Banned, ignored… adored

August 19, 2022 4:18 AM

How England fought to become women’s Euro 2022 champions [The Athletic / Archive]
posted by ellieBOA (5 comments total)

I’m very happy for the successful of the women’s football team, and the boost to women’s sport that it’s given the uk.

But.

The uk funds sport under the cultural banner, meaning that funding for sport comes out of the pot that supports art as well. Reading the article, I see that there’s been a great investment in training facilities, at a time when the UK museums have been forever to accept more and more sponsorship from dubious organisations. Added to that, the grassroots of both sport and art and been financially underfunded for decades, so while the all-star academies for training football kids might have funding, the local track meet is making do with a bag of haribo and some old band-aids.

Finally, the article is clear that the success of the womens team really took off when they started training kids from 12/13 with a special focus on football. We’ve seen scandals in the UK with swimming and cycling training environments being particularly unpleasant, and having to make large scale apologies and alterations. I would ask if it’s fair to put children in this position, where they are trained for a sport they’ll probably be too old to compete in by the time they hit their mid-30s.
posted by The River Ivel at 7:36 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

The article describes a huge long list of supports that were almost certainly already in place for men's football and at a much higher level. It seems like poor timing to jump in with "well, we shouldn't be funding sports this way!" and "what about the arts?" when it is finally a chance for women to get even some vague semblance of parity with men.

Supporting arts funding is great. Supporting more funding for more youth sports is great. But so is supporting more funding for women's sports when it dramatically lags behind the funding for men who play the same sport.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:06 AM on August 19, 2022 [7 favorites]

The River Ivel: But are they training up just an elite group or are they developing a whole pyramid, similar to the men's game where millions are playing it across the country, at many different skill levels? If the latter then it seems like a huge opportunity to expand the numbers of women who get the opportunity to play any sport, at any level, and to normalise it as something women do, which currently is clearly not the case for a huge fraction of the population.
posted by biffa at 10:36 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

This was a great article. Football is such a big sport here. The men's game went through the same kind of big step up in fitness and sports science mainly in the 90s, and it's been amazing to see the women's game get the same kind of thought and treatment even without the vast sums of money that are pumped into the men's professional clubs. I'm really excited about the growth in women's sport at all levels, including the ways in which sports like cricket and football are really trying to grow the girl's game, and how the women's netball and hockey teams was celebrated in their recent successes.

My favourite thing ever for promoting women's sport and activity at the grassroots level is the This Girl Can campaign.

The challenge of treating teenagers appropriately when training them for an elite and competitive discipline is one that it not restricted to sport. It is incredibly easy to create a bullying atmosphere in eg music as some of the horrendous stories about Chetham's show. I also don't think it would be helped by declining to have training programmes for talented teenage girls.
posted by plonkee at 2:39 PM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

It calls Man City's 7,000 seat City Academy part of a £250m complex. I know the seats we watched City play last season will be snapped up this season -- all the better for bigger crowds -- but Arsenal, Chelsea and Man United already play at bigger venues and I hope this small site doesn't stifle a growing fanbase.
posted by k3ninho at 2:45 PM on August 24, 2022