Question for the Brits about the Women's World Cup

[VenomFang]

Why do you not support women's football as much as the USA does when you guys (England) are the "home of football.?" I know you put more money and effort into it now than you used to but you are still behind countries like the USA, Brazil, France and Germany in terms of development. Is it political reasons (which we cant discuss anyway) why you guys were so slow to promote the women's game or what ?

[N E O G E O B O Y S]

Cultural thing I guess, is like how in tons of northamerican shows I had see that them label football/soccer as a ''girls sports'' or even a sport that only affeminate mens plays/like

In the rest of the world, is a sport ''too manly'' to be appreciated by womens hell, even though in brazil maybe femenine football is more devolped than other countries, people still don't give a crap like the men competition, and lots of times, igf you are a woman who plays footbal you are considered a lesbian

Is really a stupid, sexist and even homopobic way of thinking ib noth sides actually

[VenomFang]

Yeah but isnt it kinda sad that England still cant support a women's professional league ( I believe their league is semi pro) when they get all that wealth from the EPL. USA has a pro league and its struggling and may not last but its there at least.

['Foretold' Joker]

Tell me how is the Womens American Football League doing?

[ScottishProWrestling]

Womens "Soccer" is very very poor quality wise and will never compete with the mens market, so why bother investing?

[VenomFang]

Jul 15, 2011 10:24:05 GMT -5 ScottishProWrestling said:

Womens "Soccer" is very very poor quality wise and will never compete with the mens market, so why bother investing?

If you were watching the World Cup you'd know thats not true. There's been some great football going on.

[The Summer of Muskrat XVII]

The only reason the US gives a flying f*** about Women's soccer is because they're a high level team. If they were non-entities like the US mens team is, then nobody would care about them either.

And yes, I know the mens team always makes the World Cup, and is generally a decent team, but going in nobody ever expects them to win. If they went in and were expected to be a Top 3 team, I'm sure World Cup ratings would go through the roof

[VenomFang]

Jul 15, 2011 10:29:16 GMT -5 The Summer of Muskrat XVII said:

The only reason the US gives a flying f*** about Women's soccer is because they're a high level team. If they were non-entities like the US mens team is, then nobody would care about them either.

Yeah but the reason they are a high level team is because in the US girls are encouraged to participate in sports at a young age like soccer for many years now so they have had years and years of development ahead of everyone else to be good. If other countries where soccer is actually poplular would have done this also years ago they would be just as good as the US if not better. Countries like Germany and France are getting better and better and are catching up. if you watched the USA-France game youd see that France were more technically gifted and they pretty much dominated the ball possession but just couldnt finish. The nordic countries like Norway and Sweden are very good at women's soccer because they are like the US in that they are very progressive for girls/women.

[N E O G E O B O Y S]

The women's world cup is very good actually, but still feels more bad than the men's competition, so is understandable on why some countries don't feel too excited for them

[ScottishProWrestling]

Theres really no comparison in quality between men and womens football, especially at World Cup level. If women were good enough, they would be granted transfers to mens teams. Fact, is there are very very few, truly gifted women footballers.

[N E O G E O B O Y S]

Jul 15, 2011 10:35:15 GMT -5 VenomFang said:

Jul 15, 2011 10:29:16 GMT -5 The Summer of Muskrat XVII said:

The only reason the US gives a flying f*** about Women's soccer is because they're a high level team. If they were non-entities like the US mens team is, then nobody would care about them either.

Yeah but the reason they are a high level team is because in the US girls are encouraged to participate in sports at a young age like soccer for many years now so they have had years and years of development ahead of everyone else to be good. If other countries where soccer is actually poplular would have done this also years ago they would be just as good as the US if not better. Countries like Germany and France are getting better and better and are catching up. if you watched the USA-France game youd see that France were more technically gifted and they pretty much dominated the ball possession but just couldnt finish. The nordic countries like Norway and Sweden are very good at women's soccer because they are like the US in that they are very progressive for girls/women.

Well, cultural thing again, in the usa and the nordic countries they gave privilege to womens because they never did it to mens, brazil doesn't count because there you born with a ball in your feet, no matter what.

France and germany are good examples actually, it seems that they will slowly try to give more facilities to womens, but that because they are slowly killing old stigmas. The same could be said with the USA with mens actually, I had seen that slowly the sport is gaining more recognizition, I don't know if the hype with the world cup, or the growing latino population there is being influent with that

Is like why in the USA the american football and baseball leagues are never heard of, and even the WBA is very small in comparission with the NBA

[VenomFang]

I can make a case for the Womens World Cup being better than the Men's and here are my reasons.

