You may have missed it because all the message space was once again claimed by the most hysterical tea party that Dutch television viewers have had in recent years, but Saturday night the semi-finals of the Women’s Champions League were played. From six o’clock the domestic talk show panic was escaping with Vfl Wolfsburg-FC Barcelona. At nine o’clock Paris Saint-Germain played against Olympique Lyon. You didn’t even have to turn on the TV, the matches were broadcast on YouTube.
With each new championship, the speed at which women’s football advances is the surprise to be expected. The balls seem tighter with the seasons, the passes more accurate, the heels more frequent and combinations reveal that they are trained hard. This train is not going to stop. More and more girls are playing more football hours on amateur fields and it is getting busier in the pool of talents. The speed at which women’s football is catching up with men’s football is sky-high – just like my expectations.
Assuming climate change will still allow humanity to play football in a decade, we could reach the point where female players are showing their male counterparts every corner of the field. After all, the best football players mankind has known were small and lightly built, characteristics you see more often in women than in men. Lionel Messi is 1 meter 69, Diego Maradona was 1 meter 65 and Johan Cruijff was built like a strand of spaghetti.
In ten years’ time – again assuming that climate change still allows professional football – don’t be surprised if men’s football analysts refer to ‘an exceptionally female footballer’, when they describe a mainly technical, light, agile, small player. In fact, it could well be that they point to Maradona, Messi and Cruijff as examples of exceptionally female football players.
The only thing that makes me fear the future of women’s football, other than climate change, is that the break-in doesn’t seem to be just of a technical nature, but that it’s happening in things around the game. When Ada Hegerberg scored her first goal for Lyon – a header – she didn’t jump into her teammates’ arms, but demanded her applause with grumpy looks and hand gestures. The encouragement songs were no longer sung by sopranos, but by low bass voices. The supporters rolled out large flags over the crowd and sat under them setting off fireworks.
If the glass ceiling above the football field is shattered, the same can happen to the glass floor. Then the women of Barça or Lyon, who also won the cup with the big ears on 21 May, could have a party in Turin. Then they could pick up some darlings to take to their hotel rooms and when they’re still sleeping there the next day, the champions would grab random objects from the room and put them between the sleepers’ legs. If they afterwards tell each other that with a smile, the glass bottom would break, but in addition to potentially more technical football players, women are – with exceptions – better people. The glass bottom will collapse less quickly than the glass ceiling.
Carolina Trujillo is a writer.
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