Women’s football taking the passion out of the Beautiful Game

IT is cheap and easy to sneer at soccer players, to curl your lip because they are ignorant of Joyce and Shakespeare, to loftily deprecate the vulgarity and the flash and their insane salaries.

But which investment banker or barrister ever gave so much pleasure to so many people? Has an academic ever felt the eyes of the world on her as she lined up to take a crucial penalty?

She? Yes, you read it right. It wasn’t quite up there with the Spain-Netherlands match last year which a billion viewed live but Twitter has reported that the Women’s football World Cup final’s culmination broke the tweeting record. The gripping penalty shootout drew 7,196 tweets per second. Women’s football — with considerably less flash and lower salaries — might have arrived, we are told.

Japan had been portrayed as the David in their Goliath final. The underdogs came from behind twice to tie the defending champions from the USA 2-2, forcing the game into a shootout. Japan eventually won 3-1 on kicks.

Homare Sawa, their 32-year-old captain, is apparently a household name in her country. The pin-up girl (metaphorically speaking, of course) of the American side is called Hope Solo, perhaps the most appropriately named goalkeeper in the history of the Beautiful Game.

Like women who swoon when, say, Cristiano Ronaldo takes off his top, Solo has won admirers for her beauty as well as her goalkeeping. Over 500,000 Facebook fans can’t be wrong, you’d think.

Certainly, the degree of public interest in the tournament overall has been pretty phenomenal. Germany’s opening match against Nigeria was watched by 16 million viewers.

So why did this Women’s World Cup capture imaginations more than any other? That the standard of football was higher — it needed to be — and the games were more competitive certainly had a lot to do with it, even if the goalkeeping is still a touch risible at times. Commentators have been suggesting that, as female keepers tend to be shorter than the men, the goals should be made smaller. So much for equality.

Still, some sides, notably Japan, do play reasonably attractive passing football. The teams this year were more evenly matched than at the last World Cup and there are fewer cricket scores. The 2007 tournament, for example, started with an 11-0 win for Germany over Argentina, and there have been 7-0 quarter-finals in the past — a far cry from 2011’s largely tense ties.

But whether the women’s game can make the transition to a mass spectator sport is the million-dollar question. World Cup fever? Well, did you notice any?

Women’s soccer is nothing new, of course. After the First World War, women’s football was attracting relatively large crowds but the English Football Association stepped in and banned female teams from grounds, declaring that “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged”.

Today, it is undoubtedly thriving as a participation sport but it has yet to take off as a spectator sport. I mean, have you ever been to watch a match? Yet the women’s game is being vigorously promoted by both the football authorities, eager to dispel the popular perception that women’s football is a game played only by the kind of lesbians who don’t wear lipstick.

Still, it’s difficult to see how the women’s game can break out of the vicious cycle that it finds itself in. If there are no spectators then a professional league isn’t viable. Without professionalism, the quality won’t improve sufficiently to attract spectators.

Women around the world are playing many sports at a high and entertaining level, and their efforts are attracting growing attention and praise. In tennis, the heightened appreciation for the accomplishments of the players has translated into seven-figure take-home pay and household-name status for the stars. The rapid globalisation of women’s golf is evident at every LPGA event.

But while there has been a radical shift in attitudes to women’s football, whether many of those TV viewers would be willing to pay to watch women’s league football is another matter. Novelty value is not a particularly firm foundation for sustaining public interest.

It’s not that women don’t enjoy watching football. We have known ever since Italia ’90 that gawping on the sofa for 90 minutes is no longer a strictly male preserve. But, to put it bluntly, while most men are admiring a player’s performance, many of the ladies are ogling his legs.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against women breathlessly gawping at fanciable footballers. Plenty of men watch women’s tennis for similarly carnal reasons.

But the problem is this — there’s a huge gap between hype and reality where it matters — on the pitch. It’s just not so much fun watching women’s football. Of course, it’s unfair to compare women’s football to the men’s game but the pace is slower, the passing a bit more imprecise and the frustrating loss of ball interrupts play. It’s just not same.

But what distinguishes the women’s game from the men’s isn’t the (lack of) speed or the technical quality so much as the fact that it is less “physical”. Women’s football emphasises skill and fairness, we are told. For some people, that makes it a more attractive proposition than the men’s game. Just as women in business and politics are claimed to be “fairer” and more conciliatory, so female footballers are supposed to be kinder on the pitch.

Such values fit into a society in which risk-avoidance and restraint are regarded as the way forward and the fervent pursuit of one’s own interests and an unconditional commitment to bold ideas are regarded as out-dated and disruptive.

Yes, the lack of dissent and theatrics makes a change. Azusa Iwashimizu’s reaction when she was sent off in the final minutes on Sunday spoke volumes. There was no histrionics, no moaning; just acceptance. All the same, how much fun is that to watch?

More pernicious is the idea that the tepid women’s game should be seen as a template for the future of men’s football. For me, it’s the team spirit, risk-taking and passionate attitude of mean’s football that make it so great as a sport. The fact that rival women’s teams stay at the same hotels and even watch matches together is touching and the fans mingling on the terraces and not brawling in city centres is certainly a plus. But the sanitisation of football is bad news.

The football crowd is perhaps the last place where someone is completely free to say and shout what they like. The promotion of women’s football as a bloodless, tame pursuit would rip much of the joy out of watching.

My queasiness about the Women’s World Cup then has little to do with women’s football in itself and even less with women playing football. But the celebration of supposedly “feminine” values like balance, restrained emotion, sensitivity and consideration, threatens to emasculate football. Besides, there are plenty of sensitive men and kick-ass women who defy such stereotypes.

Men’s football, thankfully, has many traditions that will make complete sanitisation difficult to enforce. The women’s game is only just emerging and it will be far easier for the football authorities to impose their dreary vision upon it. What a pity.