FA's broken promise ends Fulham's brave new world

Mohamed Al Fayed has fulfilled his promise to turn Fulham into the "Manchester United of the south". Well, in the women's game at least. On Monday at Selhurst Park, Fulham Ladies will play in the FA Cup final against Charlton in search of a domestic treble having already won the Premier League and League Cup.

It could be a day of celebration for a group of players who, astonishingly, have not lost a league game for two years. But it will also mark the end of their status as professional footballers, the only ones in Europe.

It now appears far-fetched to believe, as Fayed did three years ago, that a full-time league would be established in England by next season. The money is simply not there to sustain it. But, choosing to trust the Football Association's now disputed commitment, he went ahead, enthused by the profile the game was getting in the United States.

Straitened times have brought that optimism to an end – both at Fulham who, last week, announced crippling losses of £34m, and at the Football Association which has undergone huge cutbacks. Although the women's team did not cost Fayed a lot of money – annual salaries were less than what he pays some of the male players a week – savings were needed.

Gaute Haugenes, the Norwegian manager of Fulham Ladies, disputes that it was an unrealisable dream and says that because of the culture of working long hours in Britain a professional league is more necessary here than anywhere else.

"Yes, we are the only professional team in Europe," he says. "But in Scandinavia you have teams which are more semi-professional than teams in England. They train much more and it has something to do with the working hours. Back home in Norway we work until 3pm, 3.30pm and we can start training at 5pm and finish at 6pm, 7pm with half an hour to drive home. But over here you have to start the sessions at 8pm."

It is back to Norway that Haugenes and his wife, Margunn, who plays for Fulham and is an Olympic gold medallist, will return in the summer. "I will work in the men's game," he says. "I'm going to a part of the country where football is not that big and the men's team is in the third division."

However, he says that in Scandinavia it is much easier to switch, as a coach, between men's and women's football. "In Norway you don't look at women's football as a different sport," Haugenes says. "For instance the guy who ran the women's national team when they won the Olympics went to coach the men's Under-21 team. That could never happen over here.

"The women's game is held in higher esteem. Back home if you stop people in the street and ask which is the only professional women's team in Europe, they would say Fulham straight away."

Not bad considering that Fulham Ladies have only been in existence for 10 years, entering the Greater London League Division Five in 1993.

Haugenes maintains there is little difference between the sexes. "It comes down to physical abilities, speed and strength really. Technically there is no difference at all," he says. "If you ask some of our players about tactics and then ask an average Premier League player the same question I think ours would be much more aware." In saying that, it is not often that a men's team scores 196 goals and concedes just three in 16 games as Fulham did in their first season as professionals.

There is certainly Premier League passion there too – he was banished from the dug-out during the game last month which secured the title because of his reaction to a refereeing decision.

Apart from the Haugenes' and two other foreign players, the rest of the Fulham squad, average age 25, will stay and go semi-professional. One of those is midfielder Rachel McArthur who admits that she and the other players have been living a dream. "I used to play as a hobby before, at the weekends and I paid to play," she says. "To be paid to play is just great." McArthur, who moved to London from Bristol will now search for work to fit in around football.

Despite Fulham's decision the momentum behind the women's game has been impressive. It is still the fastest-growing sport in the country, last year there were 61,000 affiliated players and 2,400 teams. When McArthur, an England international, started playing, aged 11, she was banned from doing so at school and turned out for one of only two adult teams in the Bristol areas. "Now there are just so many," she says.

Although the 15 players will lose the obvious benefits of being a professional, their contracts were almost identical to male players but also included maternity rights, it may alleviate some of the pressures. "Every time we have gone out since we have been pro everyone has raised their game against us and tried that bit harder to beat us," McArthur explains. Indeed Haugenes says that the "mental side" of being the only professionals in the league is something he has had to work on with the players.

A full-time league will come, he says, although it may take another five years at least. Haugenes, like Fayed, clearly blames the FA. "Yes, no doubt at all," he says. "They promised to start a pro-league next year and they won't do it and so we are massively disappointed. The worst thing is that they are now saying they never said it, rather than simply raising their hands and saying sorry.

"The finances of the FA have changed drastically over the last year and so if they had just said the climate has changed and we have to take the consequences, then we could understand it."

Nevertheless it is difficult to believe that a professional league can survive on attendances of anywhere between 200 and 1,500 people. There will be around 16,000 there at Selhurst Park on Monday for the final, which is to be screened live by the BBC and given the full big match treatment. Last year 2.5 million watched the game. It is just the sort of exposure the women's game desperately needs.

Women's FA Cup final ticket hotline: 0208-771-8841

FEMALE KICKS: A brief history of the women's game

* Started to develop after the First World War. The most successful team was Dick Kerr's Ladies (pictured), formed in Preston, in 1917. Dick Kerr's provided the opposition for the first women's international – against Scotland in 1920. They won 22-0.

* After 53,000 people turned up for a match at Goodison Park in 1921, the FA Council said: "The Council feel impelled to express their strong opinion that the game of football is unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged. The Council request clubs belonging to the Association to refuse the use of their grounds for such matches."

* In direct response, the English Ladies Football Association was formed, and women's matches began to use rugby instead of football pitches. The health of the women's game was demonstrated in 1937. The top two teams in the UK – Dick Kerr's and Edinburgh Ladies – met in a match billed as "The Championship of Great Britain and The World". Dick Kerr's beat the Edinburgh side 5-1.

* Women continued to play international games in the 1940s and 1950s, and in 1962 the Women's FA was formed in England. Almost 200 clubs were members of this organisation by the time the men's FAs agreed to recognise them.

* The real pioneers, however, were Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The Swedes won the first European Championships, in 1984, but it was Germany who came to dominate the competition – they have now won it five times, most recently on home soil in the summer of 2001.

* The first Women's World Cup was held in China in 1991 – and won by the United States, whose national team had played its first competitive match only six years earlier.

* The American players were the first women to be paid on a full-time professional basis. In its inaugural season of 2001 salaries up to $85,000 (£53,000) were on offer, while top players can also land six-figure sponsorship contracts. In Italy a number of players had part-time contracts in club football from the 1970s and in 1992 a professional league was set up in Japan.