Women's game faces catch-22 situation

By Dan Warren

England's women struggle to attract big crowds

Picture the scene. You are captain of England's football team, playing your first game back on home soil after a year out with injury - and you score twice in a 5-0 hammering of Scotland.

It sounds like the sort of Roy of the Rovers stuff which would be splashed all over the back, and front pages of the papers.

But this was no comic strip, it actually happened - and merited barely a column inch.

England captain Faye White was the player in question and the fantastic display described above was watched by slightly less than 7,000 fans at a chilly Deepdale in Preston in late 2003.

The Arsenal defender's rise to the top of her game is in stark contrast to her male counterpart in the England team - one David Beckham.

In 1989, the 14-year-old Beckham was snapped up by Manchester United.

Signing up the boy who was to become the biggest football star in the world looks like a shrewd move - but there was nothing lucky about the way the Red Devils unearthed their midfield diamond.

Beckham had already represented Essex, had trials with Leyton Orient and attended Tottenham Hotspur's school of excellence by the time United snapped him up. His talent had been nurtured by a network which spotted him at a very young age.

White took a very different route into football.

BECKHAM v WHITE AGE: Beckham: 30 White: 27 ENGLAND RECORD: B: 78 caps, 15 goals W: 43 caps, 4 goals CAR: B: £166,000 Bentley Arnage W: Hyundai Coupe Sport EARNINGS: B: Earns approx. £17.2m per year as Real Madrid player and face of numerous high-profile advertising campaigns W: Salary unknown. Works as a sports massage therapist and coaches Arsenal girls in Greater London

She began playing alongside the boys at school in the 1980s. Back then, women's teams and leagues were thin on the ground in comparison to the men's game.

There was no scouting network or academy system to spot the talent. And the idea of going on to earn a professional contract was quite simply not on any woman football player's agenda.

But the comparison between the men's and women's game at the top level - as inevitable as it is - rankles women who play the game.

White has said trying to draw parallels between men and women players is responsible for "holding the sport down."

"Women's football should be seen as a game in its own right. It might have the same rules but it's different. The two can't compete," she told the Guardian newspaper in September 2004.

On the face of it, the women's game is in healthy shape. It has never been more popular with more than 100,000 registered players in the United Kingdom.

But the gulf in earnings, and indeed lifestyles, between the top men and women players in England has never been larger.

When Beckham finishes training at Real Madrid's state-of-the-art training facility, he may well be off to a magazine shoot, or to attend a movie premiere.

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England's women players are not fully professional. Fulham withdrew the funding that enabled their women's team to become the first - and only - professional outfit in Europe in 2003.

As such, White - like many of her team-mates - has another job, working as a coach at her club, Arsenal.

A lack of female role models is one of the factors holding the game back.

It is a catch-22 situation - without any big stars, the game is always going to have a low profile. But as long as it is low profile, it will struggle to produce big stars.

We want to raise the profile so that young girls who want to play football don't see it as a men's sport Rachel Yankey

Talented young England striker Rachel Yankey is among those trying to change that.

She is a good candidate to be the home nation's star at Euro 2005.

Whatever she achieves, she will not command the back pages in the way that Wayne Rooney did in Euro 2004.

Nevertheless, the 25-year-old has an eye for the spectacular, scoring a brilliant free-kick in the 2002 FA Women's Cup Final - and winning the 2005 Nationwide International Player of the Year.

But, like White, she had to make her own way into the sport.

"Football was definitely seen as a boys' game, the only well-known players you could have as role models were men," she told the Observer Sport magazine in 2001.

"We want to raise the profile so that young girls who want to play football don't see it as a men's sport."

That may be easier said than done.

In 2004, Sepp Blatter, head of the sport's world governing body Fifa, decided to share his thoughts on the women's game.

"Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. They could, for example, have tighter shorts," he said, before adding: "Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so."

Most women did not excuse him for saying so. But as long as views such as his are prevalent in the corridors of footballing power, the sport will always face a battle for credibility.