It looks like the Women’s Super League in England, a new semi-professional venture (not fully professional, as some are saying), will finally launch in 2011 and the application process is now open for clubs who wish to participate.

The plan is for eight teams to compete in a summer season from March to October, thus minimising schedule conflicts with the men’s game but also going up directly against Women’s Professional Soccer in the United States.

The Football Association broke its pledge to launch a new Women’s Super League in 2010 earlier this year, citing difficult economic times. The furor over that, and continued criticism’s of the FA’s poor record on diversity from the government and pressure groups, seems finally to have spurred an organisation with a historically terrible record on promoting the women’s game (and in fact, doing the exact opposite by banning it from Football League grounds for fifty years) to finally fund a step forward.

Unfortunately, every single document listed on the F.A.’s Women’s Super League application page — all of which look like interesting reading from their titles — are not actually linked properly, so it’s impossible to read all of the details. Oops.

But the site does offer one interesting and important detail,  stating that “Clubs who successfully apply for membership to The FA Women’s Super League will be able to apply for funding from The FA to support club development activities in specified areas thereby promoting sustainability. A maximum of £70,000 per season per club will be available.”

This is a welcome commitment, given the league is in a highly competitive market for the best British talent with much of it playing overseas in Women’s Professional Soccer right now.

However, according to the Guardian, that development fund is only available if clubs make a considerable financial commitment to pay £20-30,000 to top players.

It’s a little worrying that even the league’s project leader, Sally Horrox, thinks that “we might be scaring a few of the clubs off. But we are raising the bar for the women’s game and we are serious about player payments and other minimum requirements.”

Sunderland chairman Maurice Alderson added that “We can’t afford to pay our players expenses, let alone £30,000 a year. We run our whole club on less than half of that. I love the concept of the league and I’d love be part of it, but it’s going to be very difficult.”

Alderson’s comments sum up the general excitement and concern about the new venture. It’s certainly about time the FA followed through on their commitment and debt to women’s football, and they should be praised for making funding available. The women’s game has grown enormously at the grassroots in England in the past couple of decades and the profile of the national team reached an unprecedented high as Kelly Smith and Karen Carney led the team to the UEFA championship final this year.

But the gap between the English game and the European elite was still evident as Germany easily dismissed England, with an obviously greater depth and class of athlete available to them, all of whom play in the Women’s Football Bundesliga — a twelve team league set-up way back in 1990 by the German Football Association, who obviously had far more forethought than their English counterpart.

The Super League might be the way to remedy that. But will English clubs be able to raise enough investment to match the ambition of the league, or will this prove to be another false dawn?

It might not be getting the 16 page pullout supplements in every newspaper that the Barclay’s Premier League is, but the F.A. Women’s Premier League also kicks-off this weekend.  The shadow of the men’s game (as well as the women’s European Championships going on concurrently) obviously looms over the season’s launch, but so does a black cloud over the future prospects for women’s football in England as a whole.

The grand ambition of the F.A. was to give the women’s game a new lease of life in 2010: instead of rainy, cold evenings a new elite Super League was planned for launch to run during the summer, where it might just win a little more of the spotlight. But that plan has now been shelved, perhaps indefinitely.

The original announcement in September of 2008 by the F.A. of a new Super League was a clear response to the impending launch of the summer-league WPS in the United States the following year, with several England internationals being tempted away by the pay and quality of the professional league. But in April this year, the Football Association announced it was deferring the start of the Super League due to “financial difficulties in companies with which we trade” . The F.A.  has done little to reassure anyone the Super League will ever now launch.

After the decision was announced (a desultory letter from the F.A. was sent to the clubs after the decision had already been leaked to the press and posted on the F.A.’s website), criticism rained down on the F.A. from within the women’s game. “If anybody wanted a clear indication of the FA’s regard for women’s football, this is it,” said Sue Tibballs, the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation’s chief executive in April. “They were looking at their budgets to see what they could cut and women’s football was an easy option. You have to question their fitness to run the women’s game.”

In June, F.A. Chairman Lord Triesman addressed the Women’s Premier League clubs, and failed to give any assurances whatsoever that the Super League would not be deferred again. “We cannot guarantee that this will not happen if significant commercial FA contracts and investment income is lost,” Triesman said, according to the minutes from the meeting.

Bristol Academy manager Gary Green had earlier pointed out that “It’s another kick in the teeth for the women’s game. I understand the bad economic situation, but that’s been going on for quite a while so you have to wonder if the plans were ever in place.” Legendary Arsenal coach Vic Akers added that “I think they looked at the budgets to see what they could cut and women’s football seemed the easy option.”

It wasn’t the first time the F.A. had failed to fulfil its promises to the women’s game: a similarly touted shiny new league failed at the start of this decade as well. Considering the historical debt the Football Association owes the women’s game not just from this but from the long ban on the sport under its auspices from 1921 to 1972, one has to wonder if they can ever be trusted again to nurture the future of the sport.

And providing one more little kick to the shins to the women’s game, the F.A.’s official Women’s Premier League website fails to even mention the new season is starting on its latest news page.

He was not kidding. Prominently seated at the announcement of the team’s name yesterday were over a dozen young girls curled up in Chicago city flags, with their blue and white stripes and four red stars each representing a historic moment in the city’s history.

Then, as music from Chicago blared appropriately and confetti was fired in the air, the name and logo of the team was announced: the Chicago Red Stars, their logo derived from that Chicago city flag. They will begin play in April 2009.

Civic pride, something Chicago is not short of, is the identity the team wants to build upon in an even more direct way than the previous soccer team Peter Wilt founded in this city, the Chicago Fire.

The logo was deliberately designed not to scream only “women’s soccer”, but to have a meaning that would appeal to a broader constituency and to that Chicago civic pride.

The Red Stars, Wilt said, intend to reach beyond the traditional women’s soccer audience: to embrace young adults, ethnic communities, the gay and lesbian community, traditional soccer supporters and the corporate dollar.

Without a large marketing budget, the Red Stars will focus on developing an organic online presence, led by Peter Wilt’s revealing blog, building from the ground up. And ticket prices will not scare anyone away. Season tickets start as low as $99 – under ten dollars a game, for the team’s matches at Toyota Park, also the home of the Chicago Fire.

Inevitably, the question of how the new WPS league differs from the previous women’s professional league in the United States (the WUSA) was raised in the press conference that followed the announcement. General Manager Marcia McDermott, who experienced the WUSA firsthand, said that the league’s business plan was leaner and smarter than the WUSA, which attracted good crowds but sank as it had overreached itself on expenditure.

Meanwhile, Wilt expressed his pleasure that, compared to the skepticism which had surrounded the launch of the expansion Chicago Fire in the nascent MLS, he’d already received strong support from across the city for the venture. The packed crowd and considerable media presence at the announcement bodes well for the team’s launch, as does admirable assistance from MLS both league-wide and in this case, from the cooperation of the Chicago Fire and Toyota Park.

And hiring as Head Coach Emma Hayes, formerly the first team coach of England’s omnipotent Arsenal Ladies, represents quite a coup.

League-wide, progress amongst the existing seven teams (an eighth franchise, Philadelphia, will join the league in 2010) is widely varied. The resurrected Boston Breakers seem to be set to go, for example, but concerns surround a couple of other teams, still lacking names and key staff ten months from kick-off.

In Chicago, though, those thoughts were far from everyone’s minds. The champagne flowed whilst Wilt welcomed every attendee personally, smiling kids ran around still wrapped in their Chicago city flags, and local supporters embraced the nation’s latest professional soccer team, the Chicago Red Stars.

It’s certainly true that many people think it will fail, as its predecessor the WUSA did. I can give you one reason why it won’t — the people who run it realise they have to earn your interest in it.

Peter Wilt, the Chicago Fire’s popular former GM and President who oversaw the club winning the Double (MLS and Open Cups) in their inaugural year, is heading the WPS team in the Windy City. Read his words, for in fact they would be well-heeded by all executives running soccer clubs in this country regardless of the gender of their players:

On the topic of excuses, the Women’s Professional Soccer Town Hall at the NSCAA Convention seemed to be full of them as panelists tried to explain why the WUSA didn’t survive and WPS will. The most popular one was “It’s the media’s fault”. That excuse was phrased a dozen different ways in the 90 minute forum. Suffice to say that room 338 at the Baltimore Convention Center was not a safe place for Barbaro, Sea Biscuit, Whirlaway or any other dead horse. We can not blame others for any lack of exposure and attendance. It is the responsibility of the League and its member teams to reach out to our audiences in other ways – new media and grassroots direct marketing – to connect our League and teams with people who are already emotionally and economically connected to the sport.

The other theme seemed to be the social cause of gender equity. You’ve heard the argument, “You must support this league, BECAUSE it’s a women’s sport and our daughters are entitled to role models and a place to play when they grow up.” I’m sorry, but that is NOT a solid basis to support any league or sport. It may be a convenient byproduct of a women’s pro sports league, but it is not a primary reason why anyone should attend WPS games. WPS will provide competitive, entertaining games featuring the best women’s soccer teams in the world at a fair price – THAT is the reason this League should be supported.

Photo credit: century council