We can’t put it off any longer. We NEED to have the women’s football conversation. England have now reached the final, beating Sweden last night in a wipeout 4-nil win over the pretty hot favourites (that’s ‘pretty’ as in ‘fairly’, rather than ‘cute’, although some of them were) to win the tournament. Therefore we need to take this seriously. Something that, for reasons we might (or might not) get to, has proven somewhat difficult for me during the preceding rounds of the tournament.

I even watched some of last night’s match. Ok, the last 10 minutes, but its not a duration competition, FFS, I actually watched some of a match and it was pretty (?) good.

I emphatically love football and I totally love women. So what’s the problem? Well, I love red wine and I love gardening too, but I wouldn’t necessarily mix those either, although thinking about it… Sorry. Women’s football. Focus.

Devotees of the Premier League are privileged to watch the best football in the world. Week after week, year after year. And the league is full of amazing skills and fabulous movement between players and all manner of great things, wonderful things. Unless you’re an Arsenal fan, obviously. But it becomes the norm, raises the bar and creates an unrealistic expectation, even among those of us who played the game for years, to not quite such a high standard, that ‘all football must look like that’.

Then you turn on in a moment of weakness to watch Luton Town play Shrewsbury on a Tuesday night in February and you suddenly appreciate how brilliant, how elegant, how non-industrial our Premier League really is. And the women’s football is no doubt skilful and delightful but its simply not ‘at that level’. Not yet. Possibly never, depending on whether you’re a gender judgmentalist cave-man or a equal opportunity unrealist.

So I have to enter a different mind-set when I watch (as I will on Sunday for the final) women’s football. Turn off the ‘premier expectation’ app and hit the ‘other games’ module instead. And then you’ll be able to appreciate the woman’s game, not for what it isn’t, which is the man’s game, but for what it is on its own terms. Which is 22 fairly fit and gorgeous babes bouncing round in shorts and tight shirts waggling their pony tails. Obviously I mean that in the most non-objectifying way possible.

Why do they all have pony-tails? Is it a league requirement? And why are they all dyed blonde? Zlatan Ibrahimovic never dyed his. I think they need to get a bit more creative, hair-wise and channel their inner Jack Grealish. He knows more about hair adornments than MichaelJohn.

So now I’m on board. England in a final. Any England. Any sport. Gotta be worth a roar.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx