Category Archives: Women’s football

Female footballers who fled Afghanistan in 2021 criticise BBC’s ‘false footballers’ article

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Players criticise the BBC for questioning their integrity and naming individuals without consent

Female football players who fled Afghanistan after Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021 are criticising a recent BBC article which has labelled some of those evacuated as “false footballers”.

The investigation by BBC Newsnight said some of the descriptions of UK visa applicants as national players or members of a regional team “appear to be false”. The report said there is resentment among “genuine players” now living under Taliban rule.

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Saudi Arabia to sponsor Women’s World Cup and tighten ties with Fifa

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  • Tourist authority joins international brands on list
  • World Cup starts on 20 July at Eden Park, Auckland

Saudi Arabia’s tourist authority is to sponsor football’s Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this year, despite the country’s history of oppression of women’s rights.

Fifa is expected to confirm that Visit Saudi will join international brands such as Adidas, Coca-Cola and Visa in attaching its name to the 32-team tournament that will kick off in front of an expected 50,000 supporters at Auckland’s Eden Park on 20 July.

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Leah Williamson among Lionesses recognised in New Year honours list

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  • Beth Mead, Ellen White and Lucy Bronze are made MBEs
  • Denise Lewis becomes a dame and Pat Jennings gets CBE

England captain Leah Williamson is one of four Euro 2022 winners to be recognised in the New Year honours list.

The Arsenal defender lifted the Lionesses’ first major trophy after the team’s 2-1 extra-time defeat of Germany at Wembley to earn the only piece of silverware for an England senior side since the men’s team’s World Cup triumph in 1966. The 25-year-old becomes an OBE, while her teammates Beth Mead, Ellen White and Lucy Bronze have been awarded MBEs. The head coach Sarina Wiegman has also been awarded an honorary CBE.

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New year honours 2023: Mary Quant and Lionesses among those recognised

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Brian May and Grayson Perry are knighted, Denise Lewis is made a dame and Frank Skinner becomes MBE

The fashion designer Mary Quant, the Lionesses and the Queen guitarist Brian May are among those recognised in the first new year honours of the king’s reign.

Quant, 92, who as one of the most influential fashion figures in the swinging 60s popularised the miniskirt and hot pants, becomes a Companion of Honour, one of the top honours.

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Australia 1-2 Canada: international football friendly – as it happened

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Out come the two sides onto a dramatically lit Allianz Stadium pitch. There’s firework smoke haze, spotlights, and the feel of a pop concert.

The new Allianz Stadium is resplendent tonight, all shiny and new and filled with fancy lights and noise from the PA system, which is alternating between loud pop music and interactions with fans.

With 20 minutes to go before kick-off, fans are still making their way in (and risking missing the firework display), possibly stopping off for a quick cheeseburger spring roll or two from one of the many concourse outlets (disclaimer: I have not seen a cheeseburger spring roll and know not what they are, nor can I vouch for their tastiness and/or health benefits).

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Australia slump to second defeat to Canada after early promise fades

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  • Olympic champions beat Matildas 2-1 at Allianz Stadium
  • Adriana Leon double cancels out Mary Fowler’s early opener

Three days ago the Matildas were in crisis. There were 320 days until a home World Cup and a 1-0 friendly loss to Canada indicated – once again – that getting anywhere near the trophy was basically an insurmountable task. Tony Gustavsson, the man appointed to steer an underperforming Australia to said trophy, was starting to be seen as less like a nice-natured, slightly quirky man with a very good plan and more like a slick corporate type who delivers interesting TED talks but whose advice is not quite working for those he was hired to help.

On Tuesday night, with 317 days to go, he emerged for the rematch at Allianz Stadium wearing a hospital-white hoodie and white trainers, Matildas merchandise around his neck and an earpiece that had him looking every bit the new-age life coach. He had just told media the previous day that he still had the backing of Football Australia and pleaded with external forces to trust in his process.

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Matildas face World Cup race against time after friendly defeat to Canada

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  • Australia lose 1-0 at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane
  • Matildas left to rue missed chances in World Cup warm-up

Matildas coach Tony Gustavsson believes his squad is in a race against time to complete preparations for next year’s Women’s World Cup but that home-field advantage can help push the team towards success.

Australia will co-host the 32-team finals in July and August with neighbours New Zealand, and Gustavsson warned against complacency ahead of his side’s latest preparation matches.

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Hope not hate: England women football team enjoy positive social media posts

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Study shows female Euro players got 125 positive posts for each hate one – in contrast to abuse directed at England men

The vast majority of social media posts directed at England women’s triumphant Euro 2022 football players across a three-month period were positive, research has found.

The study of 78,141 posts on Twitter, Reddit and the imageboard website 4chan identified more than 50,000 positive posts – roughly one “hate” post for every 125 “hope” ones.

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Female footballers deserve equal pay, says German chancellor after Euro run

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Germany’s women would have received €60,000 each if they had won European Championships, while the men would have received €400,000

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has made a push for equal pay for female international footballers after the team made it to the final of the recent European Championships.

“My position on this is clear,” Scholz said after a meeting on Tuesday with the German Football Association (DFB) to discuss the issue. “We talked about how we can continue to help more girls and women get excited about football. Of course, the wages at such tournaments play a major role in this,” he said.

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Lionesses’ legacy at risk as school PE fails girls, experts warn

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In the past 10 years alone, 42,000 hours of PE lessons have been lost in UK secondary schools – and girls are the worst hit

Twelve years of Tory government have had a disastrous impact on girls’ sport in schools, experts have said, warning that last weekend’s women’s Euro victory will be squandered unless drastic action is taken.

In the past 10 years, 42,000 hours of PE lessons have been lost in secondaries – with girls the most affected – and the situation is getting worse, according to the Youth Sport Trust.

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‘Sad … proud’: disappointment in Germany over loss to Lionesses

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After stunning run ends with defeat at Wembley, German team receives praise for inspiring nation and winning new fans

Germany reacted with disappointment after being beaten by England in a nail-biting and historic final at Wembley.

“A hundred and twenty minutes of pure passion and pure struggle weren’t enough today,” tweeted the official account of the German team, after their 2-1 defeat. “Respect and congratulations to the Lionesses.”

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Women’s Euros final set for a female flypast and a full house at Wembley

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Famous fans get behind England for a gripping contest against Germany that is expected to set records

An all-female RAF flypast will grace the skies above Wembley on Sunday in celebration of a women’s football team that this weekend received good-luck messages from the prime minister, the leader of the opposition and the royal family before the Women’s Euro 2022 final against Germany.

“Your passion for the game, your tenacity in tricky spots and above all your astounding talent on the pitch have already created a summer of fantastic memories for millions of us,” Boris Johnson wrote in a letter to the England team.

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How England Lionesses’ coach Sarina Wiegman developed a ruthless, winning formula

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Wiegman has transformed the fortunes of the women’s football team and got them to the Euro semi-finals – with no fear of making tough calls along the way

For any of the 7.6 million BBC One viewers who tuned in to watch England’s dramatic extra-time defeat of Spain in the quarter-finals of the Euros on Wednesday night, the sight of an animated blond Dutch woman on the touchline will not have gone unnoticed.

Sarina Wiegman, England’s manager, is fast becoming a talking point. Less for her antics – although watching her being lifted aloft in a bear-hug from centre-back Millie Bright after the full-time whistle was a treat – and more for the 11-month transformation of the Lionesses from disjointed and confidence-drained to contenders on the biggest of stages.

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‘She is ridiculous’: Sam Kerr earns yet more plaudits after match-winner in FA Cup final

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  • Striker scores twice as Chelsea secure double with 3-2 win
  • Australian ‘an amazing centre forward’, says Emma Hayes

Sam Kerr has been labelled the complete centre forward by the Chelsea manager, Emma Hayes, after the Australia captain netted another double to help her side to a second piece of silverware in the space of a week.

