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da aposte e ganhe： Here at Football FanCast, we’re proud of our link with the Professional Footballers’ Association and the work that has been done this year leading up to Bristol City goalkeeper Sophie Baggaley being crowned the first ever PFA Women’s Super League Player of the Month in September 2018.
Women’s football is growing in popularity and participation by the day, and this season saw the top tier of the Women’s Super League (WSL) become fully professional for the first time in its history.
BBC journalist Chris Slegg has been increasingly involved in the game’s coverage since he first attended the 2003 Women’s FA Cup final at Selhurst Park, and he has recently released the second ever Women’s Football Yearbook alongside fellow BBC journalist Tom Garry.
Slegg recently found time to have an exclusive chat with Football FanCast about the second edition of the book, how far the women’s game has come in the past year and what still needs to change.
So Chris, tell us a bit about the book…
“It’s mainly a reference book but not exclusively. It’s got in there all of the results and all of the goalscorers of every game in the top four tiers of English football.
“It covers the Champions League from last season, all of the England results, the FA Cup, the Continental Cup and also the domestic cup competitions for the lower divisions as well so it’s all of the key facts and figures.
“But as I say I don’t want it to be just a reference book, so we’ve got inspirational interviews in there with leading players or key figures at all of the clubs.”
Are there any stories that stood out to you when putting the book together?
“I can’t help but be inspired by all of the interviews that we’ve done with the WSL players. These players are there at the time of immense change in women’s football.
“For the first time ever, every club in that top division this season is fully professional, so we’ve got players like Nikita Parris at Manchester City just talking about how unbelievable it is to be on the cusp of that change.
“She’s still a young player but growing up she could not have imagined that she could be a full-time professional and that all of those she competes with and against are too.
“That really comes through all the way throughout the book. Jasmine Matthews is now at Liverpool but she was at Bristol City until the start of this season and just two or three years ago she was working in Aldi at the same time as playing for one of the top clubs in this country. That’s been a very common thing until now, and still is in tier two and below.
“Obviously we have heroes in men’s football but, although they’ve worked extremely hard to get to the top, in this generation they’ve probably been identified as having that talent in their early teens and 99.9 per cent of them would never have had a real job as we would call it.
“I think there’s a human side to elite women’s football that’s perhaps been lost in elite men’s football.”
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Have you see a big change in the game since last year’s book?
“Yes even in just a year. The Telegraph have appointed their first women’s football reporter Katie Whyatt, The Guardian are doing a lot more women’s football coverage, Suzanne Wrack who I think is a freelancer writes regularly there. Molly Hudson does some great features for The Times.
“In those distinguished newspapers you’re certainly seeing more coverage than you did last season. I might be wrong but I think there’s slightly more televised football this season too…
“Again though there’s more to do. I don’t think the recent England friendly away to Austria was shown on any TV channel. There was a lot of upset about that and understandably so. You’d never be in a situation where the England men’s team wouldn’t be available somewhere.”
Can you see the gap behind Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea in the WSL closing?
“It’s a hard thing to say and that’s where I worry a bit as a traditional football fan. I think it would be a real shame if women’s football just becomes a mirror image of men’s football.
“Having said that it looks inevitable that is the way it’s going to go, and if you look at the wider societal need to give as many women as possible the chance to be professional footballers, then that’s probably a good thing.
“If you look at it from a football perspective though I think it would be a real shame because part of the thrill for me of putting this book together was that, before I started just a year ago, I couldn’t have even told you every team in the top division. I was delighted to find out that Yeovil have a team in the top division.
“That gives women’s football its own colour, its own tapestry, its own narrative that’s different from the men’s game.”
What impact do you think continuing the yearbook will have on the game?
“Perhaps it’s because of the generation that I’m from but for me having a book means something special. Every single game matters. To everyone that plays in that game it matters. To everyone who coaches or volunteers, or is there as a fan it matters, and growing up I was always fascinated that there was a record there.
“For men’s football you could go down to the seventh or eighth division and easily find records from the past. Who scored the goals, who was sent off, who was unlucky enough to miss a penalty, the attendance – and I’ve always loved that.
“Football has so much to offer, in so many different ways, at so many different levels and it felt to me a real crying shame that there wasn’t a book where this is enshrined throughout history that says this is what happened in the women’s game that season, so I want this to last for as long as the men’s football yearbook that has been around – since 1970.
“It’s amazing to think when that first men’s football yearbook came out, women’s football was still banned in this country. The FA ban was overturned in 1971 and it’s only now all those years later that we have a fully professional top division.”
The Women’s Football Yearbook 2018/19 is published by Legends Publishing and is available now.