you rarely get such vitriol in return. I fail to see why the women's game is untouchable.
Who is making exaggerated claims about the absolute standard? Not me - although neither am Ilooking to find fault at every turn in the way some other male posters seem to be doing. I simply don't accept that its as bad or irrelevant as they try to imply
I am not trying to find fault at every turn. I am saying I perceive the standard to be low and discussing with fellow forum members about ways it could be improved. You obviously don't think it can be improved and that's fine. Continue to watch as it is. Its not an issue.
That's a bogus and fallacious argument - you don't seem to understand the difference between the relative and the absolute.
You probably are seeing the best the women's game has to offer, notwithstanding the fact that even the men's tournament doesn't always give a completely accurate impression in this regard. What you are really complaining about is that the standard isn't as good as the men's . Well no s**t sherlock - but again, so what? As I've said before, in an absolute sense all that matters is that whether or not someone finds it entertaining to watch or not. I have personally find the WWC and lower-league football often just as entertaining - if not more entertaining - than the Premier League, with all its empty glitz and glamour.
Again an attack on the PL. That's fine if you find it as entertaining as the top level men's game - notice it is YOU that made the comparison there. I don't find it entertaining to watch a significantly lower standard. I think we all watch the team(s) we support regardless of standard but when you go past that, especially on TV you tend to watch the higher quality. Hence why La Liga is bought up by Sky and the Estonian U21 League isn't.
The comparison with the Men's game will happen when both are being shown on TV at similar times. The reasons for why one is worse than the other wont matter to the people who switch off or don't watch because the standard is lower. These reasons may all be total valid however.
You're missing the point yet again. The issue is whether or not women's football is a worhtwhile pursuit in its own right, not whether it compares to the Premier League. By that rationale we should abolish the Football League and every other professional division in the UK.
No you shouldnt. I have said that 5 times now. Within the framework of the professional game the standard lessens the lower you go. Within the women's game it will be the same. I hardly need to explain that. The point is how women's football compares to its competition as a spectacle. Once the WWC is over it will go back to being an irrelevance to the vast majority of people in a similar way to many Olympic sports did after 2012. If that's fine for the supporters of the womens game then trust me its fine by me too. No problem.
The comparison between the WWC and lower-league football is not being made as a false analogy, but in order to refute the idea that the WWC should be disparaged as pointless just because it doesn't reach the standard of the best Men's football.
Its not pointless. Never said it was. Never attacked the right of women to play the game or have a World Cup or to try to improve.
Im once again simply saying that in order to be getting TV coverage and to go on to get TV coverage in the future now that it has broken onto the BBC it needs to get better because it compares so unfavourably with the mens game and it is being compared in the TV environment. It has nothing to do with women's right to play or whether it reaches the same standard as men. Its about what TV companies are going to want to show when all is said and done.
They aren't being played to the exact same standard - it's a question of taking a particular iteration of a sport on its own merits. By your reasoning watching the IPL is completely pointless when Test Match cricket is often of a higher standard
.
Don't watch cricket so cant comment.
Of course you don't see why - because you don't understand the difference between the relative and the absolute. If men's football was taken seriously and was popular when the technical standard of the elite was far worse than it is today then achieving the highest pinnacle of absolute technical quality is not essential for a particular iteration of a sport - i.e women's football to be considered legitmate and to be successful .
Its the comparative standard that matters. Once again, watching your kids playing in school can be entertaining, they can be good for their age and there can be a decent amount of competition at that level, but put it on BBC 3 and treat it as if it is similar to a World Cup and suddenly you are looking at it in a different way. That is normal. Its not a lack of legitimacy of the sport itself, its finding a place for it in an extremely crowded market.
And your attitude of constantly finding fault with the women's game really pisses me off as well, so I guess we're even. (Don't get me started on Premier League fetishists who know the price of everything and the value of nothing otherwise we'll be here all night).
Another dig at the Premier League. Your attitude of finding fault with that is equally annoying, especially in a thread that has nothing to do with it.
And while you may not be sexist your arguments read like the sort of suggestions a sexist would make so I've dealt with them on that basis.
No, a sexist would say "women shouldn't be playing the game" or "How about topless football", or "aww aren't they great" when they aren't or how about "aww that poor goalie wont someone give her a hug?"
There is nothing sexist about looking for ways to make the game better. There is nothing sexist at looking at it as 22 PEOPLE playing a game and judging it on its merits rather than looking at it as 22 WOMEN playing a game and looking for excuses for its shortcomings.
Pointing out that a woman is on average smaller than a man is a fact. Claiming that this means they can't play on a full-sized pitch successfully and therefore need to be treated differently to men when there is no evidence to support this assertion comes fromthe same same sort of pseudo-scientific playbook that was used to disparage black players in the olden days. If you don't want to be called out on it then don't make such ludicrously flimsy arguments.
The evidence when the goalkeepers are continuously absolutely bloody hopeless is there for all to see. The kick and rush tactics that I have seen employed when an offside trap can be simply outrun is there for all to see. Its a disgrace to compare it to anything to do with black players but keep the insults and accusations flying.
Might be for the best if this is all you've got.[/QUOTE]
I managed to do it without resorting to insults and name calling. Im happy with that.
