First things first: “football” is the thing you play using your actual feet, “American football” is the thing you play using your hands. Soccer is not a thing. Makes sense, right? So, if there are any Americans reading this, just a disclaimer that when I say football I am talking about the thing you would call soccer. Now that we got that out of the way, on to what I actually wanted to talk about: women’s football. I, a woman, have spent half of my life playing football. Though I haven’t played competitively for several years anymore, football is and will always be something very close to my heart. So, you can imagine my fury when someone I call a friend told me that “women’s football is not a real sport”. I gave no doubt that there are other men out there who share this opinion. So, I wanted to talk about why this statement is wrong and something you probably should not say and also why I actually prefer watching women’s football to men’s football.
The reason my friend thinks that women’s football is not a real sport is that “women can’t play”. Alright, so I would love to see him play against some of the best women in the world sometime. I have no doubt whatsoever that he would get destroyed. I think many people who say something like this haven’t really watched professional women’s football. Those women train really hard and are so incredibly skilled. Just because you think that women cannot be good at sports does not mean they aren’t. I remember one game I played in when I was like 15. Our opponent scored a goal right in the upper corner of the goal from the center line. How often do you see that happening in professional men’s games? And yes, it was a full-sized field, thank you very much.
Of course, I’m not trying to deny biological differences between men and women. Men are often stronger and bigger and all that. Luckily football is so much more than that. It’s about skill, team work, your knowledge of the game… If the best women’s team and the best men’s team in the world played against each other, I have no doubt the men would win since they could just roll over the smaller women. But that does not mean women’s football is inferior in any way. The game is still fast, intense and interesting in every way.
However, women being worse at football depends on so much else than just biology. Men have an incredibly long history of playing football and getting paid for it whereas for women, it is relatively new. It is so hard to make a living out of playing football as a woman because the players just don’t get paid enough. Almost all professional female players have to have a job besides playing football, which means they cannot focus on practicing as much as men. Here my friend argued that women do not get paid because people don’t come to see their games. Of course they don’t since women’s football is not promoted nearly as much as men’s! Women’s games are not advertised and they aren’t shown on tv because the focus is on men. The media still sees women’s sports as inferior and because of that, almost all the money and ad space go to men’s sports rather than women’s.
Like I stated at the beginning of the article, I actually prefer watching women’s football to men’s football. The reason for that is flopping, or faking injury. In men’s games, you see it happening all. of. the. time. to the point where it becomes infuriating. The players in the leading team often fake injury to pass time when there isn’t much of the game left. Sometimes it is just plain ridiculous: someone barely touches another player and the next thing you know that player is on the ground screaming about how horribly injured they are. Women flop so much less than men. I think it has to do with how women are seen as somewhat weak anyways so they have to prove that they are tough and strong. No one calls men weak when they flop but if women did, I somehow get the feeling that men would use it against them to prove that women are not meant to play football because of how weak they are. With hardly any flopping, women’s games are just so much more smooth and enjoyable. That is why I would personally rather watch a women’s football game than men’s any day.
I feel like many people who dislike women’s football have actually never really watched it, so before you say anything, go watch a game. Or many games actually because one game says nothing about the whole sport. If you like women’s football, go watch a game as well! And if you don’t have an opinion on women’s football, still go watch a game! Female athletes do not get nearly enough recognition so support them as much as you can! Who knows, maybe one day women can actually make a living by playing football.