Football - what if women ruled the world?

I think football genuinely has something special, not as a spectator sport, but as a game that is very simple and instinctive and can be played by almost any group of children or adults anywhere in the world. There is something in the whole 'jumpers for goalposts' cliche. Personally I discovered playing football at university and loved it despite being totally un-sporty (perhaps I wouldn't if we'd played it at school though - they managed to put me off most sports). And in the US soccer is a girls' game.

I do agree with you about the hype and vast amounts of money thrown around in the Premier League though.

You know, Hollywood films are popular because they're the only one major cinemas will distribute.

It's the same thing. Football is popular because it's the first sport most people ever encounter and it's ubiquitous.

In the USA it's not popular. Because it's not promoted by the media to the same degree. Something else is. So something else is popular.

No, it's popular because it is so highly promoted.

If governments had chosen other male-dominated sports, they would habe been the ones to be popular

Most involved in football are fine they are no worse than the average population. Because they are in the media's eye your more likely to hear about their behaviour than Mr smith across the street.

Football is popular because people enjoy playing and watching it, you may not see it but millions do each to their own. They make a lot of money because they generate a lot of money.

Yes and the prostitue using Rooney.

Eugh

Skin crawling stuff

"Not all footballers are abusive I suggest you stop reading the tat in whatever rag yuou have your head in."

I don't read tabloids or sleb rubbish magazines. Or real newspapers that much either for that matter.

The fact is, the image of the England team and the premiership, is that of really obnoxious, immoral, abusive shaggers.

Of course all of them aren't. By the law of averages, they simply can't be. There must be some decent men in there. But the very fact that the FA are content to allow their sport to be characterised in this way and dominated by that image, says masses about their values.

They're disgusting.

Sorry dadaz, football is far harder to get away from than Coronation Street or Eastenders. All the conversation from the blokes in the office on Monday mornings is about some dribbling chimps managing to kick a ball into a net.

Football is popular so thank God it's unlikely to "Go away".

Maybe Sky should buy up the rights for Coronation Street and Eastanders? (Which has way too much coverage)

Not all footballers are abusive I suggest you stop reading the tat in whatever rag yuou have your head in.

I've never been quite sure why women are so against football.

You don't have to be female to hate foortball. I despise it; these overpaid, self-centred and nasty morons are supposed to be good role models for boys growing up? The whole game is made vastly too important for what it really is.

Good points by HerBeX, too - never thought of it that way.

Before football was so heavily promoted, young men used to go to political meetings.

You can see why governments didn't want that to be their chief entertainment.

David - for me, it's just the sheer fucking disproportionate attention it, its players, its commentators, its broadcasters, its fans and its hangers on are given.

The reason it is given this attention, is because it's a man's thing and mens things are important.

Also some of my resentment against it is the knowledge that from the 1930's onwards, various governments around the world mad ea deliberate decision to promote football as a way of ensuring that the energies, passions and interests of young men, were taken up by something that essentials doesn't matter. It serves our governments very well, that the energetic and dynamic members of society, have all their curiosity, desire for justice and fury about injustice, directed away from politics and how to organise society and towards whether that bloke should have allowed that goal.

I've never been quite sure why women are so against football.

Is it just the male domination of the games we see on TV? In which case would everything be OK if they showed an equal amount of women's football??

I don't think it would go quietly away.

I do think that a bunch of overpaid woman-abusing shaggers wouldn't be national heroes.

And I think women's football would probably be shown on TV, but it wouldn't be the main game. There would probably be lots more diversity in sports televised - cycling, swimming, running, netball, hockey, skating, tennis, badminton, etc.