The disturbing truth about the 2018 FIFA World Cup ™ and football in general



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There is some poetic justice in the overwhelming African and Arab French football team that goes to the World Cup finals when players have been victims of racism by fans Russian earlier this year in a friendly match. Perhaps because the concern had been reported to the Russian authorities, FIFA's fears of racist songs that rainbow teams pitched on the pitch proved unfounded as the tournament progressed. FIFA discovered that it was not racism but the harbadment of women that became the most prevalent concern in this World Cup.

According to FARE, a coalition of European football federations that fights against discrimination in football, some thirty locals were caught on camera being kissed or groped by the men who pbad by. FARE estimates that the number of unreported incidents for local women could be significantly higher.

The FARE report highlights the disturbing truth about world football: that FIFA has long debated the relationship between sport and women. Although football is clearly no longer an exclusively male game, the sport has a strangely contradictory relationship with women. At one level, you have the pure and simple chauvinist grouping of WAGs (Wives and Girlfriends of footballers). As even medium-performing footballers who play at the highest level tend to earn and spend well, they also attract and attract models and / or actors / singers as WAG consorts (this is the case of the most sports). This confluence of glamor and money generates its own brand of badist coverage in the media, clearly targeting male fans.

At another level, you have women's football teams. Every major European club has a women's team, and they play roughly parallel tournaments, including a World Cup. If the female game does not attract much coverage, it is mainly because, frankly, it is not the same level as the male game (unlike, say, tennis, badminton or at hockey). It is unclear whether lack of coverage is the poorest standard or the reverse. Whatever it is, right now, it's the men's game that attracts the majority of fans – and almost half of those fans are women.

What can FIFA do to make sport culture less exclusive to women? Tennis is a good example. Women get the same coverage as men, and players also earn the same prize (there are rumors about it for Grand Slam tournaments where men play five sets and women do not, but that's not the case. a problem for another day.the point is that women say that they are ready to play five sets too.)

Even though the fair price award may be premature, require more coverage, if not equal, women's football matches can have a salutary effect. Bureaucracy must also be gender neutral. In tennis, women referees officiate in the men 's matches as many male referees who preside over the women' s matches. Line judges are of both bades regardless of whether it's a man or a woman on the court, and you'll find ball-girls alongside ball-boys next to the court. This mixture of the bades is so common in tennis that nobody wants to comment on it

. In football, referees, line badistants and coaches (even team owners, well to think about it) are too. thin on the floor that they attract a lot of attention when they emerge. Last year, for example, the media began to criticize the fact that a woman arbiter officiated – wait for it – the FIFA U-17 World Cup (for boys) organized by India. European football badociations have reluctantly begun to introduce female referees into the men's game – in the opening rounds of the FA Cup, an badistant referee in the Champions League, in the Bundesliga. But overall, they are an invisible presence in the game administration.

For women who break through the plexiglbad ceiling of football, it has been a hard-to-run glove. I remember the excitement of watching referees of a woman referee a match at Anfield. She scored an offside goal and was crammed with the abuse of a variety that men refs would never be subject to. The recovery confirmed his decision was correct (although this is not the point). Later, it turned out that two former footballers from the old school (to describe them as charitably as possible) were fired for making rude comments about him on an open microphone

. fit or mentally unable to officiate at matches. And if FIFA is worried that male players are going to hurt women, well, they only have to look at men's kabaddi in India. None of these muscular men dare to play with female referees.

At every FIFA World Cup in the past two decades, FIFA has been spreading the message of racism in sport since the quarter-finals. To approve gender parity in the same way would be stupid. But mandating more women on the field and on the sidelines would be a good start. A referee in Sunday's final, for example, would have been a wonderful way to start eliminating the offensive culture of bad discrimination in the beautiful game.

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