Category Archives: Women’s football

Les Hijabeuses: the female footballers tackling France’s on-pitch hijab ban

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Young players excluded from matches because of their religious dress find a way to play on and encourage other hijab-wearing women into the sport

Founé Diawara was 15 years old when she was first told she could not wear her hijab in a football match.

It was an important game. She had recently got into the team of a club in Meaux, the town north-east of Paris where she grew up, and they were playing a local rival. Diawara had been wearing her hijab during training, but as she was about to walk on to the pitch, the referee said she must remove it if she wanted to play.

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Footballers and clubs to boycott social media in mass protest over racist abuse

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Professionals and teams from top English leagues will log off Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for the whole of next weekend

The world of English professional football will unite for an unprecedented four-day boycott of social media next weekend to protest at the continued abuse and racism aimed at players.

Clubs in the English Premier League, English Football League, Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship will switch off their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts in response to “the ongoing and sustained discriminatory abuse” of footballers, and their despair over a lack of action from the tech companies.

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‘Now it’s the girls’ dream’: Mara Gómez on becoming Argentina’s first trans footballer

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Gómez made her professional debut this month, and wants to break barriers in a place where football and identity are entwined

To get a call up to your club’s first team is every Argentinian boy’s dream. Or so the traditional tango goes.

“Now it’s the girls’ dream … too,” Mara Gómez, who became the first trans footballer to play in a top-flight Argentinian league earlier this week, tells the Guardian. Gómez signed a contract with Villa San Carlos in the recently professionalized women’s Primera División, after years of journeying through the amateur leagues.

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Against all odds: South Sudan’s daring drive on women’s football

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The country’s FA is launching an ambitious strategy for a sport that has been considered a taboo for girls

South Sudan gained independence in 2011 and its history is so short that it is a regular low-scoring answer on the popular quiz show Pointless. Much less trivially, for a majority of its existence the country has been in civil war, with peace and a new national unity government in place only from February of this year.

For a country clawing its way back from the devastating effects of a conflict that has seen hundreds of thousands killed and 1.5 million internally displaced, where nearly half of girls are married by 18, child marriages are increasing and sexual violence was used tactically during the war , it would be easy to assume that football, let alone women’s football, would be nonexistent.

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‘How did none of us think of this before?’: sports bra scheme breaks down entry barriers | Samantha Lewis

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By providing access to basic equipment, a not-for-profit is helping normalise women’s involvement in sports at every level

Five years ago, Sarah Dwyer-Shick – a youth football coach from the United States – spent time visiting friends and colleagues scattered across Africa. Along with mosquito repellent and sunscreen, she carried with her a small bundle of sports bras as gifts for young players in rural Namibia.

When she arrived, Dwyer-Shick found that her gifts were coveted by older players, too – including those on the Namibian women’s national team. Many of them, she realised, had never owned a sports bra before.

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‘We did it’: Joy and relief as Australia and New Zealand celebrate Women’s World Cup bid success

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  • ‘We freakin’ did it,’ says Matildas captain Sam Kerr
  • Result hailed as a ‘tremendous and exciting step forward’

Australia and New Zealand were celebrating on Friday as the nations awoke to the news that their joint bid had won the race to host the 2023 Women’s World Cup, with the success being hailed as a historic moment for women’s sport in the region.

“We did it. We freakin’ did it,” said Sam Kerr, the Matildas captain whose image had been projected onto Sydney’s Opera House in the buildup to the announcement in the small hours of Friday morning.

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Jaw-dropping sport moments of 2019: USA snub Trump … and enjoy it

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Megan Rapinoe walked it as she talked it, inspiring the USA to World Cup glory while posing important political questions

The cheeky fire-starters at Eight by Eight magazine knew exactly what they were doing when they waited six whole months until the business end of the Women’s World Cup to publish the interview with Megan Rapinoe they had recorded in January. At least as much as the impish American midfielder knew what she was provoking when asked whether the US women’s national soccer team she captains intended to visit Donald Trump if they managed the exceedingly rare feat of repeating as world champions.

“I’m not going to the fucking White House,” Rapinoe flatly stated. “No fucking way will we be invited to the White House.”

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‘A lot of the England team still haven’t apologised’: Eni Aluko on life after whistleblowing

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When the striker called out racism in football, it ended her international career. She explains why the fight was worth it

Eniola Aluko is one of only 11 female footballers to have played more than 100 times for England. She has scored some of the Lionesses’ most memorable goals, was the first female pundit on Match Of The Day, and is a qualified lawyer, having graduated from Brunel University London with a first in 2008. But it is as a whistleblower that she is destined to be best remembered. And, like many whistleblowers, she has spent the subsequent years being rubbished by those she exposed.