Having scored two sensational volleys last weekend to help secure the Women’s Super League title with victory over Manchester United, Kerr was again on the scoresheet twice on Sunday as Chelsea won the Women’s FA Cup final against Manchester City.

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Sam Kerr caps stunning injury-time turnaround as Matildas leave it late to beat New Zealand

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  • Australia strike on 94 and 96 minutes to win 2-1 in Townsville
  • Anna Green wonder strike puts visitors ahead in first half

Emily van Egmond and Sam Kerr struck in added time to lift the Matildas to a 2-1 friendly win over trans-Tasman rivals New Zealand in Townsville.

The Matildas were heading for their first loss to the Football Ferns since 1994 on Friday night, trailing 1-0 at the end of the regulation 90 minutes despite dominating the contest.

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How Hope Powell became a football legend: ‘I’m not afraid of anybody’

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She was kicked off her school team for being a girl – then played for her country and became manager of the women’s team at 31. She discusses how she helped put women’s football firmly on the map

When Hope Powell reminisces about the childhood that she spent scurrying across the streets of south London, she thinks of football. Perhaps that is no surprise: over the past 40 years, it has given her a career of firsts – after a trophy-laden playing career, she became England’s first female coach, first Black coach and youngest coach. Today, the 54-year-old is the manager of Brighton in the rapidly growing Women’s Super League (WSL).

Over the course of Powell’s career, the women’s game has evolved beyond recognition. Her football education began in the late 70s, just a few years after the Football Association lifted its ban on women’s football, in 1971. She idolised Kevin Keegan and Ray Wilkins, but had no female players to look up to. She and her brothers would knock on the doors of their friends’ houses, then take to the football cages on her council estate for games of rush goalie to 3-a-side.

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Lewes’ Kelly Lindsey: ‘In Afghanistan I had to build trust with the players’

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Club’s head of performance talks about coaching the Afghan women’s national team and being ‘100% herself’ in her new role

“We’re eager to do something that the world doesn’t believe is possible, to take this little club and become champions on the world stage and make sure we do it with all the right values,” says Lewes’ new head of performance and former head coach of the Afghanistan women’s team, Kelly Lindsey.

Few people could talk of such lofty ambitions for the south coast team, whose men play in the Isthmian League Premier Division and women in the Women’s Championship, and be taken seriously. Lindsey, though, comes with strong credentials on and off the pitch and feels like the missing piece in the developing project at Lewes, bringing elite performance know-how to the community-owned club that funds its women’s and men’s teams equally.

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‘This is our final’: the team who led athletes’ escape from Afghanistan | Suzanne Wrack

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A dedicated crew of people helped the women’s national football team and others to flee the Taliban over two remarkable weeks

“We have been working like fingers on one hand, with different roles, and we came together as a big strong punch,” says the former captain and one of the founders of the Afghanistan women’s national football team, Khalida Popal. She is talking about the small team that pulled off the mission to evacuate 100-200 Afghan athletes and a number of individuals connected to them from the Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul.

Across a two-week period those fingers worked tirelessly around the clock and across numerous time zones, tracking the real-time movements of the Taliban and military personnel on the ground to pull off what seemed completely impossible: to get a group of female football players, many teenagers, and a host of others, including family members, into the airport and on to planes.

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‘A violation’: football star recounts having to strip during match to prove she was female

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Tabitha Chawinga, a Malawi international who plays in China, has called for greater safeguards against abuse in her home country

The international footballer Tabitha Chawinga is calling on Malawi’s football authorities to introduce safeguards to protect women from abuse at all levels of the game.

Chawinga, who became the first woman from Malawi to sign for a European football team when she joined the Swedish club Krokom/Dvärsätts IF in 2014, said that she had been forced to strip in public during a match to prove she was female and was regularly trolled on social media about her looks.

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