Girls & Soccer

Welcome to A2K, lil_horror!

I don't know where you live, but e.g. in the USA and in Europe female football (soccer) is very popular.

(Mixed teams, are only up to 10, 11 years, I think, here in Germany, in Austria this can be up to 14 - not sure about other countries.)

So, I can't find something supporting your thesis - maybe, others will :wink:

Can you clarify your position a bit?

Actually, in the U.S., soccer is more popular with girls than with boys. boys tend to get sucked into the basketball/football/baseball system.

I keep telling my kids, you wanna get a scholarship, forget basketball/football/baseball and even women's soccer, and play Lacrosse or water polo. That's the real meal ticket.

Females are allowed in soccer as well as many other sports. However, it is a male dominated and often violent game which may not be appropriate for many girls. Boys, by their very nature, are stronger than girls. I wouldn't want my daughter playing soccer.

Nick, that's just nuts. Girls LOVE soccer. It can be a tremendous confidence builder as well. Think about it - not only does it improve your coordination, you build stamina, muscle, and you tend to look great compared to your couch potato friends. My daughter plays, she loves it, and so do I. I travel all over hell to cheer her on. It's a blast too.

Agreed - which is proved by girls and women in more than 115 countries (counting only those, who have national teams).

You know, my wife initially signed up our daughters for soccer, and for the first couple years, it was rather boring. But I found myself drawn to it for some unknown reason. Both of my girls still play, the younger one at a higher level than the older. I try to go to every practice. I am sort of the unofficial assistant to the assistant coach .

My younger daughter plays on what is known as a Level 3 Competitive CYSA team. We have a paid professional trainer and a volunteer coach. It costs over $1000/year to pay for the uniforms, tournament fees, and the trainer, but it's worth every penny. We all have such a blast even when we lose. A much younger picture of her appears in the A2K gallery. She's the redhead on my right.

Aw, she looks like a great kid.

I'm all for girls playing sports, no matter what the sport is -- many, many benefits have been shown, both obvious and not. (Like, girls who play sports tend to be more physically fit, of course, but also other stuff about mental health, etc.) I played soccer for a while, wasn't my thing, but I played a sport all year round until I got to college, and I'm so glad I did.

She's one of the better players on her team and she carried a 4.0 this year! You bet she's a great kid! (you can't tell I'm proud of her can you?)

My niece played in the Austrian national team (under 18) - now, however, she'd decided, to fufill her career as a communication scientist at university ("Cultural changes in media in context of convergence" is what she likes more than defending :wink: ).

I'm not quite sure what lil_horror meant at first place maybe it's just misunderstanding?

Anyway, as people already said - in Europe female soccer is normal sport just as male soccer, and in USA female soccer is probably much more popular (what partially is related to fact that male US soccer sucks on international level, while females are one of best teams in the world).

If your hypothesis, however, relates more to fact that girls are not accepted in male sports teams...well, then we discussed that indeed already.
My opinion is that I really have no idea why would girl play for a male team when there are female teams.
Unisex teams can lead ONLY to sport discrimination of females. And unisex teams would be worst thing that can happen to female sport.

Of course, once again, I am talking from european perspective, where all popular sports have both male and female teams - I am not sure how it is in North America, and what to do with girl that from some mysterious reason wants to play American Football....

Not at all,you really need to be more positive about her.
Seriously though,she sounds like a great kid.

Where I come from soccer is considered a female sport. Guys are sissy if they play soccer.

cjhsa, you have talked about getting to know your younger daughter's real potential.

The Schwann USA Cup is held every summer in Minneapolis, and teams from all over the US ans many countries around world participate, some of them are football schools from professional teams.
Both my sons have gone there, in years past when they were 12 y.o. (the older one went in 1993, his team was eliminated in the semifinal by Hungarian kids; the younger one's got eliminated by Brits in quarter-finals, in 1997).
They stayed with families from Minnesota (parents of kids from rival teams who were very kind to them), and lived a very enriching experience.
Perhaps you can arrange your daughter's team (or league) to participate next summer (I'm really thinking about 2005).

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AS for lil horror's question, I'll tackle it later.
I disagree with her hypothesis... up to a point.

OK. Now I answer.

Football (soccer), except in the US and Canada, is a traditionally male sport. As in most sports (the exceptions I can think of now are synchronized swimming and gymnastics), its international governing body is dominated by males. I wouldn't define it as violent, even if there is some strong body contact. But I don't find anything particularly unfeminine about it (unless we are thinking "feminine" in a 1950s sort of way).

As in almost every human activity, women have made their way into football pushing for change and acceptance. It has been relatively simple where women's traditional roles have been challenged more deeply (and even simpler in the US, where male sport is dominated by MLB, NBA and NFL... err... baseball, basketball and American football). It certainly is very hard in places like Iran (where women marched in protest against being banned from the football stadiums) and unthinkable in Saudi Arabia.
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I come from a place that would be middle ground. Relatively modern; yet the fatherland of (a now dwindling) machismo.

