"England were last in the finals in 1966"

[selflove]

No. England last made the finals in 1984 & 2009.

It's just the men's team that hasn't made it since 1966.

Yep, its very frustrating!!

Good point!

Dd asked me yesterday why noone on tv talked about womens football.

Do you remember that press conference where a journalist asked Andy Murray how he felt to be the first player to do X Y X? And replied "first MALE player", knowing it was an achievement Serena/Venus had already done? Why can't a footballer just make the same correction one day when interviewed, it would be epic.

All we can do is teach our kids, I suppose. DS is 5 and corrected his teacher yesterday when she said it last happened probably when their grandparents were children. The teacher googled it, and corrected herself. So that's 30 kids who now know how epic our women's team also is. We just have to keep up with the tiny ripples

It was like the first british person in space

Everyone was saying tim peake when it was actually Helen Sharman

This is a great point

The bbc reports I heard yesterday ahead of the match were actually referring specifically to 'the first time the men's team .... since...'

Yes I was going to say on BBC radio 1 it has said men's football every time.

I pointed that out on facebook during the last world cup and amazingly everyone said good point. But they were all Danish...

Yep I've been correcting anyone who gets this wrong on Facebook. And I've loved Andy Murray ever since he corrected journalists about Virginia Wade winning Wimbledon and Serena winning more Olympic medals than him - I wish there were more male sportspeople who did this regularly.
Women's sporting achievements matter too!

yanbu
and I'm still pissed of that the women's championship was postponed. it was supposed to be on this year. but the poor men cannot cope without it seems.

I just came to see if anyone had noticed this!

I fucking love football, I played for my county girls team and got scouted for a Premier league teams under 14 squad many years ago, and am massively invested in women's football and go to matches whenever I can.

It really, really pisses me off that women's achievements in this sport are so fucking dismissed, especially because at one point in the not too distant past women's football was fucking huge.

It drew crowds of 60,000, made shit loads of money for charity, and google Lily Parr, who played in 1917 and was the first woman inducted into the Football Hall of Fame.

When football was a whole village affair, women played too, we had our own games right up until the 50s.

Women's football was hugely popular but then got fucking snatched away from us for years because the men wanted it.

(sorry to go off on a tangent, but this subject is very close to my heart and it really fucks me off that the history of women's football has been bloody obliterated in less than 70 years!)

But anyway, yeah, the women's teams have reached more finals than the men's, and it needs calling out.

Next year is the women's euros and I look forward to it!

(Also I wish people would stop assuming that only men really enjoy footy, I've seen it a few times on threads today and it makes me uncomfortable, it's just not fucking true!)

To put it bluntly I think the main reason men's football is more popular than women's is because of the physical advantage men have over women, the quality of football will naturally be a lot higher and therefore more entertaining to watch.

I think there's been a couple of embarrassing games where a woman's national team has been beaten by an amateur high school boy's team, which has made a mockery of women's professional football for some.

Where is Football's answer to Andy Murray?

Not boasting by the way shit just realised how that might have come across!!

But please do look up the history of women's football, it's fascinating and goes back a lot further than you think.

Quite a bit of the history of women's football is covered by the story of Dick Kerr Ladies. I've quite often been in a traffic queue by their blue plaque on the side of the old works so I'm rather fond of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick%2CKerrrLadiesF.C.

@MargaritaPie but a game can be internally exciting even if hypothetically the teams would be utterly mowed over had they played an entirely different team from a different league. I mean, no one is diminishing lower league games because the teams would hypothetically crumble against international heavyweights?

@RozHuntleysLeftHand Fascinating stuff!

Thanks for all the info! My dc don't know much about football so I was telling them about the Euros today and how this was the man's team, who haven't won an international competition for over 50 years. I'll tell them more about the women's team!

I was thinking about this last night as I drove along pretty much deserted roads at 8.15pm. Work and social activities that I am involved in have been altered to fit around this competition, pubs have been given a special extension to their hours for Sunday due to it, the general expectation is that everyone will be watching and will care.

I have no real interest in football but even I am aware that the nation does not stop when the women's team (who I understand are pretty bloody good) are playing. I'm not sure I've even heard it mentioned on the news when they have won. I'm not sure I buy the comment made by a pp about women's football being lower quality and less entertaining that men's.

It's frustrating isn't it? Women's football/footballers is/are becoming slowly more popular but are still poorly represented in comparison. I was saying the same to my husband about parasport recently. Both need to be better televised for a start.

I'm not sure I buy the comment made by a pp about women's football being lower quality and less entertaining that men's.

I don't find any football entertaining, but it certainly doesn't apply in other sports. Tennis, for instance - from what I've seen the men's game can too often be pretty dull thumping big shots compared to the women's. The fact many men would beat Serena Williams is irrelevant to the quality of a women's match.

@MargaritaPie

To put it bluntly I think the main reason men's football is more popular than women's is because of the physical advantage men have over women, the quality of football will naturally be a lot higher and therefore more entertaining to watch.

I think there's been a couple of embarrassing games where a woman's national team has been beaten by an amateur high school boy's team, which has made a mockery of women's professional football for some.

I don't want to be rude, but frankly this is absolute bollocks.

Women play a different game, but it is a fucking good one.

I have to sort out a few things, but I will be back in a bit to point out exactly why this is bollocks

But please please look up the full history of women's football, it really is a feminist issue.... The erasure of our sporting history is horrible.

And in the mean time, to refute the point about women's football not being as good, please enjoy this with Liv Cooke, the women's freestyle champion...

I love the story of Rose Reilly who won the women's World Cup playing for Italy in 1984.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1QZRzRJMZ4pyt9yRphyr8kt/banned-by-scotland-so-rose-won-the-world-cup-with-italy-instead

@AprilAzpilicueta

Yep I've been correcting anyone who gets this wrong on Facebook. And I've loved Andy Murray ever since he corrected journalists about Virginia Wade winning Wimbledon and Serena winning more Olympic medals than him - I wish there were more male sportspeople who did this regularly. Women's sporting achievements matter too!

I wasn't keen on him before that but have loved him ever since! He does it a lot actually when any journalist makes an incorrect / sexist comment, so it wasn't a one-off either!