Now she has written a memoir. They Don’t Teach This is a fascinating examination of her multiple identities – British and Nigerian, a girl in a boy’s world, footballer and academic, a kid from an estate with upper-middle-class parents, a God-fearing rebel. But the book is at its best when she reveals exactly what happened after she accused the England management team of racism, and the Football Association of turning a blind eye to it. Aluko does not hold back – and few people from the football establishment emerge with their reputation intact.

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USA v Netherlands: Women’s World Cup final – live!

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25 min: A cross from Dunn to Mewis gives van Veenendaal a difficult catch as she’s backtracking.

Neil Truby asks what it means to say, as I did earlier, that Mewis responds with a takedown. Basically, a wrestling move. But I should clarify that a few seconds had elapsed after Rapinoe cried foul.

22 min: Now the USA look more deliberate, passing around at the back.

Hubert O’Hearn with an interesting point: “What I’m going to suggest is by no means insulting, but this feels more like an FA Cup than a World Cup. You know, some hulking monster of a Man City, or Chelsea in their pomp, facing the gutsy team from mid-table or the Championship that went on a magical run. It’s actually rather charming – can’t remember the last time a World Cup Final felt so Favourite v. Underdog.”

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Sweden beat England to Women’s World Cup bronze with help from VAR

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Rotherham in November does not have too much in common with Nice in the searing 30C heat of a June evening but there was a definite sense of deja vu on the Côte d’Azur on Saturday night.

Phil Neville readily admits that one of his toughest moments as England coach came in South Yorkshire late last year where a soul-crushing 2-0 defeat inflicted by Peter Gerhardsson’s side “ruined” his Christmas.

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Alex Morgan’s World Cup tea celebration against England causes a stir

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US goal celebrations were a talking point yet again during Tuesday’s World Cup semi-final against England. After Alex Morgan scored USA’s second goal of the game, she raised her fingers to her lips, miming a sip of tea.

Alex Morgan sippin tea #USAvENG pic.twitter.com/oyiyeaFzKQ

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‘You can’t win without gay players,’ says USA’s World Cup hero Megan Rapinoe

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• Coach Jill Ellis is unconcerned at Rapinoe speaking out
• France’s Corrine Diacre will not quit after 2-1 defeat

Megan Rapinoe showed no sign of stemming her outspoken ways after scoring the goals that saw USA march one step closer towards the World Cup final.

“Go gays!” she said after the 2-1 quarter-final victory over France in Paris and when asked to comment on whether it being Pride month made her contribution more personally significant. “You can’t win a championship without gays on your team - it’s never been done before, ever. That’s science, right there!

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Megan Rapinoe double sends USA past France and into England semi-final

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It was fitting that the social justice activist Megan Rapinoe, the focus of unwanted presidential attentions before the game for her “I’m not going to the fucking White House” comment, was the player to power the USA into a semi-final with England, her two goals emphatically ending France’s hopes of a men’s and women’s World Cup double.

“Le Grand Match” was a slightly more measured billing from Fifa than Rapinoe’s hopes of a “total shit-show circus” but either way this meeting between the holders and the hosts did not disappoint. Rapinoe is more than a mouthpiece, she is, in the words of her teammate Kelley O’Hara, “a baller”. No player has been directly involved in more goals in the World Cup than Rapinoe since she made her debut in the competition in 2011 and, although Wendie Renard’s header launched a spirited late fightback, Les Bleues were not able to find the equaliser in an end-to-end spectacle.

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England v Argentina: Women’s World Cup 2019 – live!

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The breakthrough! Argentina push forward for a change, but when they lose the ball England break fast and in numbers. Mead gets it on the left and her first-time cross is low and precise; Correa is stranded at the near post and Taylor turns it into an empty net!

59 mins: “According to Jonathan Pearce on BBC ‘The goalkeeper’s in electrical form.’” reports Paul Thompson. But what electrical? Perhaps a washing machine: quite good at securing clean sheets.

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‘You get used to the gunfire’ – filming the Libyan women’s football team

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Denounced on TV, they train at secret locations watched by armed guards. We meet the woman from Hastings who made a fascinating film about Libya’s guttsiest football squad

‘Just what our country needs!” rails the imam sarcastically on Libyan TV. “A women’s football team! And what’s more, they chose tall, young beautiful girls for the team – and for months their legs will be exposed.”

Women’s football may be getting its moment in the spotlight with the World Cup about to kick off. But, as the absorbing new documentary Freedom Fields reveals, the Libyan women’s national team has some way to go. As well as that imam, the film also features this statement from extremist group Ansar al-Sharia: “We strongly refute what the supporters of immoral westernisation are doing under the pretext of women’s freedom. This might lead to other sports with even more nudity, such as swimming and running.”

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