When I was a child, in the 60s, football (soccer) was for boys. It was called "The Game of Man" by TV commentators. Girls played volleyball and basketball. Tomboys played football.
Yet, way back in the 60s there was a national women's soccer team, and we even organized an (I think) unofficial Women's World Cup in 1971. Denmark beat Mexico in the final.

In 1985, I got my little 4 y.o boy to play football in a recreative league that later recruited kids for a Pro team. At the time, only one girl played in the whole league. She was 5, then.
Her father told me that, while he had complete support of the league, there were complains about other parents, specially mothers, but that they really could gather a single argument (or at least a single politically correct argument). Besides, the little girl rocked.
By the next year, there were perhaps ten girls playing in the league. By 1987, almost every team had a girl. In the mid 1990s, a separate female league was set.

I lived throught the transition. And can give 2 anecdotes.
One is about Lupita, the girl who played in my son's team. She was treated like any other player, and enjoyed it. While not being particularly gifted, she was, deservedly, a starter when she was 8, 9 and 10 y.o.
Her game went down when she was 11. Why? The new coach (they changed every year) treated her differently. He was nicer to her than to the boys, and the girl felt patronized. After that season, Lupita left the team.

Other story has to do about a female goalkeeper. Though the league was officially recreative, we all knew it was highly competitive (it was the main reservoir of professional players in the country). In "secret", every summer a selection of players was sent to a tournament in Guadalajara, against other league/teams set by professional squads. Among the 9 year olds, the best goalkeeper, by far, was a girl. Her parents agreed to let her go, but the team organizers had second thoughts: since the games were competitive and the provinces are the provinces, they worried that the girl could be harassed by supporters of the rival teams, because of her gender. A boy substitute was called.

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Both my boys went to a liberal school where football is king (they went to Minneapolis with their school team). That school has since the 80s a girl's football team. Now even Catholic girl schools have a football team.
Yet, women's soccer is still seen as "second class" by FIFA and, obviously, by the national federation. Things have started to change since the Mexican team has won Panamerican silver and classified to the Olympics, beating Canada and losing to the US, but giving the American girls a hell of a fight.

of course, it's also true that if we were talking about this 20 years ago answers would be different.
Today I really don't see any discrimination.

And fact that FIFA is taking care of both male and female soccer, with probable favouring of male soccer is kinda bit deeper problem. Except in North America, male soccer is much popular in enormous amount - so, of course that you will care a bit more about part of sport that brings you enormous amount of money as well. People in Europe generally don't have interest for female soccer - in every country there are numerous teams, it's completely accepted sport, but it's not interesting for mass audience. If on every league game in strongest soccer countries you have 40,000 people, and on European female soccer championship you have average of 5,000 then it's kinda normal that media will pay more attention to male soccer, as well as sponsors.

And I think main fact is that girls that want to play soccer can play it without any problem.
We cannot demand of people to be equally interested - people choose themselves what they like and prefer.

When you talk about soccer I can name more female soccer players than male players. Women's soccer in the US is more popular than men's soccer. As far as violent or aggressive, I loved that aspect when I was young. Even though I was much smaller than most kids my age, I was just as aggressive when playing sports. I played soccer and many other sports. Speaking of violent, my favorite sport to play was street hockey.

Re: Girls & Soccer


I think you are right when it comes to English football. My son and his friends, who all play, would not like girls in their team (one of them said 'I wouldn't want anyone very fat, or not able to see properly - they are just not as good as men' but on the other hand are supportive of girls' teams and interest. Basically, it is a bit of a lads' preserve.. on the other hand when my youngest boy was 9, at primary school, he was not allowed to play netball (because he might be 'too good') whereas the girls were allowed to play football. He found this very unjust. Where does the quest for absolute equality lead you?

I think main point is "he might be too good". Maybe he wouldn't be, but lot of guys would. I already said - unisex teams would be worst thing that can happen to female sports. Simply, male are generally stronger and faster. Marion Jones is certainly faster then me, but hundreds of guys are faster then her (and she almost has no competition in female sprint).

And, as of your sons and his friends and their comments...that's true, but it doesn't only relate to women - guys in soccer-crazy countries (I hate word soccer by the way, but I want everyone to understand ) are alike, and they would said same for fat, clumsy or simply not talented guy. It's a bit racistic I know, but guys are extremely competitive in sports - when we played ordinary friendly street soccer games most of us would be pissed off if we had someone that really sucks in our team. 99% of guys play sports to win, especially at younger age. Having fun is on second place. It doesn't mean that we are devastated when we lose game against our friends, but while you play you will do everything to win.

I am totally peaceful guy in "real life", but I used to play team handball (not very popular in UK, USA and Australia, but pretty popular in Europe - some kind of mixture of rugby and basketball /only with goals/) and that's the best example. Even after practice games I was full of bruises, I broke my leg once, I gave bruises to others as well...simply, when you play you have to win. Minute game ends we are friends again, but during the game it's like you are playing against Evil Nazi Spiders from Saturn.
That's probably another reason. Girls play sports for fun.