I've been criticising Lucy Bronze and Leah Williamson all tournament

Both have underperformed, imho.

I've also criticised Wiegman for her late subs.

There's nothing wrong with criticising a player, or a team, for underperforming within the context of the current limits of their own game. Criticising women's football as a whole because of poor performances, when there have been excellent performances, and not acknowledging the reasons why women's football might be behind in quality is just pointless.

You don't have to like women's football. Evidently, other people do. Like, I don't have to take an interest in watching Mansfield v Northampton if it's on the telly but 7,500 people go and watch them and enjoy it and that's great. Good for them, I'm glad people watch it. I don't stalk Mansfield's social media and comment 'Haaland would have scored that' if Mansfield miss a penalty though which is basically the equivalent to what a lot of men seem to be commenting on England's social media channels at the moment.

There's just a huge difference between how so many people talk about the performances in the respective games. If a men's team has a bad shootout, the team and the players are criticised. If the women's team have a bad shoot out, the sport is criticised.

Kelly scored on the rebound yesterday. It was a decent penalty, it was saved. A top class male player just does not get criticised for scoring a rebound.

Women are damned either way - score a penalty, the keepers are s**t. Have a penalty saved, the strikers are s**t. It's almost as if in football, one team has to be better than the other to win. Who'd have thought!

Posted By: tim berry on July 23rd 2025 at 14:41:07

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