The Premier League has abandoned any pretence of that - it is theatre for a community of human rights-abusing oil-sheikhs the equal of any of the scumbags in Qatar and for dubious robber-barons of the worst kind, rather than football for a community of ordinary people as it used to be.
It is increasingly becoming the case that I can't watch it without metaphorically holding my nose - where MOTD was once esential viewing, I often don't bother these days. Even when I do watch it I often find it difficult to decide who I want to lose more.
I say again - I often get far more out of watching the WWC, free of a lot of the venal BS that surrounds top-flight men's football, or from watching League Two and Conference Football than I get from watching the venal Premier League. In fact if the latter folded tomorrow I genuinely couldn't care less - in fact depending on how it affected football in general I'd probably even be glad.
I know a lot of people who have the same distaste for the Premier League that I do. The fact that you find that so impossible to even begin to fathom explains a lot.
This is all fair enough but i think it places you very firmly in a minority.
Potentially women's football can tap into this distaste for men's elite level football that you speak of - by being a more wholesome and pure version of the sport. However, I think it needs more than that to really progress, as I don't think there's a massive distaste for the PL that you describe. A potential first step on the way though, and maybe a good selling point for those attempting to market the sport.
Comments
Different, not inferior.
Its already an inferior sport, the changes would be an attempt to make it different.
Women's Rugby and Women's Cricket don't change the rules? Great, and of course they are wildly successful and never off our TV screens aren't they?
Men's Pub Players aren't ever trying to pass themselves off as professional athletes on a TV sport that is apparently looking for further "resources" in order to improve. THAT is a particularly daft comparison.
Once again, changes are being suggested because there seems to be a desire to increase the games popularity, get it further TV coverage, more money/resources and raise standards. If people are happy for this to happen "whenever it happens" and leave the game as it is then thats fine but it will remain a minority sport. That in itself is not a bad thing if that is the will of the sport. However if there is a desire for this to happen more quickly then its no going to happen in its current form and there is nothing wrong with looking at fresh ideas.
No - increased exposure will come from players becoming better. Which has happened in the women's game over the last thirty to forty years and can continue in the future.
There is more scope for progress with female footballers compared to male players simply because they are improving from a lower base.
Thats genuinely not going to happen. You are saying because they are so much worse than men they have more potential to reach the same level. Well no. They will improve over time as you suggest but by your own admission its taken them 30 to 40 years to get to this level and its massively inferior to the standard of mens football.
The problem is there is far too much other football out there for the women's game to get any sort of foothold as it stands.
I would say I watch quite a lot of football on tv and subscribe to Sky Sports and BT Sport but within that choices have to be made and women's football will always be at the very bottom of the pile because quality-wise it just doesn't stack up. It used to be the case that in a summer of no Euro's or World Cup there was a break from football but that no longer applies. Even right now there is the U21s and the Copa American being shown. Truth is I cant really watch much of any of it because frankly I have other stuff to do. I think most people are like that.
There are obviously a couple of people on here and on other forums who have no partner, no kids and no job and seem to spend ALL their time watching any sort of football. They may well add women's football to the list of games to watch but they are not typical. Most people watch football when they can or have some downtime. For women's football to truly be successful on tv they need to attract these type of people, the average football fan, to watch, not just the people who either have a vested interest or those who watch all and any football.
At the current standard and format it will be a long time before that happens.
The women's ashes will be screened live on Sky, and there is a new Women's 20/20 league going to be set up, so the future there for women's cricketers is looking very rosey indeed.
And as for being wildy successful, the women are way more successful than the men in cricket, and the same the female rugby union players, as the women are the current world cup winners/holders.
They are both minority sports compared to the male equivalent. I am talking about "success" in terms of coverage of the sport not how a team is performing. I presume you are talking about just the English women when you say that they are more successful than men. There are more countries than England in the UK.
The coverage of the sport in terms of female cricket is improving year on year, and with the ashes being shown live, and this new league being set-up, then that is surely good news, wouldn't you agree?
As for the English women, sorry my bad, yes there are more countries in the UK than England, I was just using that as an example.
I have no idea. I don't watch cricket male or female so I can't really comment on the comparison between the male and female game to be honest. Another poster used it as an example of the fact that these sports didn't change their rules. Thats was all. Its not hugely relevant to the overall discussion about women's football, it was just an example.
Women's tennis is more precision-driven. With the exception of the William's sisters, not many have the power to compete with the men so it adapts itself.
Everyone accepts these differences and everyone, presumably, wouldn't change them. They wouldn't like to see females obliged to play with the same rackets men used, nobody thinks it's sexist unless they go to best of 5 - nobody watches a women's tennis match and compares them to the men. There's no need to. As it's own, because of the adaptations it's a fantastically successful sport.
Already if it was to emulate tennis there would be differences in the length of match and the equipment used. If it were to emulate golf the field area would be reduced in size, women teeing off as they do closer than men to address the physical differences. Suggest it for football? "Sexist"
Women's football won't ever get to that same level if people who're defending it constantly ignore pragmatism. The solution seems to be that we seek to make women's football a more attractive spectacle by waiting for everyone else to realise how wrong they are.
