No surprise women’s football was an afterthought in Super League plans

The women’s game has never been in better health, yet its inclusion as a footnote in the failed Super League proposal shows work still needs to be done, writes Julie Elliott

Lucy Staniforth of Manchester United shows her disappointment after defeat (Getty Images)

Sunday’s announcement of the now abandoned agreement to form a European Super League plunged the sport into disarray. As 12 of the top men’s clubs round Europe – some of which have not even won their own domestic title for over a decade – decided to break away to form their closed shop league, pulling up the ladder to those not as ‘commercially successful’ in the current moment. The uproar that exploded in response was right and just.

In addition to their declaration of a new ESL, they also sneaked in a further plan, writing that: ‘As soon as practicable after the start of the men’s competition, a corresponding women’s league will also be launched, helping to advance and develop the women’s game.’ The positioning of this vague, patronising comment at the end of the press release says it all.

The proposed JP Morgan investment and restructuring of the men’s game on top of the billions already spent on transfers, wages and agents fees is a far reach from the current situation in the women’s game. Whilst the women’s game is getting bigger, shown in the growing viewing figures and the impressive numbers in the FA’s Gameplan for Growth, there still exists deep and clear issues in the experience that women have playing the sport.

The most recent example of this is the actions of the players of Birmingham Women. Whilst the men’s elite game talks about millions, the women’s game is still stuck, in some instances, debating the very necessity of the facilities they need to function as a top sports team. In a remarkable action of unity and strength, the playing staff of Birmingham Women got together to write to the board of Birmingham FC bringing up issues of travel, changing facilities and the playing budget in addition to concerns about the full-time nature of staff. This is not abnormal. Numerous women’s club find their training, and even their match day conditions, to be sub-standard and low quality – whilst Birmingham’s men weren’t involved in the ESL project, the idea of a Women’s European Super League is absurd when many elite clubs cannot even get it right now.

The nature of the Women’s ESL being tied into the men’s was also a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation within the game. Whilst Liverpool’s men may have had a recent period of success, their women’s team were last year relegated to the Championship. The tie-in nature of the Women’s ESL would theoretically have given them a place at the top table, but wouldn’t have Lyon (5x Consecutive UWCL winners, record 14x French Division 1 Champions) and Wolfsburg (2x UWCL winners) whose success is not replicated by their men’s team.

The inclusion of the women’s game as a footnote to the ESL as a whole though was not surprising when the clubs involved have done the bare minimum for their women players. The Glazers shut down their women’s team, before reviving it 3 years ago when the popularity of the sport, which they did nothing to cultivate, suddenly became commercially interesting. Real Madrid women came about as a merger another club who were rebranded as Real Madrid Women last year. Juventus’ team were established in 2017 and AC Milan and Inter Milan in 2018. Their interest is new and does not emerge from historic support for the women’s game.

The inclusion of the sport as an afterthought is not surprising, and with no consultation with those who lead the women’s game, or the players who have made it so successful, it shows disdain for the incredible work done by so many people. We have seen record numbers of women and young girls playing the game at a grassroots levels, record viewing figures for the most recent World Cup, and we have seen incredible role models emerge from the sport, such as Alex Scott in the UK, or Nadia Nadim in France. The success is down to them.

I have continually asked the Government through the DCMS Select Committee when it planned to bring forward this fan-led review, and time and time again it has been put off, so the announcement by the Government on Monday is an important, but long awaited, step. Labour has been calling for fan involvement in the running of football clubs since 2010, and there was obvious correlation between the lack of involvement of German teams in this project with the existence of its 50+1 model of fan involvement on boards. We need this moment to be a landmark one in the history of the sport, where we should seek to change how football is governed to benefit the fans and supporters - and the experience of women playing, supporting and working in the sport must form a major part of this review too. The last 48 hours has felt like an existential moment for the game we all love – let us not let those driven by greed try to steal the sport away from us again.

Julie Elliott MP is the Labour MP for Sunderland Central and a member of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee