Big Story
It’s not often a 6-2 loss is taken to presage a “nation’s arrival on the big stage”, but that’s the reaction today in the Guardian from Anna Kessel on the England’s women’s team’s defeat in the UEFA European Championship final to Germany last night. The Germans, winning their seventh European title, were faster and stronger than the English underdogs, who were in their first final for a quarter-century.

But their run to the final and the pluck of their first half performance certainly demonstrated the improved quality of the team. At 3-2 early in the second half — England clawing their way back into it thanks to an exquisite feed from Karen Carney to Kelly Smith — the Germans were rattled, before their superior force saw them overrun England towards the end.

The women’s game in England has been growing fast at the grassroots, with participation booming over the past two decades, leading to this improved performance along with England’s under-19 team winning the European Championship in July. But development at the professional level has not kept pace so far, with the introduction of central contracts too late and too little to keep many English stars from moving to WPS in the U.S. along with the disrespectfully made announcement earlier this year that the proposed new F.A. summer women’s Super League would be delayed from its intended 2010 launch.

Amidst the excitement over England’s run this week, F.A. chief executive Ian Watmore got all the soundbites right as he promised the Super League really, really would launch in 20111. But once the media glare once again drifts away from the women’s game, will the F.A. finally fulfill their duties? Let’s hope the momentum from the past week does force them to do so.

Worldwide News

• Meanwhile, today is National Fabio Capello Day in England. The Telegraph’s Henry Winter remembers Capello’s own “thirty years of hurt” with the World Cup; the Times looks at the fortune England’s success so far has already earned the Italian; and the Daily Mail considers how Capello solved the conundrum of playing Lampard, Gerrard and Rooney together (“I spoke with them and I said you are a fantastic player, you are a fantastic player and you are another fantastic player.”)
• The Football Association is cashing in on success, with a new major sponsor — Mars — set to be unveiled soon. But ESPN are playing hardball over available FA Cup rights vacated by Setanta.
• Arsene Wenger makes an important if extremely self-serving point about the proposed ban on the transfer of players under the age of 18, arguing that reducing the ability for (oh, say) Arsenal to capture all the best talent would stifle their talent and perhaps more worryingly, lead to their sale to businessmen and agents.
• Jeff Cooper of St. Louis Soccer United speaks about his plans for men’s professional football in the city, a goal he seems to keep coming agonisingly close to achieving. Cooper was one of the leaders of the proposed purchase of USL from Nike recently, and speaks about the prospective breakaway league, whilst also keeping his options open for his obvious first preference to buy into MLS by attempting to woo David Beckham.
• Your Friday FIFA round-up of the upcoming weekend action not in Europe is available.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Watching today’s entertaining match, I found myself mulling over the way the word “profligacy” was used in FIFA’s summary of that last game againt Germany:

The African champions dominated much of this match and had enough chances to win a few games, but their profligacy in front of goal – which had already been in evidence in their 1-0 defeat to Korea DPR – once again proved their undoing.

Warning: I am an English Professor by trade. The author meant something like “wasted goal scoring opportunity,” a situation that writers about football find themselves needing to write over and over again, and so one’s vocabulary stretches along with that striker’s foot, and like that prodigal daughter who discards the perfect pass and misses the wide open net, sometimes the writer, too, goes wide of the mark. All that aside, profligacy is an odd word choice. Its first meaning is:

1. Licentious or dissolute behaviour; debauchery; spec. (in later use) sexual promiscuity. [Oxford English Dictionary]

Given the centuries-old racist and sexist traditions that inform representations of African women, it is not a word I would choose. I am sure the FIFA writer didn’t mean to draw from this (the primary) meaning of the word. Better to use the word in a statement like “Manchester United’s behavior off the pitch is a good example of the profligate lifestyle of contemporary footballers.”

Even the secondary meanings for “profligacy” feels inappropriate as a description of how the Super Falcons play:

2. a. Reckless extravagance, prodigality; (also) a wasteful or extravagant act. 2. b. Lack of moderation, excess; great abundance, profusion. [Again, this is from the O.E.D.]

On this point, my objection isn’t political, but technical. In footballing terms, I would say “profligacy” is more apropos of the striker who strikes too soon, of the player who sends the ball too far down the pitch. (In which case, one might tag Brazil for its profligacy in the first match against Germany in which we saw lots of long balls just launched away.)

If the Super Falcons suffered against these teams – the very best teams in the very toughest group in this tournament – it was, I think, more properly because they were too conservative. Which is perhaps counterintuitive, because the Super Falcons play with a lot of style and imagination. But style isn’t the same thing as wastefulness. If that were true, Argentina and Brazil would have the weakest records in football. And England would have qualified for Euro 2008.

A team of goal scorers and a lame back line may be accused of profligacy, in which case we can turn to Tottenham as a fine example. But the Nigerian women’s team plays more like Arsenal, who would never be called “profligate” with the parsimonious Wenger at the helm. We all know the purse strings are kept tight chez les Gunners. And then we have the style of play: lots of jaw dropping short little passes right up to the goal. Spectacular to watch. But, as we all know, eventually the odds go against these genius little moves up the field. Every pass is a pass that can go wrong or be interfered with. Every moment you hold onto the ball is a moment a defender has to catch you. The problem, here, then, is not “letting go” but holding on.

I am wondering if, in the case of the Nigerian women’s team, this isn’t about confidence, and the opportunities a team has to play together. You didn’t see Nigeria, for example, making a whole lot of medium or long passes into space – Germany’s Stegemann scored off of exactly that kind of optimism (“I know she’s on her way, and will be there by the time the ball gets there”), and Marta and Cristiane work off of exactly this kind of confidence in each other (“Marta – draw those three defenders off me, and then cross me the ball!”).

Nigeria’s problem isn’t profligacy – it’s the opposite. A fear of letting the ball go. And with so much riding on them – the only African women’s football team at the Olympics (and, therefore, the only all black team on the tournament’s rosters), who can blame them.

Want to talk about parsimony? Let’s talk about FIFA’s ambivalent support of African football over the years, and then let’s talk about FIFA’s even more ambivalent support of women’s football, and, well, marry those two histories: et voila! You have the special burden of being the only African women’s team allowed to take the world stage. Who can blame them for playing a somewhat skeptical game.

Well, there you have it, my reading of one sentence in a FIFA match report. This is what happens when a feminist English professor becomes a football fan.

Before I sign off for the day, let me just say some things about today’s game. The Super Falcons have super fans! You could hear them shouting, cheering, and singing alongside their own brass & drums band from the start to the finish of the match. And while plainly Cristiane is player of the match, I’d like to give a shout out to Nigeria’s Faith Ikidi who got in some technically perfect tackles and was just a hornet in both of the games I was lucky enough to see. She’s one of the defenders of the tournament in my eyes.

Cristiane’s bicycle kick goal brought tears to my eyes. So amazing, so perfect – she was surrounded by defenders and still got a controlling touch and just sent it over her own body and into the net. I was rooting for Nigeria, but I’m a fan of the beautiful game, and I don’t know what’s more gorgeous & inspirational than a goal like that. (Note the Nigerian player who nearly takes Cristiane’s foot in her face!)

So – here it is:

Brazil-Germany

Brazil held Germany to nil — no small accomplishment. If I remember correctly, the only team to do that in the 2007 World Cup was England (on the absence of a UK squad, see this post). Eurosport France announcers called it “un beau match”, and it was. Lots of action, some great shots and you could feel the tension right from the outset – Germany’s Angerer is a fierce presence in goal, and Brazil seemed intent on letting her know they weren’t afraid of her, so she took a bit of a beating in this game (not with shots so much as with strong challenges for the ball).

I like the look of Brazilian midfielder Formiga — always have (“formiga”: that means ant, right? Her given name is Miraildes Maciel Mota). The lady is not afraid to hold onto the ball: she plays with a lot of confidence and has some nice – actually genius – moves. Everybody talks about Marta and Christiane, but I think Formiga is the glue & the gas. She holds things together and gets everything moving.

Anyway, some highlights include a fantastic flying fingertip save from Brazilian keeper Andreia (Did I imagine that? Because I haven’t seen it mentioned in coverage so far). I was watching in a local sports bar, and they kept turning off the sound – and looked not so amused that I was there. In any case, I’m not sure whose shot that was (Smisek?). This was followed by a speedy counterattack & gorgeous cross from Marta right across the goal mouth to Christiane who sent it over the net with a header as she raced into the space.

Toward the end of the first half I found myself thinking Brazil looked more nervous – sending balls too far up the field, kick and run, except not really. They gave away a fair amount of balls that way, and you rarely saw Germany making those kinds of mistakes.

That said, Marta looked great – her speed is amazing, and it takes as many as three people to contain her. And Christiane is an Amazonian warrior. Over all, as clichéd as it is to say this, Brazil was nicer to watch on the ball. Turning, twisting, playful sole-rolls and crazy little flips – plus, they play chancier football. Lots of speed, quick and surprising movements, and an ability to just pluck the ball from the air – they have a lightness of touch that feels risky from the stands if only because it looks like there are moments when no single player HAS the ball – the ball is moving so fast between them.

Germany are confident – they look almost unflappable. They made very few (no?) obvious errors – few careless or pointless passes. You can feel how well they know each other. Plus, they are sneaky. Don’t let the Germanic-machine-myth let you think that this team is predictable. Prinz in particular is so quick with a shot – she shoots through an open space with a lightening reflex, and she’s hard to read: she looks very, very hard to defend. One pistol shot from the top of the box went just wide before you knew it’d even left her foot.

Brazil looked fantastic (up to a point) in the second half – it felt like the game was mostly played in Germany’s territory. Christiane had a spectacular shot on goal which deflected off of Angerer (very unusual). Defender Costa followed up with a shot that hit the top right corner of the post and bounced just outside the goal area. Nevertheless, they struggled to convert – as usual, no lucky breaks. But, we make our own luck in this game, no? I kept thinking if Germany had these chances, they’d be up by six. But, amazingly, they hardly seemed to get inside the goal’s postal code.

Overall, neither team let the other get all that close to the goal. Brazil had more shots on target, but Angerer really never seemed stretched. The last few minutes were pretty boring as both teams seemed content to let the draw stand. It is not right that they are in the same group.

China-Sweden

China looked fantastic, and not just because the Chinese WNT has the best haircuts. Check out defender Li Jie (on the left) – shortlisted for FIFA footballer of the year in 2007 – or forward Han Duan (on the right) – also highly ranked in the same year by FIFA. These mug shots from the official Olympics team site don’t do them justice. The whole team looked amazing in every single way, and more than half were sporting what I think is called a shag. We see this in England a fair amount – a very punky, scrappy and cool look for the woman athlete who likes her hair and wants to resist the whole pony-tailed “I am not a lesbian” thing.

Based on today’s performance, it would make a lot of sense to see the Chinese team in at least a semi-final match. They more or less ran circles around Sweden – they looked more fit, confident, and like they wanted the win more. And, no doubt, they do.

U.S. – Norway

And, lastly, a word about the US defeat today. Why is it that when the US women lose, they look just plain awful? Great teams lose great games all the time. But the USWNT – which rarely loses ever – seems to only lose once in a blue moon in spectacularly bad games – by giving up own goals, making fatal passes, looking like they just woke up. They didn’t lose today because Norway played brilliantly. They lost because they made two really nasty errors within 90 seconds of each other. Bad communication, a weak and amateurish pass. Not to sell the historic rivals short, but Norway would have been incompetent had they not capitalized on them. They certainly deserve the credit for coming onto the field ready to play!

We see this in the alarming frequency with which women athletes who play soccer and basketball suffer ACL tears. The ACL tear is a very serious knee injury, requiring complex surgery and a lot of recovery time. (Pictured, right: Danielle Fotopolous, the USWNT player who retired in 2007 after tearing her ACL for the third time in 2006.)

The New York Times Sunday magazine recently published an in-depth story about young women soccer players, the injuries they sustain, and the difficulty we have in dealing with them. The article is adapted from Michael Sokolove’s forthcoming book Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports. (Can I just say: I hate that title. It’s so paternalistic! And aimed at the parent-reader, not at the female athlete. How about – Match Fit: Injury Prevention for Young Women Athletes?)

This interesting article is unfortunately wrapped in a sensationalist package. Problematically, Sokolove makes news of the fact that more women are injured as more women play (really?!). The following rhetoric, for example, makes it seem like Title IX is the cause for the increase in 17 year olds needing knee surgery – and as if this were in itself the problem:

This casualty rate [JD: no statistic here, the author just means the number of injuries suffered by a couple of high school teams] was not due to some random spike in South Florida. It is part of a national trend in the wake of Title IX and the explosion of sports participation among girls and young women [No soccer teams = No ACL tears]. From travel teams [these are the club teams not based in the school system] up through some of the signature programs in women’s college sports, women are suffering injuries that take them off the field for weeks or seasons at a time, or sometimes forever. [Unlike men? I mean, of course women suffer career-ending injuries! At least they don't break each other's legs!]

The author then goes on the explain how girls develop differently – e.g. boys gain more muscle, but become less flexible; girls get fatter but more flexible. The author’s language flirts dangerously close to naturalizing girls and women as weaker, more delicate etc (I’m not the only one to spot this slant).

The main issue in this article, however, is women athletes’ specific vulnerability to the ACL tear and the lack of understanding of the specific needs of female athletes – a failure caused not by Title IX, but by the ingrained sexism of medicine and sports culture.

Towards the end of the article, the author interviews Holly Silver, a physical therapist who has developed a knee injury prevention program that should be adopted by all footballers and their trainers.

Silver touches on some possible reasons for the high rate of ACL tears in women athletes: Girls are taught to walk and stand and move through the world differently. We curl around our chests – our bodies become shells, in a way, protecting/hiding everything ‘feminine’ – those bits are sources of shame, abuse, negative attention. [Ed: Found this note on Kickster, about the reception of the first women's game in 1894: "The British Medical Journal offered its professional opinion that 'we can in no way sanction the reckless exposure to violence, of organs which the common experience of women had led them in every way to protect'."]

One of the beautiful things about playing football is it forces women to free their bodies from this shell: You can’t trap the ball with your chest if you are hiding it from the world. You can’t make a good play if your eyes are trained on your feet. You won’t have much touch or footwork if your hips are locked.

Pointing to a player with good form, Silver explains: ‘She moves like a boy….Believe me, that’s a good thing.’

In other words, that girl carries herself like an athlete. Girls are not encouraged to adopt this stance (knees bent, butt low to the ground). And so that posture has become synonymous with ‘boy’. Boys, of course, aren’t born moving this way – and lots of boys don’t carry themselves that way (and are therefore terrorized for ‘walking/throwing like a girl’). The point here is that the social inscription of gender is deep: it may be culturally produced, but it is carved into our spines, and worked into our joints. Girls need to unlearn that stuff – as athletes, they sometimes literally need to learn to walk, and run.

Silver describes the extraordinary consequence of the way that girls inhabit their bodies as they play sports – if you run with poor posture, your running is not only inefficient, it harms your back, hips: all your joints, in fact. As any yoga practitioner will tell you, holding tension in your joints not only makes you less flexible and responsive (slowing your reflexes), it makes you more prone to aches and pains.

My sister coaches girls cross-country and track at Voorhees High School in New Jersey. Her teams have been very successful. Injury prevention is a big part of her program. They work on building up their strength in the gym, on minimizing strain to their muscles, on overall health and well-being. For example, she has the girls keep an eye on their iron levels – anemia is a big problem for teenage girls and young women, and can have a big impact on your development as an athlete. She’s always looking for the latest information on issues like these, and keys these insights to the specifics of her sport and the people she coaches (teenage girls). Not all coaches approach their work this way.

One must recognize gender differences in order to coach/train/treat athletes well. Those differences may be physiological, metabolic, social and psychological.

For example, athletes in general are loathe to report injuries. Reporting injury or medical problems can be even harder for some girls and women. Here are some reasons why:

*We don’t want to seem weak. In a world that reads all physical signs of womanliness as symptoms of the weakness of your sex, getting an injury makes you feel like your body has betrayed you, again.

*Women athletes can be reluctant to own up to the differences gender makes, because admitting to those differences has meant admitting to belonging to the ‘weaker sex.’ Remember: every girl – even today – will be told at some point that girls can’t or shouldn’t play or compete. Every girl hears that girls are weak, that they aren’t tough. Or that playing a sport makes them mannish – i.e. repugnant. To all of this, players say: Screw That, and get on with it. So, not only do we not want to seem weak – sometimes we don’t want to seem like ‘girls’.

*Doctors treat us differently. They don’t listen to what we say about our bodies. They read everything through their ideas about our reproductive system. Our experiences with doctors tend to start off bad, and get worse. We have little reason to trust them.

*We are taught to accept certain physical symptoms as ‘natural’: tiredness (symptom no. 1 of anemia), especially.

*We are reluctant to talk about our bodies – sport is often the only avenue through which we get to talk about our bodies in a way that is neutral, matter-of-fact and empowering. I’ll never forget listening to my sisters talk about pre-race bowel-clearing nerves and the humiliating but often hilarious situations that puts you in. As much as their stories made me laugh, I didn’t really ‘get’ it until I started playing football and found myself at Hackney Marshes trying to act cool as we waited for the mens’ teams to clear out of the damn bathrooms. Never, ever, go to Hackney, ladies, without a roll. Somehow, I associate that kind of frank and humorous talk about the body with ‘jock’-culture. Some of us need encouragement to adopt this kind of attitude.

*Girls aren’t always used to thinking of their bodies as something they can control. Except by starving themselves.

Add onto the above the following:

*Many girls and women play team sports on bad fields/in poor facilities.

*98% of sports stores don’t carry football boots made for women – and that 2 % will carry maybe two kinds. The overwhelming majority of women wear men’s boots, in other words.

*Because women were prevented from playing for so long, coaching/training is modeled after the boys/mens game, and a lot of coaches are not aware of things like the frequency of ACL tears in young women footballers and the conditioning programs which might prevent those injuries.

*We accept the differences in the way that men and women move as ‘natural’, and so do nothing to raise girl athlete’s awareness of poor posture on the field, poor running technique, the importance of being relaxed and having a good stance.

*And, most problematic of all: we don’t listen to girls. We don’t take their complaints seriously. We dismiss their complaints as teenage melodrama or psychosomatic weakness.

That’s a lot of crap to deal with. It’s why teaching/coaching/advising girls and women can be harder – but it’s also why it’s so absolutely rewarding. The things we learn in such settings not only change how we play – they in fact change how we live.

Amazingly, as the Guardian reports, doing the double is almost a disappointment for the Gunners; last year, Arsenal won the quadruple, the heart of their run of 51 straight wins that was finally ended with a draw earlier this season.

Let that sink in for a second: 51 straight wins. In a game where one bad bounce can cost you, that is undoubtedly a phenomenal achievement. It’s also not necessarily good for women’s football in England. Too many games are over before they begin, and nobody wants to know who the champion will be before the season even starts.

The structural problems in the English game are pretty clear. Despite impressive numbers for participation at the grassroots — over a million women and girls played the game last year — too many teams have for too long been at the mercy of their parent clubs. Arsenal’s dominance comes from the strong support they’ve received from the club, but that’s all too rare.

