Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
A pub quiz question ahead of this weekend’s football action: which is the only professional team across Europe’s ‘big five’ – England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain – to have had a 100 per cent winning start to its season? Congratulations to those who answered correctly: Chelsea Women.
They have won the Women’s Super League (WSL) for the past five seasons, but their long-serving coach Emma Hayes left this summer for the US women’s national team. If anything, they’ve got better under her replacement, Sonia Bompastor, with nine wins from nine in the league and five from five in the Champions League. More wins tomorrow and on Tuesday would keep them perfect at the halfway point in the season.
Their brilliance has raised questions about the disparity between haves and have-nots in the women’s game. The top four clubs – Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United – accounted for 66 per cent of the WSL’s total revenues last year, in a picture that is broadly positive for the overall women’s game, having grown from £20 million in 2020/21 to a projected £52 million this year.
