The Women’s World Cup should be a milestone, off the pitch as well as on

Arriving in Paris for the first game of the 2019 Women’s World Cup was an unsettling moment.

Despite talk of this tournament being a watershed moment for women’s football, there was little promotional material to be seen at Charles de Gaulle airport, or anywhere around the capital for that matter.

The advertising boards on the Metro were filled by tennis stars competing at Roland Garros. The free-to-air television at my hotel had scheduled the host nation’s matches and not many more. It started to look like the opening night might not live up to the hype.

I shouldn’t have worried. After taking my seat at the Parc des Princes for France’s impressive 4-0 evisceration of South Korea – in front of a sell-out crowd of 45,261 that was young, noisy and female – I felt reassured that this could be a milestone month after all.

The world’s most popular sport is making progress, certainly, but we’re still a long way from anything close to gender equality. A look at the sport’s best women’s team and best female player tells us that much.

The US are the reigning world champions and will attempt to defend their title in France, but do so just two months after filing a lawsuit against their governing body US Soccer, demanding equal pay with their less successful male counterparts.

Meanwhile, Ada Hegerberg has gone even further, choosing not to play at this World Cup at all. Instead, she will continue to boycott international football until the Norwegian Football Federation treats its women’s team with the same respect as its men’s.

Players from Nigeria, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand and Spain have all taken similar collective action since the last World Cup in 2015. Jamaica needed the financial assistance of Bob Marley’s daughter Cedella to reach these finals after their funding was cut.

Those of us privileged to earn a living writing about elite men’s football spend a lot of our time reporting on a game that is endlessly alluring, but one that also seems to grow ever more avaricious, imbalanced and complacent as a result of its own success.

It is rare that we are able to witness at first-hand a sport that instead has to fight for the recognition it deserves. At every turn at this World Cup, there are women looking to make their mark. The next month is their opportunity to write history, both on and off the pitch.

Yours,

Mark Critchley

Northern football correspondent