Don’t compare men’s and women’s football

They are different entities. But one is not less important than the other.

Photo by Adrian Dennis / AFP via Getty Images

In spite of Sunday’s loss, Gareth Southgate’s reputation as one of the best managers this country has ever had is cemented. And as has been widely reported, Southgate is the only England manager in history to qualify for two major tournament finals. It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of this achievement. Simply put, as the ever-laconic Harry Kane did last month: “We haven’t won anything as a nation for a long, long time.”

While it is true that under Southgate, the men’s national team have come the closest of any previous iteration to win a major international trophy since 1966, and this is the first time they have reached a final on foreign soil, has anyone remembered when Sarina Wiegman and the Lionesses triumphed at the Euros in 2022 and reached the final of the World Cup the year after? (They lost to Spain, whose epochal win, incidentally, was overshadowed after the former head of the Spanish football federation Luis Rubiales kissed player Jenni Hermoso.)

By virtue of both teams playing the beautiful game, comparisons between the two are naturally going to be made. A lot of this discussion centres around whether they are the same game, or not. Some posit the women’s is less skilful. Others argue that the women’s game isn’t trying to replicate the men’s and should, therefore, be regarded independently. The latter makes more sense – they are two different games. Women are biologically shorter, lighter and slower than their male counterparts, and one 2019 Norwegian study suggested that, to accommodate such anthropometric differences, a women’s pitch and the goalie’s net should be smaller, and the ball should weigh less (according to researchers, having women play with a men’s ball would be the equivalent of the men kicking about with a basketball). The game is the same, but the delineations that arise due to gender are subtle. Physical differences translate to different tactics deployed; less tiki-taka, more long-balling; when women are defending, more players get in the box to take up more space.

Gender parity is accounted for in other sports. In athletics, women throw lighter discuses and leap over lower hurdles; in volleyball, a lower net is used; in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), a lighter ball is used. It does no one any favours to pretend that men and women are equal in sports, but this does not negate the fact that gender equity is something we should strive for. An easy way for this to happen is through language and the recognition of women’s sporting achievements.

It’s the kind of acknowledgement that, when done correctly, can be transformative. Take Andy Murray, whose advocacy of women’s rights in sports saw him enter the chrysalis a mere tennis legend and emerge from it, totally transformed, a global feminist icon. When a journalist called Sam Querrey the first American to reach a Grand Slam semi-final since 2009, Murray added, “male player”. Similarly in 2016, after John Inverdale said that Murray was the first person to win two Olympic gold medals in tennis, the Scot said, “well, to defend the singles titles. I think Venus and Serena [Williams] have won about four each.”

We might cast this dismissal of women’s sport as insidious patriarchy. It’s probably more accurate to suggest it is a product of mere laziness. The ability to celebrate the fantastic efforts of the men’s national team does not need to – nor should it – come at the expense of relegating the women’s feats to the backroom, along with old clothes and Nan’s ashes. Semantics matter; specificity matters; the historic erasure of the accomplishments of women could be so easily negated by adding the appropriate possessive pronoun – in this instance, women’s or men’s – into a sentence. Is that too much to ask?