AIBU to say men who believe this are sexist pricks

[Oddsocksanduglyshoes]

Men who refuse to watch the euro finals tomorrow as it’s women’s football - so what’s the point and refuse to watch, and say this in front of they wives and daughters are misogynistic pricks and their wives and daughters deserve so much better?

Sometimes a sport can have the same rules but be played quite differently depending on whether men and women play it. Male players can usually kick a ball further and harder, so when they get a penalty ten meters into the other team’s half in rugby, they might go for three points or might kick for their own lineout as close as they can get to the corner flag of the other team’s tryline. A women’s team is might not be able to kick that far, so they train with different tactics, and the game is not played the same way the men do.

Not who you replied to, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily "unappealing" (although, admittedly, I do prefer male sports for no particular reason).

I also follow the PL, and will watch the major tournaments, but honestly have no interest in watching the women's games mainly because I have no idea who the players are (whereas I recognise a lot of the male players from MotD etc.)

There’s a certain category of men who spend every waking moment watching and talking about football who are very sneery and dismissive of women’s efforts. You only need to look on X during and after a match to see that - J the obnoxious Joey Barton’s tweets and replies are a good example.

Women’s football is the same game played slightly differently. There are any number of sports where top tier women might readily be beaten by average men but football seems to be the one that’s singled out for this argument as a justification for not watching.

The final point is that women’s football has had to battle to get to where it is now. The FA banned women’s football for 50 years until 1971 so it’s massively behind the men’s game in terms of funding and access to facilities. Seeing the Lionesses in the third major consecutive tournament final is a massive achievement and I wish them all the best in the final.

It's not like there's much interest in women's football even here on Mumsnet. The semi-final didn't even have a thread until the end of the game.

Whereas I vastly prefer the women’s game to the men’s. Women’s football is stripped of all the nonsense on and off the pitch. For years I thought I hated football but actually I hate the culture of drunk idiots that often turn to violence off the pitch and the entitled nonsense on the pitch (although some women’s teams indulge in that too - looking at you Italy!).
I’ve been to the Women’s FA Cup final and it was a joyous family friendly event.
It’s developed hugely over the last 10 years now that people have stopped being so precious about it!

Now if we could get the other home nations to invest properly in women’s rugby so that the Red Roses have some actual competition that would be fab.

That's both interesting and depressing! My young cousin plays football and absolutely loves it, but it's quite sad to think no one could or would take it seriously. I am hopeful though because the NZ women's rugby team have huge support and respect from both men and women. I genuinely think people were shocked how good the games were.

My DH used to not enjoy the women's football because he said the quality of the playing was very low.

He now enjoys it much more than I do and says the quality has improved significantly due to more investment in the women's game etc.

So I think it's fine if people don't want to watch it. You can't force people to enjoy things.

To be honest I don't really enjoy the Paralympics that much just because there are so many categories. I understand why they need to have all those categories but it just makes it much less fun to watch for me personally. I don't think that makes me ablist, although I am sure someone will be along in a minute to tell me it does 🤷‍♀️

We are sports fans and will watch it. But my DH will piss me off by laughing at it a fair amount. He was a nightmare during that penalty shoot out, which i have to admit was pretty dire.

"...to pretend it’s exactly the same is not helpful."

You can't get more identical than 11 people trying to score as many goals as possible in 90 minutes. And then nervous breakdown penalties. That's it.

It's not really the same though if you are deeply into it. I've never seen anything as technically brilliant as the Cruyff turn in the women's game for instance. And my DH is often showing me incredibly impressive goals from the men's game that TBH I haven't seen in the women's game.

I'm still more interested in the women's game because the female players are more relatable. I'm not that interested though because I don't find sport that interesting. I can completely see why if someone was watching for a love of football as a game they would find the women's game inferior, in the same way watching a league 2 match is going to involve inferior play compared to a Premiership match, even though it's still football.