Get back to me in 10 years and let me know how that's working out for you.
Whether its an inferior sport per se is a matter of opinion. It might be of an inferior technical standard - I doubt that even the most ardent female footballer would argue otherwise. However there are many different parameters apart from absolute technical quality that define spectator value in a particular sport or pastime - competitiveness within the sport, the attitude of its participants and so on. For example I've enjoyed the womens World Cup in general far more than I enjoy the Premier League, largely because I loathe many of the immoral and venal aspects of the latter, such as the greed, the background of some of its owners and so on. Others seem to think the Premier League is all that matters. It's not a black and white issue in the way those sneering at women's football would like it to be.
I don't recognise this appalling womens football that everyone is talking about. Granted its not as technically good as the best men's football and admittedly some of the minor nations are poor - just as the likes of Zaire/DR Congo were once comically bad at the men's World Cup - but there absolutely is some great technique and entertaining football on view.
The absolute technical standard of one sector of a sport relative to another is not the only important characteristic defining its value, otherwise people would have ignored men's football in the days when the likes of Sheffield Wednesday and Wimbledon were playing a version of rugby with forward passing and a modified offside rule, with the ball bouncing of the shins of the likes of the Carlton Palmers of this world and waited for the advent of the modern era.
For example I've seen games in the Conference that had far greater entertanment value than some of the tedious dross that gets served up among the minor Premier League teams on more than a few occasions even today. Gary Johnson was Sky's pundit at our first Conference play-off Semi-Final and described it as the best game of football he'd seen anywhere all year, yet even a fanatic like me would never dispute that our players were significantly below even the average Championship standard at the time.
There are many sports that have relatively little media coverage - does that invalidate those as well?
As i've indicated I support a team that spent a few years in the Conference. When we were relegated there was no TV coverage whatsoever (although Setanta began broadcasting games in our second or third season). Does that mean Conference football should be dismissed and mocked as "inferior" to real football? After all there are plenty of misplaced passes and goalkeeping errors made by male footballers even up to League One, which is the highest standard I've regularly experienced live. (I imagine the blinkered afficionados of the Greed-Is-Good League would probably answer in the affirmative).
But its not daft to point out that arguing on the basis of absolute comparisons between womens and mens football as they stand today, when there have been and always will be relative differences between both, within each and from one era to another is idiotic. Moreover, the women internationals I've been watching are of a far higher standard than any male "pub players" I've ever seen and are certainly not trying to "pass themselves off" as anything - some of them really are professional athletes. That you should imply otherwise is illuminating.
I can personally remember English football very well going all the way back to the mid-seventies and regardless of the misty-eyed nostalgia that is ofen indulged in these days there have been considerable periods in the past where the average technical standard of men's professional football in this country has been absolutely appalling. I can particuarly recall watching the nine o'clock news (as it was then) in the eighties or early nineties about an international ex-sprinter (I think it was Jason Gardener) trying to get into football (at Walsall?). The manager or coach told the reporter that he wasn't a particularly talented footballer, but he was quick and unfortunately such was the poor technical state of English football at the time that his extreme pace was all he really needed to succeed.
That's the ostensible reason. However I suspect that regardless of the injured air of protest, a lot of the rationale behind essentially creating a different game for women really does come from a chauvinistic attitude and a desire for the women's game to know its place.
In the seventies it was commonplace for the lack of top black footballers to be explained away by the same sort of pseudo-science that says women can't last ninety minutes in a football match when they can successfully complete triathlons. Pundits in international games and managers interviewed on the highlights programmes would regularly and quite openly attribute the phenomenon to the fact that black people couldn't perform well in European weather and didn't have the same heart and fighting spirit of the indigineous population. In my experience that kind of prejudiced BS was fairly widely accepted as axiomatically true. I stand to be corrected, but I think it was Terry Venables who I once heard on the Big Match explaining that while Vince Hilaire was a talented footballer and a good lad, like all the "coloured boys" he couldn't be relied upon on a wet, cold and muddy evening in Grimsby or wherever.
You can't simply dismiss the fact that the social context of the mens and women's game is enormously different - men's football has more social status and value than womens football. In many countries women still face overt societal barriers to playing football - its illuminating and depressing to hear of the obstacles and prejudice the Brazilian women have spoken of for example. That has far more effect on the progression and popularity of the womens game than the size of the goals or nonsense like that. After all the environment players grow up in is itself hugely important for their development and the development of the game in general. Even the youngsters at my league Two club are hugely cosseted relative to their peers - by contrast Fara Williams was a homeless down-and-out for six years while still playing women's international football.
This sort of thing has a thousand different and complex effects on the development of the game - for one thing social value often translates into material value and so the men's game has a vastly greater pool of human and material resources to draw upon before you even begin to consider anything else. Of course the mere fact of the existence of men's football alone will affect the popularity of the women's game, just as it affects a vast range of other mens sports. That won't change in a hurry, no matter how small you make the goals.