Women 16 teams vs Men 32 teams. Men's WC there are way too many bad teams that no one wants to watch. Slovakia, Switzerland, Greece, Costa Rica, New Zealand, etc and on and on. Womens World Cup only 16 teams so its not as diluted and you get better quality because theres not so many bad teams and games no one wants to watch.

Men's World Cup a lot of players are dead tired after a long and grueling club season and WC rolls around they are too tired and cant play their best. Women, a lot are semi pro and they arent tired from long and grueling club seasons thus they are fresher and can give a better effort.

Womens' soccer there is far less diving and faking injury. It does happen but its far less than in the men's game.

Also since men make so much money playing you have to question just how much they care about playing for their country when they make millions at their club and the women dont make much money so you know they are very proud 100% to be playing for their country. How motivated is the random EPL player playing for England when he makes millions for his club.

[Zombie Mod is not a ghoul.]

basically after one of the world wars (not sure which probably the first.) the womens game was being attended by an increasing audience which threatend the mens game, the english F.A. pretty much disbanded the womens leagues due to that.

there have always been womens teams for some of the bigger/better known clubs, but due to rules put in place way back when restricting the womens game and players they are only just really starting to get the attention they deserve as footballers.

if say sky or espn were to put a load of money behind an english womens league and promote it as sky did when the premier league started, it'd survive.

[N E O G E O B O Y S]

Those are actually some interesting points.

About the 32 vs 16 teams, well, here is a case where you had so many countries playing football that you need to put lots of them to represent each area of the world, there is the problem that there are too many europeans imo, I mean, they bitched for the next world cup claiming that there will play 6 south american teams, will they believe that europe needs to use that slot because the tournament will be better, well, I strongly that the 6th best south american team is better than the 14 of europe.

I don't know, if you reduce the slots with the world cup, the outrage will be big, and will lost some of the ''world's big deal'' imo, but there is the old say that the world cup starts with the second round.

That being said, world cups has been really boring this last 12 years, there are lots of ''club players'' who seems to don't give a crap for their country (messi)

I could see why women's tournament will be more exciting, for example, here in chile 2 years ago we held the women's u-17 world cup, and since we built new stadiums, and the tickets were free, I went to see the third place and the final match in the same day.

The USA won to north korea 4-2 and it was a hell of a match, not for a technical stand point, but very fun otherwise, hell, even my mother who hates football had a great time

[clifford]

Would the US woman's team be half as popular if they hadn't already won two world cups and never been outside the top 2 in the rankings?

[VenomFang]

Jul 15, 2011 10:56:52 GMT -5 clifford said:

Would the US woman's team be half as popular if they hadn't already won two world cups and never been outside the top 2 in the rankings?

Probably not.

[N E O G E O B O Y S]

I had to ask, womens sold out stadiums there or not?

I had seen matches of the MLS where the stadiums are sold out, but I had never seen a local women's match in the usa

[VenomFang]

Jul 15, 2011 11:52:32 GMT -5 N E O G E O B O Y S said:

I had to ask, womens sold out stadiums there or not?

I had seen matches of the MLS where the stadiums are sold out, but I had never seen a local women's match in the usa

I dont follow it closely but from what Ive read the league average is a couple thousand people per game and theres only 6 teams at the moment so it looks like the league isnt safe and in great health but its still better than other countries who only have semi pro leagues. This is the 2nd US pro league btw the 1st one was started after the US womens success but it eventually folded and this new league is a "restart" or sorts.

[Bo Rida]

As already said due to the ban it didn’t develop alongside the men’s game like other sports (eg Tennis) so as a result the quality is lower.

Then from there it’s a vicious circle; people don’t want to see it as the quality is comparatively poor, that quality can’t be raised without investment but there’s no money to invest as few people want to see it.
That said the game is slowly improving but not to the point large numbers of people would regularly pay to watch it after a long and expensive men’s season.

Even the world cup was relegated from the main BBC channels and the quarter final was only switched to BBC2 at the last minute. If the BBC won’t even show the pinnacle of the game then there’s no hope for normal matches (ie not finals) being shown on commercial TV to raise interest

[4real]

As said Football is a very male dominated sport in this country and our most popular sport.

I personally know of very few women if any that I can talk about with football but with guys its kinda one of the first few starting pints of a conversation with somebody new you met or are working with "So.....which team do you support?" It's an icebreaker.

It's due to our culture and due to the fact I don't think realistically anybody thinks they can make good money from the Women's game in this country. Which is a shame because I have seen some entertaining Women's football matches.