The secret history of women's football

The secret history of women's football

Women's football matches once pulled bigger crowds than most men's games - sometimes more than 50,000.

In the 1920s the sport flourished with around 150 women's teams in England.

But then the women's game was effectively banned, with the FA at the time saying the game of football is "quite unsuitable for females".

It was another half century until women's football got back on its feet and a key reason it lags behind the men's game today.

Read the full article on BBC.co.uk:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/33064421/the-secret-history-of-womens-football

Little bit arrogant for them to title it that. Surely it should be "The secret history of women's history IN ENGLAND."

It's length and depth is rather disappointing as well... less than a dozen paragraphs (if blocks of one or two sentences can be called paragraphs) and a collection of pictures. I was hoping for something a bit more comprehensive from the BBC, to be honest.

Huh. Reminds me of the history of baseball is the USA.

The first group of paid athletes in the country was a team of black American women in the late 1800s who traveled across the east coast. A lot of women got paid to play baseball for a while until one white woman got hurt while playing, and the men watching canceled the match right away and laws were passed that banned women from playing the sport

It's actually surprising how big some leagues and sports of women were popular and even profitable in the late 1800s/early 1900s, but I think soon after that, sexism seemed to kick in and accused fragility of women and senses of "place" took over to kill competition as a means of control. It's kind of sad. You wonder how different women's sports could be if they had been allowed advance on from their early stages.

True, but I thought it is a start. I will repost the history of women football in Germany here as my original text just disappeared without people taking any notices.

History of the German Women NT

By the way, I read up a bit on the history of the German women NT today and was thoroughly fascinated.

People laud and applaud the DFB for setting up a successful men's team after the dismal showings in the beginning of 2000, but what the DFB did in women football was probably even more stunning.

Let's start with the fact that originally the DFB decided in 1955 to forbid women's football in all of its clubs in West Germany because they thought it was indecent and the sport was unbecoming for women. It took until 1970 before the ban was lifted.

Nonetheless there was no official women national team until quite a bit later.

When in 1981, a DFB official got an invitation for the German women NT to participate in the unofficial women's football world championship that took place in Taipei/Taiwan in 1981, he was too embarassed to admit that Germany didn't have any women national team in football, and so the DFB accepted the invitation nonetheless.

But what to do with no NT? Sneakily they decided to send the German club champion Bergisch Gladbach to the tournament - and lo and behold, they won the whole thing.

Still it took until 1982 that the DFB finally managed to found a proper national team, and as they wanted to build on mostly young players, they missed the qualification for the first two European championships that took place in 1984 and 1987.

But already in 1989 - that is a mere 7 years after the women NT was founded - we did not only qualify for the Euro, but won it as well.

Since then, the German NT managed to win the Euros in 1989, 1991, 1995, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009, and 2013, only missing out on one for which we qualified (1993 that went to Norway).

It took slightly longer to win the World Cup (1991 and 1999 went to the USA, and 1995 was won by Norway), but in 2003 and 2007, the German women finally managed to claim that cup, too. After the shock defeat by later winners Japan in the QF 2011, we will see how things will pan out in Canada 2015.

But if you look at it, for a national team that only exists since 1982, the yield of 2 World Cups, 8 European Cups and 2 Algarve Cups is not bad at all.

(And I didn't even mention women club football, where 4 different German clubs by now won altogether 9 of the 14 available Champions League titles since 2001, the last winner being 1.FFC Frankfurt (who interestingly are coached by Colin Bell from England).)