Set-up of elite women’s football in England needs to change – and saying so is not a criticism of this squad or manager
Football is all about creating dreams but even the most ambitious and imaginative young players require some initial inspiration.
Like England France have reached the quarter-finals of Euro 2022 but unlike the Lionesses their 23-woman squad contains 15 black or brown players. By contrast the Lionesses have only three black players: Jess Carter, Nikita Parris and Demi Stokes, with only Carter having, so far, had any game time. Demographics also come into things. Some areas – the north-east for example – are much whiter than others. Even so, scouts do not seem to be identifying promising young black players in much more diverse regions. Are they not looking in the right places? Do laziness or groupthink draw them to search in similar places? Or is it also partly about the WSL’s establishment in 2010?
Part of the problem stems from WSL teams having moved mainly to leafy new suburban or semi-rural training facilities away from cities in places like Surrey, Hertfordshire and Cheshire. While no group is homogenous and it is wrong to buy into the received wisdom that all young black players are disadvantaged and live in inner cities – clearly a sweeping generalisation – the suburbanisation of training facilities has evidently limited opportunities for both black and white girls from working-class backgrounds. By way of further complication, some schools have been very slow to introduce football as an option for girls.
Then there is the lack of understanding about cultural barriers in some black, Asian and minority communities where there are often a lot of different pressures for girls to conform to gender norms. For instance, when Sport England began encouraging people from the south-east Asian community to take up cycling it did not initially realise that, in that culture, cycling was synonymous with poor people and, consequently, looked down on.
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