Episode #17: The [Men’s] World Cup Special
Images (CW): Nettie Honeyball // Dick, Kerr’s Ladies // Eni Aluko // Die Mannschaft mid-Mexico game // logo by @3Dperson // Swedish celebrations
It’s Germany v Sweden all over again as Charlotte and Emma discuss women’s place in football, the question of expertise and why Neymar could pay the salaries of 1,693 female players in the top leagues. Plus: What we owe Nettie Honeyball…
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FOOTNOTES
- Welcome to Charlotte’s most difficult World Cup ever. We recorded this episode on Tuesday 26 June 2018 – before Sweden won against Mexico and Germany lost to South Korea. Sweden has progressed to the knock-out rounds; Germany have been knocked out;
- Here’s a handy guide to The Nice Young Men of the England team;
- ‘After 30 years, I’m boycotting Aston Villa. Why? John Terry’s past racist language’ by Steve Bloomfield, The Guardian, 5 July 2017;
- Charlotte supports Peterborough United – a sure sign that she isn’t a glory-hunter;
- Here’s what Wikipedia has on the history of Skåne, Emma’s home province. It explains why some skåningar have a difficult time identifying as Swedish;
- Malmö FF’s kit, modelled here by captain Markus Rosenberg (another footballer who went to the same school as Emma), has the red-and-yellow Skåne flag on the back rather than the blue-and-yellow Swedish ditto;
- MFF played Swansea at the Liberty Stadium on 1 August 2013. Emma was there;
- Bastian Schweinsteiger bleeds at the Maracanã, 14 July 2014;
- Thanks to Thames Television (and YouTube), we can go on a tour of Old Wembley in 1980:
- Euro 96: the view from Germany;
- Charlotte’s article for History Workshop Online – ‘Football’s coming home? England and the World Cup’ – can be read here;
- Here’s Kehinde Andrews, Associate Professor in Sociology at Birmingham City University, on why he doesn’t like the England flag (read more about Kehinde here; and follow him on Twitter @kehinde_andrews):
Kehinde hates the English flag. Callum loves it. The challenge: Don't. Turn. Around. pic.twitter.com/qZYvNT7b0o
— BBC Three (@bbcthree) June 19, 2018
- The Guardian dissected the reasons for Emily Thornberry’s resignation after she tweeted a photo of a house decked in England flags in 2014. Thornberry is now the Shadow Foreign Secretary;
- Want to know more about Sweden’s path to the bronze in the 1994 World Cup? Read this, then watch the final penalty against Romania that took Sweden to the semi-finals – a rare opportunity to see Henrik Larsson ecstatic:
- Here’s Ola Toivonen’s goal against Germany...
- …And Toni Kroos’ goal against Sweden in the final minute of that game:
- Proof that somehow Sweden won Group F – and Germany went home;
- Emma supports QPR, who, er, play Peterborough United in the first round of the Football League Cup on 14 August;
- Here’s a photo of Rihanna endorsing Charlotte’s life choices:
…and here is more on that story;
- Want to know more about race, class and the French national team? Read Grégory Pierrot’s ‘Ghetto defendants’, published by Africa Is A Country on 25 June 2018;
- ‘England's Danny Rose says racism fears mean family will not go to Russia’ Sky Sports 6 June 2018;
- The Players’ Tribune published ‘It Was All a Dream’ by Raheem Sterling on 21 June 2018 and Romelu Lukaku’s ‘I’ve Got Some Things to Say’ on 17 June 2018;
- Icelandic surnames are individual, not hereditary, and almost always patronymic. Here’s an example: heroic goalkeeper Hannes Þór Halldórsson has a father called Halldór, while his own children's surnames will be Hannesson or Hannesdottír. The Icelandic phonebook lists people by their first names and, thanks to Norwegian tabloid VG, you can find out what your Icelandic name is here;
- Want to know more about what it was like growing up in Malmö in the late 1980s and 1990s? Read Zlatan Ibrahimović’s autobiography I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic from 2011. Emma doesn’t feature in it;
- Jacqui Oatley became Match of the Day’s first female commentator in 2007; follow her on Twitter @JacquiOatley;
- Vicki Sparks became the first female commentator for a live TV World Cup broadcast during Portugal’s game against Morocco on 20 June 2018. John Terry promptly tweeted that he turned the volume down to avoid her voice #idiot. Follow Vicki on Twitter @vksparks;
- Eniola Aluko has 102 caps for England. She played for Chelsea 2012-2018 and is moving to Juventus this summer. Aluko played in the first FA Women’s Cup Final held at Wembley Stadium on 1 August 2015 in front of 30,710 fans. Chelsea won the title. She is now a pundit for ITV and was applauded by Patrice Evra for… making sense? Having a good point? Being the best pundit on the team?
