In recent years, women’s football in England has been leading the way – our sensational Women’s Super League is the envy of countries around the world, with its top-tier superstar talent, and Arsenal winning the UEFA Women’s Champions League this year for the second time. Not only does it inspire young fans, but it also gives other nations impetus to keep up, encouraging them to back their women and girls as well, because if you do, the rewards will come. Look at Italy, beaten by England in the Euros semi-final, but with a professional league in their country for only three years – great things will come for them.
I’ve just published a new book that explores the lives of the female players from the UK who opted to pack up their lives and move abroad to chase their footballing dreams. One of those women, Jeannie Allott, was an original Lioness back in 1972. She chose to go to the Netherlands, where she felt women’s football had more respect. One of her team-mates at her new club KFC ’71 was a young starlet named Sarina Wiegman.
Wiegman’s success as a coach and her value to England as a footballing nation cannot be overstated. She’s led her teams to the finals of five major tournaments in a row, and won the Euros three consecutive times, which is simply incredible consistency. The rumour was, even before the final, that an honorary damehood is heading her way.
Inevitably, the question arises about whether Wiegman will be the first woman to coach in the Premier League, a rather tired and tiresome debate that used to circulate regularly around Hope Powell, one of her England predecessors, and Emma Hayes, now the US Women’s national team coach. Nobody wonders whether these women would even want those jobs; there is simply an assumption that everyone must want to coach elite men’s football. It’s similar to the persistent search for parallels between female players and male counterparts, as if a woman’s abilities can only be understood and appreciated if there’s a man she can be likened to.
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