A game of political football

It’s about an hour before the kick-off of the Women’s World Cup final. And, as I write this, I’m doing my best to fight nausea.

I know it’s infra dig to admit affection for footie, but we are all allowed one common touch. This is mine, and I never miss a good match. Which, alas, women can’t play.

That’s why I’m not going to watch our Lionesses, who are really pussycats. The England women’s team is regularly thrashed by English schoolboys, and not the most senior ones.

Yet even if the women were able to raise their standards to the level of 15-year-old boys, I still wouldn’t watch them for fear of throwing up. Such an onset of emesis wouldn’t be caused by their ineptitude – God knows I’ve sat through many bad men’s matches without rushing to the loo with a hand pressed to my mouth.

What is truly emetic is the political hysteria artificially whipped up around women’s football in general and this World Cup in particular. An inordinate amount of newspaper space and TV time is devoted to this second-rate sport, and I’m being generous with that adjective.

Once woke politics moves in, reason walks out. More and more one hears frankly idiotic demands that women players be paid as much as men because they are every bit as good.

This reminds me of John McEnroe’s interview a few years ago, when he said that Serena Williams was the best women’s tennis player of all time. Why such qualifiers, asked the interviewer. Why not say she is the best player, full stop?

Now Mac is on the woke side in general, but that was too much even for him. “Whoa,” he said. “If Serena competed against men, she’d be ranked 700 in the world.” He was a bit PC there – any fulltime male player, including veterans and college stars, would beat any female pro. Serena wouldn’t have made it into the top 1,000 and she knew it.

When asked if she’d like to play Andy Murray, she honestly said that was a ridiculous question: “Andy would beat me love and love in 10 minutes.” Women’s and men’s tennis, she added, are two different things.

True. However, a massive political campaign waged over decades has forced the organisers of Grand Slam tournaments to give the same prize money to men and women. The sports are different; only the pay packets are the same.

Now the same kind of deafening campaign for equal pay is monopolising public discourse on women’s football. There’s a minor hitch though: it’s easier to lean on Grand Slam organisers than on football club owners.

The former have to work hand in glove with their federations and therefore governments. However, the latter are private – and in Britain usually foreign – individuals who treat their clubs as strictly commercial propositions.

They’ll be happy to pay women players the same astronomical amounts they pay the men if their game attracted as many viewers and sponsors. But it doesn’t and, for all the woke politicking, never will.

Yet one important member of the England team is indeed paid by the Federation: its manager, the Dutch woman Sarina Wiegman. Our eagle-eyed campaigners have espied that she is paid a meagre £400,000 a year, whereas her male counterpart, Gareth Southgate, is on three million.

A gross injustice, or what? The clamour for Miss Wiegman’s salary to be bumped up to Gareth’s level is getting shriller and shriller, with its rational component not so much low as non-existent.

You see, Gareth could walk away from the England job tomorrow and instantly find a club that would pay him as much or more (by an order of magnitude if he chose to move to Saudi Arabia). Miss Wiegman’s options are rather more limited. However, the former midfielder turned pundit Danny Murphy doesn’t think they should be.

“The fundamentals of football are the same, for men or women,” he writes, “so there is no reason a woman couldn’t do the England men’s job…”.

Now, I played for my university team back in Russia, and “the fundamentals of football” were exactly the same there as well. Would I be able to manage England then, Danny? If I asked that question, he’d laugh. That’s a different game, he’d explain. Quite. But this goes for the women’s game as well, same fundamentals and all.

“It doesn’t have to be compared to the men’s game,” continues Mr Murphy. “It’s a terrific event in its own right. I can’t wait for the final.”

The first sentence is God’s own truth. I can’t say anything about the second one because I haven’t been watching the “terrific event”. But I agree with the third sentence wholeheartedly, but with a small addition at the end: “…to be over.”

However, while our gushing commentators share the sentiment of Murphy’s last two sentences, they clearly disagree with him on the first. For they do compare women’s football to the men’s game.

Jacquie Beltrao, Sky News correspondent, was on the verge of orgasm this morning as she shouted that this is the first time since 1966 that England is in a World Cup final. It isn’t, Jacquie. Not the same team, not the same game, not even close to the same achievement.

Both Rishi Sunak, our prime minister, and Prince William, heir to the throne and chairman of the Football Association (affectionately known as “sweet FA” in some circles) implicitly recognise this. Both decided not to attend the event, instead sending recorded messages of encouragement.

That piqued the ire of AN Wilson, a columnist who looks as if he has never kicked a football in anger: “What a shameful – and sad – reflection this is of officialdom’s attitude to such a joyous and important national occasion.”

Obviously, the two gentlemen didn’t expect to derive much joy out of watching 22 mannish girls (“English Sheilas”, as the locals call them) run around in shorts and kick the ball with all the mastery of pre-teen boys. Neither do they see the occasion as important enough to justify an endless flight to Sydney.

Actually, Mr Wilson (AN are his initials, not his first name) hasn’t made the trip either, preferring to keep his air miles for something really “joyous and important”. He can whip up the hysteria without leaving his study, which is a smart choice. The same can’t be said for his championship of this political cause.