Leeds United L.F.C., Arsenal’s opponents today, have survived against the odds after being abandoned when Leeds United chairman Ken Bates cut their funding and use of training facilities. Leeds managed to buck the trend of this leading to disaster by acquiring sponsorship from Empire Direct and later Leeds Metropolitan University. For many women’s teams tied to men’s teams, though, relegation for the latter often means extinction for the former. This happened to Charlton Athletic’s women’s team just last year: success on the field for the females was not enough when the club decided to cut costs when the men were relegated.

The final thus contrasted two models: Arsenal Ladies success shows how much value can be gained from close cooperation with the men’s team. Yet league-wide, the trend should surely be towards Leeds’ now-independent model, so that women’s teams can develop on their own feet and not be dependent on the results of the men’s club for survival.

Women’s Professional Soccer
The launch of the new Women’s Professional Soccer league in the United States in 2009 might deal a further blow, at least in the short term, to women’s football in England. It is not hard to imagine that some of the best and most ambitious female players and coaches might jump ship to a fully professional team across the Atlantic.

Unlike the previous professional league, the WUSA, WPS looks to have a sensible modest business model that should mean it can survive without attracting huge crowds. I’ve been following closely the early stages of the formation of the Chicago WPS club (and so can you, if you read the blog by its president, Peter Wilt), and it looks like it will be a very impressive set-up (and Peter: please sign Kelly Smith!).

Like most other American professional sports leagues, WPS will surely encourage parity that would make 51 consecutive wins unlikely; WPS should be able to attract fans who want to see competitive soccer week in, week out. Teams will be independent entities, but some will also partner with MLS clubs to share facilities and resources (Chicago’s WPS team will play at the Fire’s Toyota Park, for example).

As well as competition, then, perhaps WPS in America can also set something of an example for how a women’s league could flourish. For as much as Arsenal set an inspiring example with their set-up and performance, no league can thrive when one team is indomitable and women’s teams are tied to the fluctuating fortunes of men’s teams.

The Guardian article also reports the FA are currently reviewing the future of the women’s game. Given the historical debt the F.A. owes the women’s game, let’s hope it really comes up with a solid plan and funding to develop a more competitive league.

It’s very hard to accept any kind of patronising view towards the World Cup when we hear Marta’s story. That doesn’t mean one has to enjoy it or even watch it necessarily, but if one loves football, it’s impossible not to respect the passion and pride for the game shown by the players who just want to do what we all dreamt of once: represent their country at the highest level they can playing the intoxicating game we all can’t get enough of (a passion notably absent amongst certain male superstars in recent years when they’ve pulled on their country’s shirt).

Marta and her teammates have been advocating for a Brazilian league, but they are battling institutional inertia and a history that banned soccer for women until 1979. The federal government beginning in the 1980s limited sponsorship opportunities for women and prevented their competitions from being held at athletic grounds, consigning them to, in many cases, the beaches in Rio.

Copacabana Beach, in fact, in 1981 served as the venue for the first women’s tournament. The strongest women’s side through much of the 1980s, Esporte Clube Radar, used the beach as its home ground. Opposition to women playing football has been constant. The challenges range from the physical—Marta reports that her brother hit her when he found she was playing, and BBC columnist Tim Vickery’s girlfriend says she got similar lashings from her father (BBC Sport, Sept 10)—to the subtly patronizing gender stereotypes that frame women, in the main, as an object of the male gaze or as devoted disciples of home and church.

“Today, when I came into the field, I heard a guy say that I should be at a laundry sink, washing clothes,” said a Radar player in 1984. “But I did not bother to reply to him, although I was angry. My reaction came later, with the ball at my feet.”

And of course, it does come down to what happens when the ball is at a person’s feet. And boy, Marta has some feet, as this video demonstrates as she put five past Canada earlier this year (alright, the defending’s atrocious):