Never has a Women’s World Cup been so much in the spotlight. From the prolific growth of the women’s game over the last four years to a lawsuit involving the world’s biggest female stars taking Fifa to task over the issue of artificial pitches, the tournament that opens in Edmonton on Saturday has reached a level of profile that few could have predicted.
With 24 teams involved, eight in the competition for the first time, it is the biggest platform for the women’s game the world has seen. More broadcasters than ever have signed up to show the matches while the level of professionalism has exceeded expectation with team chefs and business class flights the norm in Canada. One nation has even organised a private jet for its players.
It is also, however, a World Cup that will be played against the most controversial of backdrops – from the arrests and allegations of corruption in the governing body that the USA goalkeeper Briana Scurry this week warned could form a “dark cloud” over the competition as players “have to confront questions that have nothing to do with them”, to the high level of scrutiny that will accompany the world’s first senior global tournament played on artificial grass.
Many have questioned, loudly, why women’s football should be the guinea pig for a Fifa experiment in playing surfaces after its general secretary, Jérôme Valcke, said: “It could well be that sooner rather than later the men’s World Cup will also be played on artificial pitches.” Not if the men have anything to do with it. Thierry Henry famously refused to play MLS matches on artificial pitches for fear of injury. And when the USA star striker Sydney Leroux tweeted a photo of turf burn on her legs with the caption “This is why soccer should be played on grass!” she instantly received support from the LA Lakers star Kobe Bryant and Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kevin Durant.
While male and female players universally tend to abhor synthetic turf, Fifa insist theirs is an issue of perception over fact. The governing body have commissioned Prozone stats and Uefa medical expertise to argue their stance that a high grade artificial surface is no more dangerous than grass, nor does it have any impact on the way footballis played. Still, in October last year a group of 84 players representing 13 countries – including some of the world’s biggest stars, such as Marta, Nadine Angerer and Abby Wambach – filed a lawsuit against Fifa in Canada’s court of human rights citing risk of injury and gender discrimination.
Hampton Dellinger, the lawyer representing the women players, claimed that in response the Mexican, French and Costa Rican federations all threatened their players with suspension or omission from their national squads if they did not withdraw from the lawsuit. Three players subsequently did – prompting almost the entire Germany team to then sign up in protest.
In the end the case never quite got off the ground. Fifa remained resolute, insisting that relaying the surfaces of six stadiums and 24 teams’ training pitches would be impractical given the weather conditions in Canada. By January of this year time was running out, players needed to know which surface to prepare for the World Cup on and the lawsuit was dropped. So too – for the most part – was the subject.
But one of those players who signed the original petition says the movement had significance beyond the pitches. England’s Anita Asante, a glaring omission from this summer’s World Cup squad having spent the season at FC Rosengard in Sweden’s Damallsvenskan playing alongside the five times Fifa player of the year Marta and Germany’s 120-cap Anja Mittag, says athlete activism was at the heart of the initiative.
After being sent the petition by a former team-mate in the US, the 30-year-old says she did not think twice about signing it. “It represented my own ideals and philosophy. Regardless of what our federation or anyone else thinks about it, if you want change you have to use your voice. It gets frustrating when you’ve been through other issues in the women’s game and wanted things to change or improve and we’ve backed down because we’ve been suppressed or told that we shouldn’t do this, or we should be silent about something.”
“We value having grass – the tradition, how it responds to our bodies. We appreciate the nature of being on actual grass: the smell, the feeling, the sentiment. It is also about feeling like you are valued and not a guinea pig for someone else’s experiment.”
With 67 caps to her name and a PhD in the governance of women’s football, Asante has been through enough power struggles to know that things do not change without a fight. They have ranged from the battle for England women to receive a £2,000 payrise in 2013 to Katie Chapman’s four-year absence from international football due to a lack of support from the governing body over childcare – “basic human rights on an EU level” as Asante puts it. “It’s just another struggle, amidst a lot of other struggles related to women and our value and trying to get more equality in lots of other aspects,” says the defensive midfielder. Of signing the petition she says: “We were making a statement, making a point, letting our voices be heard, so other people can continue to voice the same things in the future.”
Uniting female footballers over this singular issue, argues Asante, marked a turning point for the sport. “We often don’t think about these networks and how powerful they can be in other dimensions, just little things like if you want to sign for a club or need information about a coach or a team-mate, but if you want to achieve bigger standpoints in the whole structure of the game this is the first thing, recognising the power we have within our own football polity.”
Her words come at a time of a growing political movement within the women’s game and the wider world of women’s sport – for genuine equality. In March the former England manager Hope Powell gave a rousing and passionate speech condemning the lack of female managers in the women’s game – only eight out of the teams in Canada this month will be led by a woman – while in the FA Women’s Super League Emma Hayes is the only top-flight female manager.
Meanwhile public campaigns for women’s football to be included in mainstream football culture are having an effect: this week EA Sports announced that Fifa 16 would feature female footballers for the first time. Even within Fifa itself reform is taking place, spearheaded by the former Australia footballer turned Fifa ExCo member Moya Dodd, with discussions for a women’s Club World Cup taking place and a renewed emphasis on equality on and off the field.
In Asante’s Damallsvenskan a full roster of matches is now broadcast every week, starting from this season, and she says journalists flew in from around the world to attend her club’s pre-World Cup training sessions. With friends and team-mates, she will watch the tournament – keenly keeping an eye on how turf affects the sport’s most prestigious competition. Fifa, too, have promised to assess the results. “Regardless of the outcome of the competition, it’s important that the discussions continue,” says Asante, “and that it’s not just a forgotten thing. As much as it might affect players in the competition now, it’s also a question to think about for the future, for generations to come.”
KOMENTARI