- According to Time, “Vocal fry involves dropping the voice to its lowest natural register, which changes the way a person’s vocal folds vibrate together. Those changes create inconsistencies in the vibrations and lend the speaker’s voice a subtly choppy or creaky quality.” Read more here;
- ‘Can We Just, Like, Get Over the Way Women Talk?’ by Ann Friedman was published by The Cut on 9 July 2015;
- Ira Glass talks about the criticism levelled at his female co-hosts on This American Life – all caused by their voices – in ‘If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS’ from January 2015;
- Simon Kelner decided that ‘Female world cup pundits are a step forward for diversity, but not for the quality of coverage’ on 19 June 2018. Sample paragraph: “I would only question the insight they offer. Women’s football is a very different game from that played at the World Cup, much less intense and physical, with very different tactical exigencies. I’m not saying that women’s football isn’t entertaining or relevant, but it’s like getting a netball player to discuss major league basketball.” Really, Simon, really?
- We discussed the disparity in pay for women and men in sport in the first ever episode of Tomorrow Never Knows – listen to that here;
- Sweden’s men’s football team is currently ranked 24th in the world; the Swedish women are ranked 11th; England’s men are ranked 12th while the women are ranked 3rd. Still, the FA thinks the right way to celebrate a World Cup bronze is this:
Read all about it in 'England ‘can go back to being mothers, partners and daughters,’ says FA tweet' The Guardian, 6 July 2015
Here’s what you need to know about the gender pay gap in football: “Among a number of stark findings was that the combined pay of those playing in the top seven women’s football leagues equals that of a single male footballer, the Brazilian forward Neymar, who plays for the French club Paris St-Germain. Neymar will earn £32.9m from PSG for the 2017-18 season purely for his playing contract, without taking into account millions more he receives in commercial deals. His salary is almost exactly the same as 1,693 female players in France, Germany, England, the US, Sweden, Australia and Mexico combined, according to the Sporting Intelligence annual salary survey.” From ‘Football’s gender pay gap worse than in politics, medicine and space’ by Martha Kelner, The Guardian, 26 November 2017;
‘Women’s World Cup: from unofficial tournaments to record-breaking event’ by Anna Kessel of The Guardian contains everything you need to know about the roots of women’s international football, Brandy Chastain and 80-minute matches;
Here’s FC Rosengård from Malmö – Marta, Anja Mitthag, Lotta Schelin and Ali Riley have all played for the club;
Susanna Hedenborg is a Professor in Sport Sciences and Associate Professor in Economic History at Malmö University who has researched the gender pay gap in Swedish sports. Read more about the pay gap here [in Swedish] and about Susanna here. You can also follow Susanna on Twitter @SHedenborg;
This BBC News article – ‘The story of women's football in 10 objects’ – contains photos of Nettie Honeyball, Lily Parr’s kit and Dick, Kerr's Ladies, as well as a poster for the unofficial World Cup in 1970;
‘Why was women's football banned in 1921?’ Read all about it;
The Cadbury ad starring Alex Scott, who played for Arsenal before retiring earlier this year. She has 140 caps for England and is now a pundit for the BBC;
- Charlotte is reading lines from Carol Ann Duffy’s Sub, published in Feminine Gospels in 2002:
“I came on in extra time in ‘66, my breasts
bandaged beneath my no. 13 shirt, and put it in
off the head, the back of the head, the left foot
from 30 yards out, hat-trick. If they’d thought
the game was all over, it was now. I felt secure
as I danced in my dazzling whites with the Cup –
tampon – but skipped the team bath with the lads,
sipped my champagne in the solitary shower
as the blood and soap suds mingled to pink.
They sang my name on the other side of the stream.”
OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
- Emma recommends the embroideries by Chelsea of Thread The Wick – who designed the Ovary Squad embroidery that we used for TNK007 on women and health - you’ll find Chelsea on Etsy here;
- Charlotte is recommending Tiny Comrade’s new ‘Street harassment is not a compliment’ running t-shirt – just in time for the shouty-men-in-cars season. Buy yours here.
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