Five Myths About Women’s Football and How to Use Sport Science to Debunk Them

I have been an England football fan (in the best ways) since being a young boy. I have vivid memories of staying up late to watch the England v Argentina quarter final in Mexico in 1986, when Maradona scored twice and Lineker scored once and almost twice after amazing wing play by the substitute John Barnes. I remember crying my eyes out in 1990, when Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle missed penalties to lose to West Germany in the semi-finals. I remember sitting on my sofa in 2015 with both my daughters in tears when Laura Bassett scored the own goal that knocked England out of the semi-finals just seconds before penalties were due to start to decide the match against Japan. And then, on Sunday of this week, I sat with both my daughters Anna and Georgina, now 17 and 14, my partner Marta and our friends Claire (mum of), Lucy (18) and Anna H (14) and we watched England narrowly beat Germany in the final of the Euros as well as the celebrations that followed.

The football during the Euro 2022 tournament was some of the most exhilarating sport I have ever seen. Especially in the knockout stages, the matches that England played against Spain, Sweden and, finally, Germany were stunning occasions and utterly absorbing. The football spoke for itself: brilliant goals, well-drilled teams of the highest standard and ruthless competitiveness played out in the right spirit. But after every game, there also seemed to be a sense of sadness. I listened to comments by Alex Scott, Ian Wright, Rachel Brown-Finnis, Farah Williams and many others and there was an anxiety. Despite the stunning success of the England team, there remained a concern that the women’s game would not continue to grow and, throughout all of this, these commentators cited barriers and prejudices that are real obstacles for the potential growth of the sport.

With these points in mind, I want to share with you five myths about women’s football that I have personally heard during the course of the Euro 2022 tournament. These are comments that people I know (and, in some cases, love) have made to me in the light of the success that has been witnessed. In my opinion, these myths are representative of a bemusing last bastion of opposition to women’s football and I aim to write this post to equip every reader to challenge these myths when they hear them. As our readership is typically made up of teachers, I also hope that this post will help educators to discuss these views with students and challenge any remaining unbalanced opinions about women’s football and women’s sport in general.

 Myth 1: Women’s football isn’t exciting (also frequently used is “Women’s football is boring”) 

I have heard this spoken on numerous occasions in recent weeks. On one occasion, I heard the comment from a barman who was serving me a drink. It was kind of funny, as the bar was filled with people watching the Germany v France semi-final and these people were literally providing him a job because the sport was exciting and interesting and because people wanted to meet up to watch it together.

But I digress… Myths are contextual and often historical and it’s important to view this myth in its context. Let’s take a step back and look at what football is, where it came from and why these ideas might exist.

Association Football emerged in elite, male public (meaning private) schools in the early to mid-19th Century. Schools like Winchester, Charterhouse, St Paul’s and others played versions of football that suited the environments that the schools existed in. At a time when public school headmasters were banning off-school site activities like hunting, wild swimming and cross-country running, Association Football emerged because it could be played in confined spaces on grassed areas between buildings on the school site. Initially, the games were controlled by the boys themselves, with sixth-formers and prefects taking responsibility and with the house system providing a format for competition. Each school had a different type of game but there were common themes. Beyond rules and timings and other formalities, all of the versions of football emphasised male physiology. It is important to remember that the sport was being played by teenage boys, full of testosterone, energy and physicality and, for this reason, the game that emerged was framed around speed, power, strength and cardiovascular endurance. When we look at football today, these same components of fitness dominate the sport. Teams with fast players are seen as exciting and exhilarating, for example.

Therefore, people will argue that women’s football in the modern era is not exciting because the speed and power of the performances do not match those of the men’s game at elite levels. This is not untrue. It is perfectly reasonable to state that elite men’s football is faster on average, say, than elite women’s football. I have no objection to this fact. It’s just true. However, this is rarely, if ever, the point that people make. The myth that is perpetuated is that this means the game is boring. It is this point that I categorically disagree with. Women’s football is different to men’s football. Later in this post, I will argue that they are the same game but two different sports.

Football can be boring. It is boring, at times, for the following reasons:

1. Seeing/playing the same thing over and over again.
2. When players use extreme gamesmanship such as time-wasting, exaggerating fouls and appealing to referees to detract from the viewing experience.
3. When commercialism and the win-at-all-costs mentality outweighs the joy of sport.
4. When matches frequently end as low-scoring affairs (I will expand on this point later).
5. When deviant behaviour by players and/or spectators makes it difficult for some people to be part of the sport.
6. Players and coaches being mundane and robotic.

Now, if someone wants to tell me that the points made above apply more to women’s football than to men’s, they are not in reality. If we look at the two sports as a whole, it is perfectly reasonable to argue that the product of women’s football is actually more stimulating and sits closer to a truer notion of sport than the men’s game. Personally, I am tired of going to a stadium with my daughter, an avid Man City fan, and having to physically protect her from aggressive behaviour by spectators. I am tired of paying over €150 to watch the Barcelona men’s team, despite their brilliance, waste time and dive all over the pitch. I am tired of listening to male footballers who, with exceptions, struggle to share themselves with their high-paying fans because they have been media trained from the age of 10 years old. Whilst I don’t want to fall into the trap of generalising men’s football, I strongly believe that these factors make women’s football stimulating and exciting and men’s football too frequently repetitive and uninteresting despite the fact that it moves at a higher pace.

 Myth 2: Women make far more errors than men 

This myth has been shared with me on countless occasions. Typically, I will be told: “Yeah, but the standard is not that high” or “There’s not much flow and they make a lot of mistakes.” Now, do female footballers make errors during a 90-minute match? YES! Of course they do! But the question to ask here is what is the rate of error in women’s and men’s football and, beyond this, what is the reason that errors made by women are linked to their gender?

So, let’s address the first point: Do women make more unforced errors than men? There is a simple answer to this: nobody knows. There is not a study in existence that can prove that women make more errors than men in football. So, for this reason, why do so many people spout this myth? The answer to this comes by addressing my second point.

What is the reason that errors made by women are linked to their gender? This is classic confirmation bias. When the average football viewer sees a mistake made by a woman, they have a higher tendency to link these mistakes to the gender of the performer. Let’s say that Mary Earps, England’s goalkeeper, mishits a goal kick. The tendency is for some people to link this error to her being a woman rather than seeing it simply as a normal occurrence that sometimes happens when you play sport. On Saturday, I watched Jordan Henderson, captain of Liverpool men, kick the ball out of play under absolutely no pressure. To my knowledge, no one linked this unforced error to his gender. Why? Why do people link mistakes in sport to being a woman and never to being a man? In the total absence of actual evidence for a higher rate of errors being made by women in elite football, why do so many people perpetuate this myth? The answer is simple: they have a pre-existing view and they use confirmation bias to hold that view up as correct. Women do not make more errors than men in football. Rather, those that hold prejudicial views select information that supports their prejudicial viewpoint.

 Myth 3: Female goalkeepers are rubbish 

I would argue that this is the myth I have heard the most. I have used the term “last bastion” on a number of occasions in this post and I believe that this myth will be the final one to be overhauled. Viewers have a tendency to watch the women’s game and to identify goalkeeping as the weakest skill.

So, let’s explore this. Why would viewers think female goalkeepers are worse than male? There is certainly no neural or skill reason for this to be the case. Females are as capable as males at learning the necessary coordination required to be a goalkeeper. However, two other factors may well be the reason for this perception:

1. The average female goalkeeper is not as tall as the average male goalkeeper, whilst the size of the goal remains the same. This means that female goalkeepers may be more likely to be chipped or beaten into the corners than their male counterparts.
2. Male physiology, as previously mentioned, tends to emphasise power, speed and agility because males have higher levels of testosterone throughout their puberty and post-puberty lives. This means that, on average, male muscle tends to be more lean than female and, therefore, have a higher contractile force.

So, it is reasonable to say that elite female goalkeepers, on average, are smaller and that their muscular contractile force will be, on average, less than their elite male counterparts. These factors are only relevant because the goals used in elite women’s football are the same scale as men’s. If the goals were smaller, this myth would be instantly crushed. However, I am not arguing, nor will ever argue for goals being made smaller. One of the wonderful things about women’s football is that more goals get scored than in the men’s game. In other words, and I refer back to myth 1 for this point, women’s football is exciting for exactly this reason.

As an aside, I just want to pay tribute to Mary Earps. The best moment of the entire tournament for me was her save against Spain when England were losing that match 1-0. Earps made a phenomenal save from a mishit cross. A save, which had it not been made, would have meant England’s exit from the tournament. Two minutes later, Russo headed the ball to Toone for her to equalise and England went on to win 2-1. This save emphasised Earps’s brilliance in the context of this myth. The exact type of save that women are supposedly not to be very good at was the exact save that Earps made to help win the match.