All women's sport will remain a minority sport as long as attitudes to men and women in society are different. Posters critical of the WWC have cited women's tennis as an example of a sport that has more equality with the men's game, but apart from that being hugely overstated (how many people asked at random could name ten female players or tell you who won any of the WTA tournaments, as opposed to Grand Slams, in the last ten years?) that increase in popularity only occured relatively recently. In any case it has far more to do with the likes of Billie Jean King fighting tooth and nail for a change in the status and treatment of women in the sport in general than it does with differences in equipment and so on. Such as differences that do exist are minor, in most cases are circumstantial rather than codified (i.e there is no "women's tennis racket" in the way some posters have advocated "women's goals") and existed even when womens tennis was taken far less seriously.
There is nothing wrong with looking at fresh ideas to improve the game, but not if those ideas are founded on misguided and patronising ideas of female fragility and inferiority and unreasonable and hugely simplistic comparisons with the men's game.
Women's football has definitely improved and hopefully will continue to do so despite the obstacles in its path. Of course it's unlikely to ever surpass the men's game in absolute terms (speed, strength etc) or popularity, but so what? Can't people simply enjoy it in its own right, just as those who don't believe the Premier League is the be-all-and-end-all of sport endeavour enjoy mens football played at lower levels and enjoy other mens' sports whose profiles are similarly obliterated by the popularty of mens football?
There is absolutely no intrinsic reason why it can't be just as entertaining to watch twenty-two women play football as it can be to watch twenty two men doing the same thing. In fact as I've already said I've genuinely found more pleasure watching the WWC than I have found in watching the PL for years - not to mention the fact that since the 1982 World Cup the great majority of mens international tournaments have often been about as entertaining as a root canal.
Yet in the DS thread, everyone thinks the football is wonderful and exciting. Nobody has a poor word to say about it. When even the players are complaining about their ability to put on a good match due to the artificial pitches yet here people are wonderfully impressed with everything, you do have to wonder quite how sincere people are in their praise.
If you're a football fan and say that you're enjoying the women's world cup more than you have the PL in years or a World Cup since 1982 - a women's world cup where even the women acknowledging conditions are making efforts to put on a show case difficult, then I'm sorry but I question your integrity and honesty.
I think this is what winds people up, together with efforts to get any critical comment in that thread banned. I don't think people believe it's sincere and there's a certain irony of people wanting it to be treated the same as the men's game yet you go into the thread and all you see is wall to wall near-patronising praise. It doesn't ring true and probably isn't genuine.
If people who are playing are admitting that the conditions aren't conducive to the ideal way they'd want to play you have to wonder if this cheerleading isn't just mindless 'say it's great whatever happensism'
Well we can pretty much stop right there if thats the benchmark you are using. If you judge an Aguero goal by the morals of his clubs owners then that makes being a spectator impossible.
I have repeated myself constantly. The vast majority of people impartially watching women's football will recognise that it is of a hugely inferior standard, regardless of however many legitimate reasons there may be for that.
I can't say Ive noticed but then i am only a very casual viewer because what I have watched has been poor.
Many did.
Random examples will always happen. I have been at pains to point out I am talking about an overall standard. You will see exciting games at any level played by either sex. You can watch your kids playing for their school team and be entertained too,it doesn't get it a tv deal. Again all I am saying is that the overall standard is poor.
Not if they are happy enough with their lot. Not if people are realistic about where they are and how good they are rather than proclaiming them to be so much better than those with eyes can see.
I have answered this at least 3 times already yet it is ignored by those who don't want to see it.
Conference football is at a particular level by its very nature. Its isn't a sport in its own right, its a level within a sport. You don't go and watch the 5th tier of English football and expect to see the best the game has to offer. You DO expect to watch the World Cup and expect to see the game has to offer. Of course that doesn't always happen but that is why expectations are different. The World Cup should be the pinnacle of the Women's game. With respect to your team, the Conference is not the pinnacle of the mens.
Not at all. I didn't make the "Pub Players" comparison. I was responding to another poster who did in yet another desperate attempt to use a lesser level in the mens game to compare to the top level in the womens.
The comparison between men's and women's football will be made if both are being shown on TV and both are played to the exact same standard. If I want to watch a game of football tonight as a casual viewer and there is a Copa America game an U21 Championship game and a Women's World Cup game, I don't see a huge reason to pick the women's game based on *potential* quality on view. That is the reality of the market that the womens game is in. Hence why there are people making suggestions to set it apart in a crowded marketplace.
And that is when football was in the doldrums. I don't see why referencing that has much relevance to the discussion.
That attitude REALLY pisses me off. I have no axe to grind either way. I think the women's game is poor so I say it therefore I am sexist or a chauvinist. I am neither. Criticise any other type of football and its fair game but mention the women's game and all sorts of nonsense allegations are being flung around. Such an overly precious mentality will make the game an even bigger turn off if you must simply applaud everything as if its genius for fear of what you will be called.
Its no skin of my nose what happens to the women's game. Its an interesting talking point to me but nothing more. I am just kicking around genuine suggestions to make things better.
Brilliant.
So pointing out that women are actually physically smaller than men is now akin to the racist or at least ignorant attitude to black players in the 70s. I'm pretty if you gave me a tape measure I could actually demonstrate for you what women's goalkeepers cover less of the goal by volume that their male counterparts. That is different to questioning the mentality of a black man compared to a white man.
In fact now that you have thrown the sexist, chauvinistic a racist card in my direction I think I'll just leave it there.
