A game of two halves

It wasn’t, let’s face it, a particularly successful debut weekend for Chelsea's new home kit. Defeat on Saturday for Thomas Tuchel's side in the FA Cup Final and then a thumping 4-0 win, yesterday, by Barcelona over Chelsea in the women’s Champions League Final. It would have made for uncomfortable reading this morning in SW6 and in Surrey. Unsurprisingly, however, most of the media chin-scratching is over the challenge Tuchel now faces to keep his team in contention for Europe next season, rather than recognition of just how far Emma Hayes has brought Chelsea, and women’s professional football in England.

The women’s game has transformed out of all recognition in recent years, with most of the big clubs ploughing money into their women’s squads, making competitions like the Women’s Super League in England far more exciting as a result. Rather than treating them as ancillary operations, owners like Roman Abramovich have matched ambition with resources. Chelsea coach Hayes has been the beneficiary of a recruitment programme which, proportionately, has kept pace with - and even exceeded - that of the men’s squad, complementing the dedicated training facilities at the club's all-squad Cobham training complex.

Picture: Chelsea FC

It was no coincidence, either, that Abramovich himself was in Gothenburg last night to cheer - and console - Hayes’ players. And, yet, I wonder how much newspaper attention will be afforded Hayes in taking an English women's team to the pinnacle fixture in European professional football? The sports pages may have covered the final, but the women’s game is still painfully lacking respect from many sports editors, with coverage often buried. Even worse, from male football fans, of which a cursory gaze through the comments of any attempt by the Mail Online to cover games reveals a depressing litany of misogyny (I’m not even talking about casual sexism, either) and homophobia. 

Picture: Twitter/Alex Scott

I’m not trying to be woke in raising this. I just find it hard to understand, genuinely, how in the 21st century it should even be a ‘thing’ that women play football professionally. But here we are, in a world where former Arsenal and England defender Alex Scott, who has already built up substantial experience as a TV presenter and football pundit, is chosen to replace Dan Walker (who has never played football professionally) as anchor of BBC1’s Football Focus, and all of a sudden online forums are full of “box-ticking” comments about the BBC appointing a black women to present the Saturday lunchtime institution. 

At risk of stating the bleeding obvious, there are clearly a lot of people with a problem at the idea of women doing something that men can also do. It manifests itself in even darker ways, too: former England international and Chelsea winger Karen Carney contemplated taking her own life after being abused on Twitter following comments she made during Amazon Prime coverage in December about Leeds beating West Brom 5-0. Even now, Carney is a lightning rod for online abuse, often for her Midlands accent, something that rarely afflicts male commentators from the same region (with, perhaps, the exception of Alan Smith).

Chelsea’s defeat in Gothenburg last night will be of little consequence to those categorically opposed to the idea of professional women’s football, but to those of us who do take an interest (mine, admittedly, through Chelsea’s ever-increasing success), there was much to celebrate, even if the four goals Hayes’ side shipped in a devastating first 35 minutes of the fixture will sting for some time. Objectively, Barcelona exposed a gulf in quality, shockingly so, considering just how talented Chelsea are, with their usually on-point ‘Kerr-by’ forward partnership of the symbiotic Samantha Kerr and Fran Kirby, along with appearances from other dependable such as central defender Millie Bright and goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger. 

This was still the same squad that recently won the WSL, the women’s League Cup and next weekend will contest the FA Cup. Chelsea’s appearance last night also marked the first time an English team had appeared in the pinnacle European finale since Arsenal won it in 2007 (Hayes was assistant to Vic Akers that night, in a season where Arsenal won a historic quadruple). They were also playing a Barcelona that had won all 26 of their domestic league matches, scoring 128 goals and conceding only five in the process. And that, for contrast, is on a budget of just Eur 4 million, a fraction of the salaries and transfer fees the men’s game commands.

