FourFourTwo November 2020 55WSL
W
hoever said that all publicity is
good publicity obviously didn’t
support West Ham United.
In October 2016, BBC News
beamed footage of the
Hammers’ female players
pounding the pavements
next to a busy, streetlit road,
having apparently been barred from using
the club’s own gym facilities. If that wasn’t
bleak enough, chairman Stephen Hunt also
claimed that the club – then competing in
the third-tier FA Women’s Premier League
Southern Division – had been prevented from
finding their own sponsors, couldn’t afford
travel to matches, and were even playing in
the previous season’s kit (with the names of
former players helpfully peeled off). Oh, and
West Ham were ignoring his emails, too. “It’s
beyond negligence,” huffed Hunt, drawing
his daggers. “Someone had to say something
and it may as well be me.”
In terms of PR, a public brawl was Pretty
Rubbish. But from it came the swift action
that Hunt had wanted all along. That month,
he was gone. In a swift statement rebuking
his many accusations, West Ham claimed to
have already been in the process of joining
the growing number of clubs taking their
women’s teams ‘in house’ and out of the
dark ages. Sure enough, they did just that:
fast-forward to 2020, and the rebranded
West Ham Women – led by the 20-year-old
Jack Sullivan, son of majority owner David –
are into their third WSL campaign and rising
fast. Appointing the joint-chairman’s teenage
son was ridiculed in 2017, but now the Irons
are used for the BBC’s programme-making,
rather than depressing news footage. Sullivan
became the subject of Britain’s Youngest
Football Boss in 2018, then his side starred in
2020 follow-up Squad Goals.
Football changes fast. Even so, in the UK,
the women’s game is evolving with particular
speed. A record 11.7 million viewers tuned in
to see England’s agonising 2019 World Cup
semi-final loss to the USA – a smidgen more
than those who beat (or embraced) their
food comas for the Gavin & Stacey Christmas
Day special – and 38,262 supporters watched
November 2019’s North London Derby at the
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
The Women’s Super League (WSL) is no
longer playing catch-up with Europe’s elite
divisions. In a stunning summer of transfer
activity, Chelsea completed a world-record
deal for Danish attacker Pernille Harder, while
Tottenham snared Alex Morgan – the USA’s
most marketed female footballer – until the
end of the season, and each Manchester club
completed a double swoop for their own
trophy-toting Americans. City also convinced
England internationals Lucy Bronze and Alex
Greenwood to swap the behemoths of Lyon
for burning ambition back home, and Everton
made a statement by bringing in France No.9
Valerie Gauvin, supplementing the superstar
forwards in a league that already boasts
Arsenal’s Vivianne Miedema and Chelsea’s
Australian icon, Sam Kerr.
The financial honey pot of English football
is becoming all the sweeter for the world’sleading players – but the truth is much more
nuanced than that. All around the country,
women’s football is going through seismic
change on an unprecedented scale, as men’s
clubs and commercial partners finally begin
to get serious about it.
The games are just beginning.THIS IS ENGLAND
Believe it or not, coronavirus wasn’t all bad
for English football this summer. When the
National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL)
in the USA cancelled its season in June and
arranged only a mini Fall Series to replace it,
the nation’s top stars faced a decision: stick
around to see what happens next, or, with
next summer’s Olympics in sight, find game
time elsewhere.
“COVID-19 has somewhat helped in terms
of transfer activity,” admits Aaron Little, thegeneral manager of Everton’s women since
February 2017. “It allowed some of the best
talent to come and play in the WSL, which
probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
I think the interesting thing in terms of the
recruitment this summer is how it affects
the next one. Can we retain that sort of US
talent here, or will they go back and force
clubs to fill in the gaps?”
The WSL is now an increasingly attractive
proposition, having been fully professional
since 2018. That aforementioned spread of
high-profile arrivals has served to highlight
its competitiveness among teams as a key
selling point – unlike in France or Germany,
for example, where Lyon (champions 14
times running) and Wolfsburg (just the four
times) dominate. There are chasms between
some WSL clubs, as 9-1 and 9-0 victories for
Arsenal and Chelsea have shown this term,
but competition is fierce.There had to be one unlucky side
relegated after two-thirds of
a curtailed 2019-20 campaign –
but with just one win from their
14 games, Liverpool deserved it.
A glance at the Merseysiders’
2019 accounts goes some way
to explaining why. By their own
definition, Liverpool consider
full-time employees to be those
working more than 20 hours per
week – yet unlike WSL rivals, their
entire playing squad of 19 was
considered semi-pro. A turnoverof £1.08m was dwarfed by that of
Chelsea (£3.33m), Manchester City
(£2.05m) and even long-awaited
second-tier debutants Manchester
United (£1.25m), while the wage
bill was more comparable with
also-rans and drop-dodgers than
title-chasers. Such investment
levels should still have kept them
up, but ultimately they paid an even
heavier price in embarrassment.
While the women’s side suffered,
Liverpool’s men proudly trumpeted
pre-tax profits of £42m in theirown accounts last year, prompting
some fury. “Their women’s team is
a token gesture,” fumed Reading’s
Jess Fishlock, Wales’ most-capped
footballer. “There is no way you
should have arguably the world’s
best [men’s] team, yet allow the
women’s team to be relegated.”
FSG president Mike Gordon
claimed the club’s women were
“an exceptionally important team”
at Anfield – but actions will speak
loudest as the Reds aim to make
their second-tier stay a brief one.ODD OnE OUT
The Premier League big guns are leading a WSL charge – with one exception
Above Spurs have
got in on the action,
drawing a bona fide
superstar in Morgan
Top right Bronze
and Kaagman: two
impressive signings,
for different reasons
Above right Meet
the Press: Christen
Press, Manchester
United’s new arrival