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Nika Lalic

Marta in Pants

An intimate history of the most popular sport in the world - but the female version


The recently held Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand was a global phenomenon, simply because it was female.

Major televisions broadcast it for the first time, the number of viewers increased dramatically, and football was more interesting than men's football.

And yes, there were more goals.

Would the world have a female Messi today?

Or is it just a feminist issue.

Let's start with the numbers...

And a few facts.

Let's go in order.

Everyone says that England is the "cradle of football", and that saying does not exist without a connection. Both women's and men's football began in England, and spread throughout Europe and the world. Football was a workers' sport and started as leisure behind the factory halls. It was played equally by men and women.Like dodgeball.

In 1917, a tournament was started for women's teams of female workers who worked in a munitions factory in North East England.

It is officially called "Tyne Wear & Tees Alfred Wood Munition Girls Cup", and abbreviated - "The Munitionettes' Cup".

The first final was won by Blyth Spartans, who demolished Bolckow Vaughan 5-0 in front of 22,000 spectators on 18 May 1918.

The facts.

The tournament took place the following year as well. In the 1918/19 season Palmer's Jarrow Women beat Christopher Brown's Hartlepool 1-0 in the final at Newcastle's iconic St James' Park on 22nd March 1919.

It was a consequence of the First World War, as women rapidly began to work in heavy industry, which furthered the growth of the game.

After the war, the world of women returned to the old way, that is, working in the house and raising children.

One of the victims was women's football.

Although more popular than many men's events (at one game there were 53,000 spectators), women's football was stopped in December 1921, by decree of the Football Association of England. The famous FA stated: "The game of football is completely inappropriate for women and should not be encouraged."

One more fact.

Other countries followed the English example. The German Football Association banned women's football from 1955 to 1970, France from 1941 to 1970, while in Brazil the Vargas regime and military dictatorship did the same from 1941 to 1979.

Facts again.

The return to the scene happened in England in 1969 when the English Women's FA was founded, as a result of the very popular men's World Cup in 1966 in England.

But the momentum was lost... Hundreds of Messis and Ronaldos…

Women's football is moving step by step, as well as women's education, today more women are graduating from universities, so that only from this year we will have the opportunity to watch it on TV screens again.

We proceed only with the facts.

Women's football was belittled by men. The hooliganism created at men's football matches only reinforced the prejudice that "football is not for women". The more misogynistic and aggressive ones joked that "women have two left legs", while the worst, and men's football is full of such, that women should play in "sexier clothes".

I'm still not making anything up.

In the end, America changed women's soccer, and that's because it called the sport in which they hit each other at full speed male.

The most famous soccer player became Mia Hamm, so popular that she ended up filming the famous Gatorade commercial where she and Michael Jordan, the greatest athlete ever, compete in different sports while playing "Anything you can do (I can do it better)".

At the end of the commercial, Hamm throws Jordan to the floor in judo.

What a moment of victory it was for women around the world.

In just one ad...

In real life, women still can't make up the 50-year gap. The greatest star of women's football, Marta Vieira da Silva, is compared to the greatest in men's football, but then she is called "Pele in a skirt", although she has been declared the best female footballer in the world six times, and Pele twice.

Then why is Pele not Martha in pants?

Well, because he isn't. Pele is Pele. And Marta Marta.

And when we all accept that, there will be more goals.

And better games for everyone.


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