England Twitter account celebrates historic World Cup campaign, tweets that players can go back to being 'mothers, partners and daughters'

The England women's team have just completed the most successful of the country's World Cup campaigns since 1966. And now, at last, they can go back to being "mothers, partners and daughters", according to the official England team Twitter.

Tweeting as the team returned to London after a campaign that saw them reach the semi-finals, the account seemed happy to suggest both that members of the team had stopped being daughters during their time in the campaign — and that they'd somehow stopped being footballers after the competition was over.

Reaction to the tweet was immediate and intense, with the replies flooded with people saying the tweet was "an own goal", along with much less printable responses.

The account is verified, has almost 1.2 million followers and seems to be run by the FA. It has spent much of the campaign celebrating a team that has managed to make huge gains for women's football — before single-handledly undoing much of them with one tweet.

The FA said that the tweet had been taken out of context: "The full story was a wider homecoming feature attempting to reflect the many personal stories within the playing squad as has been told throughout the course of the tournament.

"However, we understand that an element of the story appears to have been taken out of context and the opening paragraph was subsequently revised to reflect that fact."

Other users were apparently untroubled by the sexism, arguing that the account had either got its grammar wrong or shouldn't be celebrating England's most successful international team in over five decades.

Catherine Mayer, co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party, said: "Twitter has treated the FA’s Tweet about the Lionesses with the amused contempt it deserved, very much as Twitter responded to Tim Hunt’s comments about women in laboratories by creating the hilarious hashtag #distractinglysexy. And just as happened when Twitter mocked Hunt, there are already efforts to mischaracterise the witty, proportionate reactions to the FA’s silly tweet as 'mob rule'."

However, some sought to play down the row. Jacqui Oatley, the broadcaster who anchored coverage of the Women’s World Cup for the BBC, told The Independent: “I’m a little bit surprised that it’s become such a big story. It was well-intentioned but clearly ill-judged because so many people have been offended by it, although I’m not one of them. It was deleted, James Callow has apologised, time to move on.”

The tweet was deleted about 45 minutes after it was posted. The account continued to post extra updates without explaining the tweet or its deletion.

England finished third at the Women’s World Cup, beating Germany 1-0 after extra-time in their final match on Saturday. Arriving back in London at 7.30am, the players said they hoped they had inspired young girls to take up the sport.

“I’ve never really seen myself as a superstar or anyone’s hero, but it is great to know that these kids are looking up to us and that we are making a difference,” said right back Lucy Bronze, who was shortlisted for player of the tournament. “If in ten years’ time I can say that I made a difference and that some little girl has become the best player in the world then that’s fine by me.”

The post linked to the FA's article about the players' return, which originally began with the same text as the tweet. Soon after the tweet was deleted, that article was amended to begin "England Women returned home as heroes on Monday morning - with their bronze medals proudly hanging round their necks".

The author of that article tweeted soon after the outrage and said that he "reject[ed] any accusation of sexism".

The England Twitter account isn't the only official site to be flagrantly sexist to its own players. Earlier this week, for instance, it was noticed that Fifa's own website described USA forward Alex Morgan as "A talented goalscorer with a style that is very easy on the eye and good looks to match, she is nothing short of a media phenomenon".