Visit UEFA.com to watch Earps's epic save

 Myth 4: The England women’s team is not as good as the men’s 

Once again, I have heard this on countless occasions. The idea goes that “men’s football is just better”. Being good at something is a relative concept. Why are the England men good? They are good because they are effective in the context of men’s football. They are good because they win and draw more matches than they lose. They are good because they reach the latter stages of international competitions. Let’s imagine something: let’s imagine that England men were the exact same team they are now with Kane and Sterling and Rice and Pickford but that every other men’s international team improved. Would England men be good? The answer is no because, in relative terms, they would not be effective in their competitive environment. Likewise, England women are good because they are effective in their competitive environment. Moreover, England women have made and are making giant strides in becoming more and more effective.

Now, I want to pause here and make a very clear point: I strongly argue that men and women play the same game, Association Football, but play in different sports. Those sports being men’s football and women’s football respectively. The only way that a comparison can be made as to whether the England men are better or worse than the women is to compare their relative performances in their own sport. If we compare the England men’s team to the England women’s team over the past five years, all of the following apply:

• England’s women have a higher win ratio than England’s men.
• England’s women are more successful at major tournaments than England’s men.
• England’s women have a higher goal differential than England’s men.
• England’s women have a cleaner disciplinary record than England’s men.

So, with all this being true, where does the argument stand that England men are better than England women? Typically, people will go on to argue that if the men played the women the men would win very easily. This is true but it is true because they are competing in different sports and because of the massive physiological advantage that elite male athletes have over elite female athletes. If England men played England women, we would be inventing a completely new and unbalanced sport, making this argument completely irrelevant.

 Myth 5: The media is overpromoting women’s football 

I’m not sure where to start with this one. I have heard it spoken twice by people that seem almost annoyed that women’s football is being successful. I have made the assumption that people make this statement because their previously held view has been disrupted and this is the only place left to hide.

The media is not over-representing women’s football. In fact, the media has been and continues to be one of the major barriers to women’s football. It is estimated that women’s football receives less than 1% of the coverage of men’s football in the UK. Less than 1%! Women’s football has found a way to survive and, now, to thrive despite the lack of support by the media. An excellent example of this is the success of the Women’s Super League (WSL), which, since March 2010, has allowed women to play professionally at clubs like Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea. The WSL is a commercial success. Whilst its profits are modest in comparison to the men’s Premier League, the WSL is sustainable and will provide a platform for girls and women to compete at the highest standards of competition in the coming years and beyond. This is despite an almost complete absence of media coverage of the league. Whilst it is true that BBC Sport and Sky Sport have covered live and highlights of the WSL in recent years, the coverage tends to be hard to reach as it is in non prime-time slots and even, at times, hidden behind interactive red buttons and alike. This needs to change.

The printed media are arguably even worse at covering women’s football. Newspapers and online landing pages are bedecked in coverage of the men’s game with tokenistic references to the women’s game here and there. Again, this needs to change.

However, I want to draw the reader’s attention to a concerning consideration. Media outlets are almost universally commercial organisations and they exist in a market space of very high competition. The capacity to broadcast and/or publish in 2022 is available to almost everyone and, because of this, the need to draw attention to one’s media stream becomes ever greater. Therefore, a media company that takes an ethical stance and decides to sacrifice space and coverage of the men’s game for space and coverage of the women’s game is likely to suffer a loss of hits and income in the immediate term. It is for this reason that media companies tend not to take the risk. Men’s football coverage is a cash cow for media companies and allows them to sell advertising at a higher price. Therefore, this places great emphasis on two other spaces to address this issue:

1. Social media, driven by people, needs to become the melting pot of where coverage of and discussion about the women’s game takes place. This will force media companies to follow this trend and to further cover the women’s game.
2. We need to force our public broadcasters such as the BBC to lead the way and to cover women’s sport properly. The BBC, along with other broadcasters who receive part of the licence fee, need to work with the WSL to bring the very best coverage to the UK audience at times that are suitable. This will force other companies to follow suit. We need to remember that the BBC belongs to all of us and we can dictate what it does and how it does it.

So, there we have it. Five myths, five untruths commonly espoused and totally wrong. I am proud to have written this post. I am proud to be a football fan. I am proud to be an England football supporter and I am incredibly excited to see England (women and men) play again soon.

As always, thank you for reading. Please feel free to leave a comment below.

James