Picture: Twitter/ChelseaFCW

Hayes, though, is a breath of fresh air, in football as a whole. “I am not going to give you crappy platitudes,” she said, live on BT Sport after her side had beaten Munich to reach the Champions League Final. “I have worked my whole life for this day and I am so fucking proud of them players. They have delivered.” Yep, the F-bomb on a Sunday lunchtime (Ofcom sanction, no doubt, in the post). But it was unlike any of the pro-forma cliches you normally get from professional football managers, the Keegan meltdown notwithstanding. 

“This is thousands of hours, thousands of setbacks," Hayes continued. “I got to this level through my hard work and determination, and I am fortunate enough to be working for a football club that I adore, that give me licence to do this.” She then reflected on how her love of football began on the Islington streets of her childhood: “I entered that pitch every day as a nine-year-old, about to ‘play’ in the Champions League final. Oh my God, my dreams came true today.” While, ultimately, those dreams may have taken a dent last night, Hayes’ ambition to drive women’s football ever onwards won’t be dented. She wants to win over the naysayers and give nine-year-old girls everywhere the idea that they, too, could play in a European final one day. 

It’s this self belief that has made her one of the best coaches in the game, regardless of gender, even raising the idea of how she’d make a better manager than many of those running men’s teams. Earlier this year Hayes was linked with the vacant job at AFC Wimbledon, one she instantly rejected, partly because she was extremely happy at Chelsea (jokingly, because Wimbledon wouldn’t have been able to afford her, anyway), and partly on principle.

"The football world needs to recognise that while the game is played by a different gender, it’s the same sport,” she railed. The qualities involved in team management were exactly the same as for a men’s team. “We are talking about human beings,” she stressed. “We spend too much time talking about gender and ethnicity instead of the quality of candidates.” 

Hayes then got to the nub of the issue: “Women's football is something to celebrate, and the quality and the achievements of all the females I represent. It’s an insult to them that we talk about women’s football being a ‘step down’, with the dedication and the commitment and the quality they have. That's what I’m disappointed with, not being linked to a football job.”

Picture: Peckham Town FC

Things have come a long way, however. A couple of weeks ago BBC London reporter Chris Slegg fronted a compelling film featuring Mary Phillip, England’s first black international captain and a six-time FA Cup winner, who is now the manager of men’s side Peckham Town. She’s now used to the “she ain’t got a clue what she’s doing” barbs - even from rival managers.  “It is still perceived as a men’s game and I am in men’s football. But when you learn to play you are coached the exact same way a man is. The drills and tactics are the same.”

“I was born in the 70s, fell in love with the game in the 80s, played at elite level in the 90s, became a professional in the early 2000s and a manager in the 2010s,” Phillip told the BBC. However, her journey and the journey of millions of female players has been long. 

Women’s football first became popular during World War One, but faced cultural male hostility. In 1921 it was banned by the Football Association. In 1967 Tottenham met (and beat…) Chelsea in the men’s FA Cup Final, a game that had a profound effect on the-then 19-year-old Patricia Gregory, who wrote to a local newspaper to query why women didn’t play football, and then set up a team of her own. Within a couple of years, a league of 47 teams had been set up, and the Women's Football Association was born. The same year, finally, the FA overturned their 1921 ban.

More than half a century on, the women’s game gets TV coverage and attention, but the sense is that it’s still not regarded with any of the same blanket national obsession as the men’s game. There’s no doubt that things are moving in the right direction - Sky Sports and the BBC jointly signed a £24 million deal with the Women’s Super League that will make it the world’s most-watched women’s sports league. Coming on top of £20 million in sponsorship, the TV deal has been described as “a game changer”. UEFA also recently announced a Eur 24 million package for women’s Champions League teams, pledging that clubs in the group stage will receive a minimum payment of Eur 400,000. 

Further visibility and further investment - even if paltry by comparison to the eye-watering sums swilling about the men’s game - but momentum that brings Emma Hayes’ dream just that little bit closer to reality.