Lets hope it doesn't get belittled as sneering at the women's game.
Your whole tennis analogy is wrong on almost every level - in fact it supports a diametrically opposite argument to that which you expound on this thread.
Women's tennis is not seen as "on par" with the mens. Nowhere in the world will a women's final be the centrepiece of a tournament, nowhere in the world will a broadcaster or media outlet give pride place of place to a women's final and nowhere in the world will it cost the same to see a women's Grand Slam finals match as it will cost to see a men's ( it is three times more expensive to watch a men's match at Wimbledon from the quarter-finals onwards).
It is true to say that women's tennis is more respected and has a higher status relative to the men's game than in some other sports, but that is a very recent phenomenon - even as little as thirty years or so ago Pat Cash was on the BBC openly sneering at women's tennis while still a player. That greater respect has little to do with the weight of racquets and whatnot - it has far more to do with the concerted campaign undertaken by feminist players in the seventies - particularly Billie-Jean King , who fought hard for equal treatment, equal status and to change the negative attitude towards women's tennis which was once just as disparaging and patronising as that directed towards women's football from some quarters today. In fact the WTA tour and the Virginia Slims tournament was originally a breakaway Kerry Packer-style tournament set up by her as a direct result of that campaign.
It was the chipping away of those barriers (along with general changes in society) that elevated women's tennis to the status it has today. As I indicated it was once subject to similar sneering as that directed towards womens football today, even though the number of sets and the weight of racquets has not changed. If I went into it here this post would be even longer, but look up the Bobby Riggs - Billie-Jean King match and the Virginia Slims story. The BBC did an excellent documentary which used the Riggs match as a framework to tell the story of Billie Jean King's fight against discrimination and ther battle to change negative attitudes towards women's tennis. It's available on Amazon (and possibly in dark corners of the internet).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Battle-Sexes-Billie-Jean-King/dp/B00D5TJU7W
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b047pcyc
Five set matches for men only take place at four tournaments out of the many played on the tour - at all the ATP and WTA tournaments women and men both play three set matches. The reason for this is not due to any kind of enlightened thinking by the authorities as you make out, but is ironically a traditional hangover from the days when sexist beliefs in female delicacy and fragility were the norm.
Women are no more physically incapable of playing five set matches than men - in fact the WTA has asked for five set matches at Grand slams. However the ITF, rather than the ATP/WTA runs these and it has refused, largely because it would create scheduling havoc rather than any fanciful notions of putative entertainment value and so on. In any case there is a growing call among male players for three set matches across the board due to the increasingly injury toll on the men as the intensity of play increases. (The comptetiveness of sports - say women's football - tends to improve over time you see). Players like Nadal would probably not have suffered the sort of problems they have if all matches were three sets.
Racquets tend to be more lightweight among women in general. However the weight of racquets varies within and across womens and mens tennis. There have been some women who used heavier racquets than some men - there is no such thing as a "women's" tennis racquet in the way you imply.
In other words any difference in racquet weight between individual players is a matter of personal choice. It is not codified in the way you are arguing for a difference in men's and women's goals and pitches to be codified. A better analogy would be some bright spark popping up and suggesting nets should be lower and courts should be smaller in women's tennis as a matter of regulation. I suspect that would rightly be condemned as demeaning and patronising.
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Nope - the aim is the same but the attitude towards the sport is different. That is the critical issue, not nonsense designed to create a different game.
Which is undoubtedly true on an average basis but immaterial for the purposes of your argument.
Given that women are capable competing in triathlons against other women, the proposition that competing for ninety minutes on a full-size football pitch somehow stretches the limits of female human endurance is an absurdity. 16-year olds can play on full-size pitches but women can't? Please.
Yes. Tennis understands that attitudes towards the sport, such as equal treatment - for example in terms of equal prize money and whatnot - and promoting the sport equally (i.e "over-hyping by the BBC" in the way that some of us would say the nauseating Premier League is also over-hyped) thereby giving it an increased profile and so on is more important to growing the sport than implying that its participants are delicate little flowers who need looking after in case they strain themselves.
I can't speak for women's football, but I suspect they think that imposing small-sized goals and similar specious changes are unnecessary - after all women play basketball on the same courts with the same height baskets as men. I'm not a basketball afficionado, but the sport doesn't seem to have a major problem in that regard. Of course it isn't as popular as the men's game, but I doubt that has anything to with the dimensions of the apparatus.
I personally haven't seen any issue with the size of goals at the WWC - its not as if the number of goals scored has been wildy out of kilter with the men's game. There has only been one cricket score I can think of, but that almost certainly has more to do with the unequal development of the game in different countries than anything else. On that basis we should make the goals smaller for Brazilian men because they got hammered at a World cup by Germany.
The Swiss goalkeeper is the only one I've seen where height has been an obvious problem, but according to the pundits she is unusally small even for the women's game. We have a young goalkeeper in League Two who has played for the England under-20 side and is roughly the same height as Hope Solo and Nadine Angerer, the German womens goalkeeper. Can we have smaller goals next season as well please?
