William and women's football

[Nono22972]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-12413893/amp/Prince-William-not-attend-World-Cup-final-watch-Englands-Lionesses-face-against-Spain.html

One again, William's neglecting women's football. The Lionesses made history. It is the first time that the English team (male or female) reached the World Cup final since 1966. We all know that if the men had reached the final, he would've been there and probably would've brought George with him.

Queen Letizia and her daughter Sofia will be attending. What's William's excuse? You are président of the Football Association.

This is really disappointing but I'm not really surprised. The young generation of royals are such a joke compared to previous generations. Yes, the Queen’s children had their controversies but when it comes to royal work, they always got the job done.

Oh, and while we're on it

As of 2021, the official budget for the Spanish monarchy is 8.4 million euros, one of the lowest public expenditures for the institution of monarchy in Europe.

https://www.yourviva.com/blog/new-spanish-king-costs-just-17-cents-per-head-government-reveals

At just 17 cents per head, King Felipe of Spain is the cheapest Monarch in Europe

Spain boasts some of the cheapest holiday resorts in Europe, and can now claim to have the most cost-effective Royal family, too.

King Felipe VI, 46 – who took to the throne earlier this year following the surprise abdication of his father, King Juan Carlos – costs each Spaniard just €0.17 cents per year, making him the cheapest figurehead on the continent…

These figures were published this week by the ruling Popular Party as the government sought to ward off growing fears that Spain’s Royal family is increasingly seen as an anachronistic, expensive throwback to the bad old days.

Yet with the budget for the Spanish Royal family frozen this year at €7.78 million, the Popular Party claim that the Spanish Royal family are not the financial burden on the average Spaniard as many believe.

Although lacking the pulling power of the British Royal family – who, it is estimated, actually bring money into the UK rather than drawing constantly from its coffers – Spain’s Royal family still turns heads and regularly gets invited to global events. And compared to Queen Elizabeth II – who costs the average Brit €0.68 cents a year – King Felipe is good value for money.

The Football Association need a new president . Are you English and interested in football?

I’m English and watched every single game except for England v Australia. We watched yesterday’s match with 100 others in a tent at a kids festival and the atmosphere was fantastic. I’ve always been a national team supporter and my interest really doesn’t extend to the club level. I’m so proud of our team and how well we played. I’m really disappointed with the lack of representation by our government and also by the fact the the President of the FA did not attend. I think this stems from misogyny not matter how many people try to dress it up as anything but.

I think that William seriously has scored an own goal here - first with his non attendance and then with the message he sent to the team with only Charlotte (again if we were going to use children it should have been all of them or at least George and Charlotte to send the message that women’s sports is for everyone). He will need to work hard to walk back from the lazy tag which they managed to get away from.

I'm not such a football fan, but I agree with every word you say.

The pictures of Queen Letizia extending the hand of sympathy to the English team really rubbed it in that there was no senior English or British figures there

The President of the FA doesn't have to be a member of the royal family. But it does need to be someone who will show up to World Cup finals when their nation is playing.

I'm very disappointed with William for not being at the Final.
Only illness - of himself or a close family member or a direct terrorist threat is an excuse for the snub.
He is the President of the FA.

The gaslighting here, and in this entire thread is astonishing.

FFS the FA actually banned women's football for 50 years. I wonder if William even knows or cares about this heritage or institutional misogyny.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/13/how-the-fa-banned-womens-football-in-1921-and-tried-to-justify-it

He’s the President of the English FA, it is perfectly reasonable to expect him to be at a World Cup Final. Once we’ve accepted the British establishment would be sending someone (culture secretary was stuck on a plane I believe), then why was that someone not the President of the English FA?

So reasons we’ve got:

a) he’s lazy and avoids work as much as he can

b) he doesn’t care about women’s football, so didn’t think the World Cup mattered enough to factor it in to summer plans

c) he’s married such a terrible woman, she can’t be trusted to cope with 3 kids for a few days of the school holidays without him, even though they’ve got nannies and other staff to help and grandparents close by

d) 2 months of holidays isn’t enough for him to have family time - even though he’ll also take time off for other school holidays and can’t be expected to manage a flight after such a short break

e) he decided going shooting things on the Balmoral estate was more important

f) he’s too concerned about the environment to fly to Australia to watch a game (although flying to Singapore for a meeting or Jordan for a wedding or indeed flying to Scotland is completely fine. Plus he must know that someone else would be sent in his place, so not saving anything).

g) protocol means that he can’t do a state visit to Australia before his Dad as new King - although this wouldn’t be a state visit and other members of the Royal Family have managed to visit commonwealth countries before Charles, just not in state visit capacities.

h) his team decided Australians hate him and his family so much, the bad press of not going pales into insignificance compared to the bad press he would have got from being booed or shunned in Australia.

I) the intelligence service have decided Australia is a super dangerous country and it’s not safe for him to be there

I think that’s pretty much the full list of things from this thread. Any others I’ve missed?