There is a difference between 'it's not my thing' and 'it's because it is women playing', in my opinion. The former is reasonable- I don't watch or go to the opera for example.

I really like the women’s actually. I went to the quarter finals. The atmosphere is so much nicer than the men’s. After the Sweden game, three swedes came and made friends with us at the bar. We could drink in the stadiums too as no fighting. It’s just a good time. And you still get to support your country.

I love football but I won’t be watching. I just don’t like women’s football. The quality is dire.

It depends why they aren’t watching it.

If they aren’t interested in women’s football, I don’t see what’s wrong with that. The quality tends not to be very high (although is improving, particularly the top teams).

I’m not interested in men’s golf, so I don’t watch it.

If they aren’t watching because it’s women and women shouldn’t play football, etc, then yeah it’s sexist.

Men are allowed to not be interested in the women’s football. It is not an indicator of sexism, or their quality as a husband or father.

fathers shouldn’t criticise women’s football in front of their children, but they are not obliged to pretend that they want to watch it.

It's fine to not be interested in the women's game, but not OK to slag it off to daughters who may be interested or inspired by it.

My partner has watched all the games and will watch the final as he thinks it’s a good standard but of voices as others have said, not on a par with the men’s equivalent. Someone suggested the women should play on a smaller pitch and I think will this would help massively in terms of the intensity and impact.

I watch both and agree they are different. Entirely reasonable for people to choose not to watch everything/ sports they don't find interesting. The women's game is slower than the men's so can be less exciting and engaging to watch. Thats just how it is. They are definitely different. Agree entirely that the culture and atmosphere at womens is way more civil and mens football crowds could learn some lessons on that front.

Similar is true of tennis though, but you say you prefer women’s? Venus and Serena Williams played a match against the 203rd ranked man (they played a set each) and lost 6-1 6-2. This was the year before the sisters won 3 of the 4 slams between them.

I think there is more of a cultural bias in this than people generally like to acknowledge, although I appreciate you specially have mentioned it.

For the vast majority of men and women, no one takes their sport seriously. Even really talented male footballers won’t, unless they’re literally in the top 0.1% of players. Everyone should be allowed to partake and enjoy sport, but no one is owed fame and fortune from it.

Attempts to push women’s football hard do seem artificial, and do feel like “You WILL love women’s football as much as men’s, or we’ll shame you for being sexist!”

Like with many sports , DH says the women’s game is better technically and less histrionics

he does wish the goal was slightly smaller

There are plenty of people not taking men’s football seriously too - “overpaid”, “just kicking a bag of air around”.

In the same breath they praise Olympians seemingly oblivious to the fact that footballers are highly skilled athletes too.

I don't mean it like that, just it's unfortunate if no one will even take it seriously or even be interested in it. But I hear what you're saying in that the point of it is to get enjoyment from playing it. Perhaps I got too sucked into that movie Bend it like Beckham as a teen 😄

One of the stats to come out of this tournament was that several of the women’s penalties from the England team have been the most powerful in all football this year.

The quality of the women's game is significantly lower as many people have pointed out, I wouldn't go out of my way to watch the mens U21s international team either but they are far better players than the women, its not even comparable.

My DH will have it on if its a big England match like the other night but wouldn't stop plans for it, a lot of our plans are made round our local mens teams fixtures though. He recognises that the ladies have improved massively and it doesn't come from a sexist place, its just nowhere near as exciting to watch I find.

We watch a lot of cricket and often go to The Hundred so the women play first. Again the quality is pretty poor, they can bat/bowl ok but the fielding is awful (way worse than teen boys) and is even more noticeable when the men play straight after, but to make it more interesting they bring the boundary in for the ladies. I wouldn't usually bother to watch the ladies if the mens match wasnt on after (even though I play myaelf) but occasionally I will go if its a social event with my team/friends. Its really cheap still but I wouldn't pay the same as the mens England cricket prices for the ladies as the level is really not worth it.