If we're going to have goal sizes regulated to acccount for differences in average height between genders then why not go the whole hog and impose different goal sizes in each country? After all the average male height in the likes of India and parts of Africa and Asia is 5'5", which is about the average female height in the UK and an inch or two smaller than the average female height in the Netherlands. Come to think of it average male height in the UK has increased by over four inches since the Football League was formed, so by your rationale we should demand bigger goals and bigger pitches in the men's game from now on.
Horribly artificial measures like changing the size of goals and so on would only make superficial differences to the women's game - they would not fundamentally change its status and would do more harm than good in termsof its image. Positive change will only come after a lot of time and effort, not just on the field but in wider society. Making fundamental and unnecessary changes that set differences between the gender codes in stone would send out an unhelpful message about the status of the sport. "y'know, under-15s boys play on smaller pitches too".
It "adapts itself" organically, without having codified differences between the genders imposed by the governing body, as you advocate for football. No-one I know of is advocating smaller courts or lower nets and they would rightly be lambasted as patronising if they did.
People have gradually come to accept that women's tennis should be respected for what it is and that making direct and unfavourable comparisons with the men's game, as you and others seem to be trying to do between man's and women's football, is bogus.
Unfortunately the women's game is not there yet as many of the posts on this thread clearly demonstrate,, but hopefully that day is not too far off. However if it takes twenty or thirty years, then so be it. I can well remember a time thirty years ago when men's football in this country was thought to be dying - when I was at University and fancied a girl I would avoid telling her I went to football at all costs for fear of being thought of as an oafish chav pariah.
They're not obliged to play with different rackets either. There is no gender-based regulation concerning the issue and that is the fundamentally important thing.
Women only play different numbers of sets in a tiny minority of matches. In any case the reason they don't is not because they couldn't, but for historical reasons and the logistical problems involved in changing the status quo.
Even though they play with the same size balls, on the same size courts, with the same height nets, and over the same number of sets 99 per cent of the time.
[quoteThere's no need to....[/quote]
Exactly, yet ironically time and again you and your fellow travellers judge womens football by comparing it unfavourably to a men's game with vastly greater resources operating in a staggeringly more favourable social environment.
The exact same conditions existed when women's tennis was widely derided as a joke, so your specious argument about "adaptations" falls at the first hurdle. Moreover as I've already explained, the only codified difference between men's and women's tennis is the greater number of sets at four out of many tournaments for purely historical reasons.
Nope. There would be shorter matches at the Euros and WC alone, for historical reasons and out of personal choice they would use different equipment to strike the same size ball across the same sixe court over the same height nets. I imagine women footballers already use lighter and smaller boots in general so I guess that part of it is sorted.
Golf is a game of dimensions and limits - the aim is to hit the ball as far towards the hole as you can in order to sink it in the fewest possible shots. Golf courses have evolved to make the distances long enough to provide a meanigful challenge to the player. When a system is designed with the physical limits of men in mind it will not be appropriate for women and it is not sexist to accept that. There is nothing to suggest that the size of a football pitch is particularly arduous or detrimental for women to play on that I have seen.
Football and tennis are fundamentally different - if football involved lining up on your own goal line and trying to kick the ball into a goal 500 yards away, or if you were penalised for making more than two passes once your goalkeeper had released the ball then you might have a point about imposing different size pitches , but it isn't and you don't.
Sometimes it is sexist - or are you one of those who argue that sexism died the day Margaret Thatcher was elected and racism died the day Trevor MacDonald was hired to present the News At Ten? At other times it's just ill thought-out nonsense.
It will never be an identical game to men's football and will probably never have an identical status. Given the rotten, greed-laden, amoral abomination that men's top-flight football has turned into that is a shame in my opinion. As you yourself said iwomen's football needs to be valued in its own right and respected on its own merits and then it will eventually become successful enough. Hopefully that is not too unrealistic an ambition.
I've seen plenty of attractive football, but it doesn't get me in the same way as watching my own team does purely for reasons of context - it has nothing to do with the size of pitches or whatnot.
I'm confident that one day women's football will be given more respect than it is now and will be far more generally popular, but thinly-veiled and patronising sexism will have to change first - giving those delicate little flowers their own set of rules will be a hindrance rather than a help in changing perceptions.
It looks horrendous, nobody will read it and it's impossible to respond to.
Wildly.
http://www.itftennis.com/technical/publications/rules/rackets/overview.aspx
http://shop.wimbledon.com/stores/wimbledon/en/c/equipment/rackets
Especially when the same poster used the same spelling themselves...
Oh come off it. I never said anything of the sort - I judge my enjoyment of the Premier League itself based on the morals of its owners and administrators - just as I would loathe the Bundesliga if say, Hitler owned Bayern Munich - I'm not commenting on the technical ability of its participants.
I've never heard anyone argue that like-for-like it isn't technically inferior. That said there are definitely some international women players who are better than at least some League Two and non-league men's players I have seen
If you don't really watch it then your opinion is hardly very objective.
Exactly - and it wasn't artificial changes in the size of goals and whatnot that brought them back. Changes in the offside rule and the 1994 moves to stop the organised GBH that football in the country was beginning to resemble may have helped, but those are not gender specific issues.