The environmental reason is the only one that seems a reasonable excuse, but then he really needs to not fly long haul anywhere else this year to make that seems a legitimate explanation.

Excellent summary @LimeCheesecake, I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s fairly obvious that b) is the truth sadly, with a) as the second best bet.

@MrsFinkelstein I'm not gaslighting, I'm saying that I saw no threads about Kate and Wimbledon apart from that silly one. There are threads where she's criticised for other things, but not about attending Wimbledon, which was the point I was making.

I also agree with you both, I don't watch that much football but Dh and one of our kids does and they watched most of the WC.

It doesn't matter if none of us watch football, we are entitled to an opinion about the President, whoever it is, not attending the womens final when we are in it. I am surprised at posts which seem to insist if you don't follow football you shouldn't have an opinion on this. William is taxpayer funded and the future King, people will comment on which roles he undertakes and when they think he isn't working hard enough.

Nobody here should be telling anyone else they are not entitled to comment.

Nobody here is telling them to send their kids to boarding school. Plenty of parents fulfil work commitments without doing that. All of those kind of remarks are not in the spirit of the discussion.

I think that this role is not appropriate for William, and someone else should take over the Presidency of the Football Association. It's not a crazy opinion, it's valid, and the derision on here for those of us who hold this opinion is unnecessary.

Such a good summary @LimeCheesecake I think it's, A and a bit of B.

Good for the Spanish RF.

The BRF brought in 1.7B 2021/22.

https://metro.co.uk/2023/05/08/how-much-money-does-the-royal-family-bring-in-to-the-uk-2-18741992/

The BRF brought in 1.7B 2021/22. No they didn't. The figures are never well supported but even in that article it shows they include visits to historic buildings. The family have nothing to do with people visiting buildings. They'd do that whether we handed over billions or not.

Marvellous work and summary. I'm with a) and b) - both the Wales' are not known as the Dolittles for nothing. 'Pa' is notoriously hard working as Harry details in Spare and it looks like William is happy to wing it which didn't matter so much when the old guard were still in evidence. But that ship has long sailed now and they better get quickly ahead of the curve or be submerged by it.

The lame arsed video filmed on a phone on a bench for 15 seconds was worse than useless and just served to underline the lack of care or attention he has for his role. Literally just phoning in his appearance.

Support for the monarchy rests on two pillars. The first is economic: the monarchy is seen as cheap — the sovereign grant for 2022-23 is £86mn, or £1.29 a person — and possibly a net contributor, due to tourism.

Republic puts the true cost of the monarchy at about £350mn a year, once you include items such as the incomes of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall (nearly £50mn of operating profits, plus tens of millions more in capital appreciation); the cost of royal security (never disclosed but rumoured at £100mn); and the cost to councils of organising royal visits (£22mn, according to Republic’s estimates). Tourism, it says, does not require a continuing royal presence: more visitors go to the Tower of London than to Buckingham Palace, more go to France than to the UK.
https://www.ft.com/content/87f8e0f3-c085-402f-96e6-97602b323f2a

As arguments go it's a lazy as William ....
God Save the King !

I don’t understand what you mean.

It's Will.I.Am text raging in between shoots...

@cobicat

Have you looked at any media over the last few days ? I assume not . You are in for a shock .
Yes it matters .

And Ive seen a few really scraping the barrel comments along the lines of ‘if you aren’t interested in football , why are you commenting ‘

If you want to go down that route , there are a number of commenters who aren’t UK citizens ( or of the dwindling ‘realms’)

Should they be told not to comment too ?
They aren’t being bleed dry by the Windsors to the tune of hundreds of millions annually during the worst cost of living crisis in years ?

@cobicat - “Prince William” has been trending on twitter for 3 days, mainly people arguing he should be in Australia /should have gone. There’s a few defending him, but most comments are about it being bad he didn’t. He’s being talked about negatively on radio phone ins and tv shows. There have been articles in pro-royal family papers about it being terrible he didn’t go. Both before the match and now. This isn’t just a small echo chamber. Many of those saying he should have gone are people who have been pro-William and anti-Harry. Even Piers Morgan has said William should have gone and no one could accuse him of being Team Sussex…

William had very very bad press which does seem to have been a surprise to the Royal Family and they’ve failed to handle it well.

May I kindly suggest we don't respond to personal attacks as MNHQ have warned us a lot lately not to do so and doing so will only get yourself in trouble.

Its the first time I've been called Sussex Squad. I'm usually labelled as one of the pro-Wales "haterz" !

But of course it's entirely possible to have views that aren't tidily divided into the social media boxes.

I'm generally supportive of the whole royal family.

But will say when I think a member has done something wrong.

I think in this instance Prince William has done something wrong, to the extent that I think he needs to relinquish the presidency of the FA to someone who will be available to represent the nation when English teams reach the finals of the World Cup.

The BRF brought in 1.7B 2021/22.

This figure derives from a report published by a branding company with links to the royals and form for publishing puff reports on them. There is no indication as to who commissioned them or why.

Oh, and I think we don't need to go any further than reason A 🤓