A New Era For Women’s Football?

Raphael August 08, 2012 0 Comment

I think it’s safe to say that every 4 years when the Olympic Games come around, it brings with it an opportunity for the more modern and non-traditional sports take centre stage, many of them we may have never even seen televised on such a large scale before, for once as they receive extraordinary publicity for the world to see. No matter where the games are held. This is proving to be the talking point of the London Olympic Games of 2012. But, I’m not referring to a sport we’ve never even knew existed. In fact, it’s a sport which is popular with a majority of households across Great Britain, it’s just a shame it has been side-lined and overshadowed by it’s predecessors. Women’s football. This year will be the first year that a team GB have actually qualified for this event and for once has taken precedence over men’s football after their continued success through the group stages of the Games: winning every single one of their games to reach the quarter-finals to face Canada. The surprising thing isn’t their success though; we’ve seen the England squad play and we knew they were good. No, what has stunned the media and the people sitting at home – even shocking the most dedicated of football fans is the huge amount of support they have received over the last two weeks from the nation.

Women’s football in Britain has been notorious not for it’s accomplishments but for it’s drastic lack of support from the public as those few games which have been shown of TV have either shown desperately empty stadiums for even the most high profile of games in the world of women’s football leaving the country with the feeling that because their women ‘trying’ to play a man’s game and the nation’s favourite sport they will never be as highly regarded as the men who also take part. This is clearly evident by the ever-increasing wage gap between the two sexes where players being bought and sold for sums of up to £80 million is completely unheard of in the women’s game. However, could the Olympic Games, hosted here in London have started the dawning of a new age for women’s football in Britain. The answer could be yes. The team GB game versus Brazil held on Tuesday 31^st July saw a crowd of 70,584 turn up to witness their 1-0 victory over the Brazilian women’s national team (the greatest number of people ever to attend a women’s football match). Also, with the public getting to see high profile games such as the semi-final match between the US and Canada where a total of 7 quality goals were scored in a captivating match that went into extra time at Old Trafford in front of 26,630 could we see women’s football become a more popular game?

So, with London 2012’s motto being: ‘Inspire a generation’, could we see a greater interest in women’s football in the years to come? With more interest in the sport could we see more success to follow also? Only time will tell.

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