They are not random examples. I've seen just as many entertaining matches in the WWC than in many men's tournaments in the past - especially the likes of Italia 90 and the truly abysmal Euro 1996. Anyway, if you hardly watch how do you what is random and what isn't?
Who is making exaggerated claims about the absolute standard? Not me - although neither am Ilooking to find fault at every turn in the way some other male posters seem to be doing. I simply don't accept that its as bad or irrelevant as they try to imply
That's a bogus and fallacious argument - you don't seem to understand the difference between the relative and the absolute.
You probably are seeing the best the women's game has to offer, notwithstanding the fact that even the men's tournament doesn't always give a completely accurate impression in this regard. What you are really complaining about is that the standard isn't as good as the men's . Well no s**t sherlock - but again, so what? As I've said before, in an absolute sense all that matters is that whether or not someone finds it entertaining to watch or not. I have personally find the WWC and lower-league football often just as entertaining - if not more entertaining - than the Premier League, with all its empty glitz and glamour.
You're missing the point yet again. The issue is whether or not women's football is a worhtwhile pursuit in its own right, not whether it compares to the Premier League. By that rationale we should abolish the Football League and every other professional division in the UK.
The comparison between the WWC and lower-league football is not being made as a false analogy, but in order to refute the idea that the WWC should be disparaged as pointless just because it doesn't reach the standard of the best Men's football.
They aren't being played to the exact same standard - it's a question of taking a particular iteration of a sport on its own merits. By your reasoning watching the IPL is completely pointless when Test Match cricket is often of a higher standard.
ussion.
Of course you don't see why - because you don't understand the difference between the relative and the absolute. If men's football was taken seriously and was popular when the technical standard of the elite was far worse than it is today then achieving the highest pinnacle of absolute technical quality is not essential for a particular iteration of a sport - i.e women's football to be considered legitmate and to be successful .
And your attitude of constantly finding fault with the women's game really pisses me off as well, so I guess we're even. (Don't get me started on Premier League fetishists who know the price of everything and the value of nothing otherwise we'll be here all night).
And while you may not be sexist your arguments read like the sort of suggestions a sexist would make so I've dealt with them on that basis.
Pointing out that a woman is on average smaller than a man is a fact. Claiming that this means they can't play on a full-sized pitch successfully and therefore need to be treated differently to men when there is no evidence to support this assertion comes fromthe same same sort of pseudo-scientific playbook that was used to disparage black players in the olden days. If you don't want to be called out on it then don't make such ludicrously flimsy arguments.
Might be for the best if this is all you've got.
Nobody's forced to read or respond to it if they lack the attention span or to do soor if it offends their aesthetic sensibiltity. It isn't necessary for you to comment on the style rather than the substance of posts.
Well you do come across as condescending and patronising towards womens football from my point of view, just as many others on this thread have been.
Having said that it would still have been wrong and petty of me to pull you up on such a minor spelling issue even if I had been technically correct. As I wasn't I apologise on both counts.
People are saying that the pitch has caused problems and may have affected the quality relative to that which might normally have been expected. I have never heard anyone say that it has prevented good and entertaining football being played at all, merely that things would have been better on a grass pitch. You're simply twisting their words to suit your agenda. I'm afraid its that pesky difference between the relative and the absoute rearing its ugly head again.
Question away. As I tried to explain, enjoyment of a particular sport or pastime is not completely dependent on the level of technical ability involved otherwise nobody would watch anything else but Barcelona v Bayern Munich every week.
I appreciate football for a whole range of reasons which I suppose all add up to considerations of culture and context in the end. That's why I feel a ridiculous level of emotion around a struggling League Two club that will never remotely approach the Premier League under the current system. The act of supporting it involves other things I find important such as social value, a sense of community and identity and its representative meaning - i.e I value what I think it stands for, along with a whole heap of other things which mean I can overlook the fact that our defence might be sh*t in a particular season and so on.
The Premier League has abandoned any pretence of that - it is theatre for a community of human rights-abusing oil-sheikhs the equal of any of the scumbags in Qatar and for dubious robber-barons of the worst kind, rather than football for a community of ordinary people as it used to be.
It is increasingly becoming the case that I can't watch it without metaphorically holding my nose - where MOTD was once esential viewing, I often don't bother these days. Even when I do watch it I often find it difficult to decide who I want to lose more.
I say again - I often get far more out of watching the WWC, free of a lot of the venal BS that surrounds top-flight men's football, or from watching League Two and Conference Football than I get from watching the venal Premier League. In fact if the latter folded tomorrow I genuinely couldn't care less - in fact depending on how it affected football in general I'd probably even be glad.
I know a lot of people who have the same distaste for the Premier League that I do. The fact that you find that so impossible to even begin to fathom explains a lot.
I think your problem is that you can't fathom how anyone could possibly judge the worth of something by different parameters to yourself. "If they don't just love the shiny, glitzy supersoaraway Premier League just as I do they must be lying". Well believe what you like.
Of course there's also a certain irony in the same people who complain of being accused of having a (chauvinistic) agenda for criticising women's football themselves acccusing others of having an agenda for praising it. (Technically its hypocrisy rather than irony but I'm not pointing that out to belittle anyone before the anti-WWC brigade start)
You're dealing in absolutes on top of a strawman.
