For this week I decided to split the video and article slightly differently, using the video bulletin to give a general overview and the article to develop a specific story in more detail. This week I’ve chosen the Women’s World Cup, and looked at what the tournament has done for the profile of women’s football, particularly in this country. As ever, please leave any comments or suggestions below.
So, the Women’s World Cup is over, and it could hardly have had a more fitting finale. Japan, not highly fancied coming into the tournament, have won many fans with their technical ability and dogged determination, and on Sunday night those attributes won them the greatest prize of all. They defeated the world’s number one-ranked team, the United States, for the first time in 26 meetings to become world champions.
Only the most committed of cynics could fail to be moved by such a story. And its poignancy is only enhanced when you find out that to motivate his players before the match, Japan’s coach Norio Sasaki had shown them footage of the areas devastated by March’s earthquake and tsunami – footage that reduced some of the players to tears. On the pitch, the match had all the drama we could have hoped for, with Japan twice having to come from behind to force a penalty shootout. And the obvious joy of the Japanese players afterwards, along with the Americans’ grace in defeat, provided an appropriate ending.
The competition certainly finished in style, then. But what about the World Cup as a whole, and particularly the ambitious claims about what it would do for the profile of women’s football? With the new Women’s Super League halfway through its first season, hopes were high in the British media that this would be a real breakthrough year for women’s football in this country. So has it lived up to expectations?
Let’s deal with the obvious issue first – no, England didn’t win the World Cup. In fact, they didn’t make it beyond the quarter-finals, losing to France to the obvious distress of players and coaches. However, in many ways that loss, and particularly the manner in which it occurred, may turn out to be good for the England women’s team. After all, being dumped out of a major tournament on penalties puts them firmly in line with English footballing tradition. England’s women may not be world champions, but long-suffering supporters of the men’s team will feel a certain comfort in experiencing the same sense of inevitable disappointment with which they are so familiar.
We all know, though, that it’s not just the team you follow that keeps you interested in a sport. It’s just as much about the individuals, and here too the World Cup has been vital. This has been the first tournament for which England have had real depth in their squad, so that for the first time there’s been genuine competition for places. This will have led those watching to engage with the players on a more personal level. Put simply, knowing that a player’s only on the pitch because they’re good enough to be there, and that a poor game could result in them being dropped, encourages you to invest emotionally in their success.
It also encourages armchair experts. And let’s face it, we all like to feel like experts. I’d hardly watched a game of women’s football before this tournament (largely because of the lack of television coverage, but we’ll get to that later), but that didn’t stop me sitting in front of my TV halfway through England’s first match shouting “Eni Aluko’s having a bad game, get Faye White on!” And now that I, and thousands of others, know the players’ names, we’ll be far more likely to listen out for news of them, and maybe follow the progress of their clubs. One of the most appealing things about sport is that it provides us with individual stories to follow. For women’s football, the hope must be that interest in those stories does not fade with the memory of events in Germany.
For the health of the sport internationally, too, this tournament has provided many encouraging signs. Attendances at matches were consistently above the 20 000 mark, with a remarkable 70 000 at the opening game and nearly 49 000 watching last night’s final. And from personal experience, it does seem that this competition has got more people interested in the game. Demands of “How are the girlies doing?”, frequently heard around my house during England’s campaign, may not be the most politically correct formulation of this interest, but that’s not really the point. The point is that a competitive England outfit alongside an exciting and well-organised tournament really can boost the profile of the sport.
So just how much of a boost has the World Cup given women’s football? That, of course, won’t really be known for some time. In this country, one important indicator will be the success or otherwise of the Women’s Super League. It will be fascinating to see whether the exposure that the national side have gained thanks to the World Cup translates into more people going out and watching women’s club football on a regular basis. The catalyst provided by the World Cup might help with this, but it certainly won’t be enough on its own to make the league successful. Neither will it be enough to ensure that more people will take a sustained interest in England’s fortunes now that the tournament is over. As I suggested above, in the past a big part of the problem has been the sporadic nature of television coverage, even of important international matches. The quantity of women’s football on our screens has increased markedly this year. It remains to be seen if this trend will be sustained.
Overall, though, the signs are encouraging. Even if the effect is short-lived, the World Cup has got more people watching, talking about and appreciating women’s football. It doesn’t seem too much to hope that for some this competition has marked the start (or the continuation) of a real love of the women’s game. But of course the real test is whether this tournament, and all the other progress the sport is making in this country, encourages more girls to go out and play football. Will the World Cup help inspire a new generation to take up the sport, and to keep it up until they too step out onto the international stage? That’s something we won’t know for many years to come.
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