Saying that the surface has adversely affected the tournament (whether or not that is true) is not the same as saying that it has been poor. To put it another way they could simply be saying that it would have been even better on grass.
Of course if the genera opinion of the player's statements suggest that it has been a bad tournament in an absolute sense, with little quality, then you might have a point. Could you link me to statements of that nature?
It seems that I've been so keen to defend women's football that I've missed the live games and will have to watch my recordings all night. Now that really is ironic.
In every post you have made you make some form of attack on the Premier League - you clearly hate it for your own reasons. Maybe you just look favourably on everything that isn't Premier League.
It is COMPLETELY objective, that's the entire point. If you want to grow something then the only way to do it is to get people who previously weren't interested to become so. I am a football fan, despite allegations I am not sexist and I am happy to make my selection of what football to watch from the vast quantity available based on what I think will be the best. I am exactly the sort of person who should be watching the WWC right now and I am very much the target market for anything that comes under the "football" banner.
The backpass rule changed
The offside rule changed
Tackling rules changed
Stadiums were made all- seater
Pitches were improved
Families were targeted
Names were put on shirts
Glamour was added
Presentation was altered
Now you can argue totally about what you like of dislike about any of the above the there is no doubt that decisions were taken to make the game better, more appealing and more entertaining both to the supporter in the ground and the viewer on tv. That is all I am saying. Altering goals and pitches in the women's game are simply a starting point and talking point for the women's game in order to make it more appealing in a crowded market. People are free to make their own suggestions.
I read, I see what other say and its backed up by what I see myself. If an opinion is only valid if Ive done an in-depth study by watching many many many hours then that's fine but if you disregard the views of people who are fans of the sport in general but dare to be critical of this area then there is little scope for improvement. Ask the people who are already watching in depth then of course you are going to get a differing view.
If you enter into a discussion about the merits of Scottish Football and what can be done to improve it you rarely get such vitriol in return. I fail to see why the women's game is untouchable.
I am not trying to find fault at every turn. I am saying I perceive the standard to be low and discussing with fellow forum members about ways it could be improved. You obviously don't think it can be improved and that's fine. Continue to watch as it is. Its not an issue.
Again an attack on the PL. That's fine if you find it as entertaining as the top level men's game - notice it is YOU that made the comparison there. I don't find it entertaining to watch a significantly lower standard. I think we all watch the team(s) we support regardless of standard but when you go past that, especially on TV you tend to watch the higher quality. Hence why La Liga is bought up by Sky and the Estonian U21 League isn't.
The comparison with the Men's game will happen when both are being shown on TV at similar times. The reasons for why one is worse than the other wont matter to the people who switch off or don't watch because the standard is lower. These reasons may all be total valid however.
No you shouldnt. I have said that 5 times now. Within the framework of the professional game the standard lessens the lower you go. Within the women's game it will be the same. I hardly need to explain that. The point is how women's football compares to its competition as a spectacle. Once the WWC is over it will go back to being an irrelevance to the vast majority of people in a similar way to many Olympic sports did after 2012. If that's fine for the supporters of the womens game then trust me its fine by me too. No problem.
Its not pointless. Never said it was. Never attacked the right of women to play the game or have a World Cup or to try to improve.
Im once again simply saying that in order to be getting TV coverage and to go on to get TV coverage in the future now that it has broken onto the BBC it needs to get better because it compares so unfavourably with the mens game and it is being compared in the TV environment. It has nothing to do with women's right to play or whether it reaches the same standard as men. Its about what TV companies are going to want to show when all is said and done.
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Don't watch cricket so cant comment.
Its the comparative standard that matters. Once again, watching your kids playing in school can be entertaining, they can be good for their age and there can be a decent amount of competition at that level, but put it on BBC 3 and treat it as if it is similar to a World Cup and suddenly you are looking at it in a different way. That is normal. Its not a lack of legitimacy of the sport itself, its finding a place for it in an extremely crowded market.
Another dig at the Premier League. Your attitude of finding fault with that is equally annoying, especially in a thread that has nothing to do with it.
No, a sexist would say "women shouldn't be playing the game" or "How about topless football", or "aww aren't they great" when they aren't or how about "aww that poor goalie wont someone give her a hug?"
There is nothing sexist about looking for ways to make the game better. There is nothing sexist at looking at it as 22 PEOPLE playing a game and judging it on its merits rather than looking at it as 22 WOMEN playing a game and looking for excuses for its shortcomings.
The evidence when the goalkeepers are continuously absolutely bloody hopeless is there for all to see. The kick and rush tactics that I have seen employed when an offside trap can be simply outrun is there for all to see. Its a disgrace to compare it to anything to do with black players but keep the insults and accusations flying.
Might be for the best if this is all you've got.[/QUOTE]
I managed to do it without resorting to insults and name calling. Im happy with that.
This is all fair enough but i think it places you very firmly in a minority.
Potentially women's football can tap into this distaste for men's elite level football that you speak of - by being a more wholesome and pure version of the sport. However, I think it needs more than that to really progress, as I don't think there's a massive distaste for the PL that you describe. A potential first step on the way though, and maybe a good selling point for those attempting to market the sport.