Fifa Women’s World Cup: Four ways women’s football beats men’s

There were still far more people watching men’s World Cup matches, but there are some ways women’s football is hitting the back of the net – while the male strand of the sometimes-beautiful game bounces disappointingly off the crossbar.

1. Value for money

For the men’s World Cup last summer, your pockets had to be bulging with Russian roubles if you wanted a chance to see football come home (or not) with your own eyes.

The best seats in the house for the France v Croatia men’s final cost an eye-watering 66,000 roubles (£824.44).

But don’t despair. If you don’t have a spare 800 quid jangling around, it’s still possible for you to go to a World Cup final.

The most expensive seats in the women’s final at the Stade de Lyon on 7 July are more than 10 times cheaper than in the men’s tournament at £75.12 (84EUR).

At the Women’s World Cup in France this year, you can actually watch a game for as little as £8.05 (9EUR).

C’est magnifique, non?

This pricing imbalance manifests itself in merchandise, too.

Perhaps to Nike’s credit, the official shirts of the men’s and women’s World Cups both cost £89.95.

However, while it is free to add the name of a Lioness to the women’s shirt, it costs £13 to splash names such as Kane, Rashford or Vardy across your shoulders.

Nike hasn’t responded to a request for clarification on why this is the case.

2. More goals

The stats speak for themselves on this one.

For a start, Brazilian women’s forward Marta is the all-time World Cup top scorer for both men and women, with 17 goals to her name across 19 matches.

So far in this year’s tournament the women have scored 2.69 goals per game – just edging out the men, who scored 2.64 goals per game in last year’s World Cup.

The women are even further ahead in the top leagues. Over the last three seasons of the Women’s Super League there were 3.05 goals per match, compared with a measly 2.76 goals in the men’s top tournament, the Premier League.

3. Women stick to the rules

We’re not saying women are angels on the pitch (in fact, Cameroon were described as quite the opposite when they played England on Sunday).

But they break the rules less often than men do.

Fifa didn’t provide stats for bookings in World Cup games, but we did manage to pull some together from data provided by Opta Sports for the FA, which runs England’s top league games.

It turns out, in the 2018-19 season, Premier League players (men) were three times more likely than players in the Women’s Super League to be sent off in matches.

Men were also handed yellow cards twice as often.

Over the last three seasons, there were 3,777 yellow cards given to Premier League players – a rate of 3.3 per game – compared with 399 given to Women’s Super League players (1.5 per game).

Men booked for twice as many fouls as women

Janie Frampton, who has refereed both men’s and women’s international matches in her 30-year career, said the “streak of cheating” that so many top male players express is in part down to “far too much money and far too many big egos”.

However, the data from the Football Association (FA) also suggests the amount of yellow cards given for fouls per women’s match is creeping up.

It went from 1.3 per game in 2016-17 to 1.5 in the following year and 1.6 last season.

Men get more yellow cards for all kinds of offences

Frampton believes an increase in rule-breaking is inevitable as women’s football becomes more popular.

“The women’s game is becoming far more professional, and by that happening, the skill factor, the determination and challenge of the game is getting much higher,” she said.

“Women’s football has become far more important, and that’s going to bring the more competitive edge, which is going to bring tougher challenges and more cards,” she added.

So if the upward trend continues, it won’t be long until the women are making Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt look like an Eskimo kiss.

Only kidding. There’s no way you can make that infamous moment look any less brutal.

4. Global competition

Men’s World Cup winners have ony ever come from eight countries across two continents – Europe and South America.

There have been four times as many men’s World Cups as women’s, but the women’s tournament has already produced four countries as winners from North America, Europe and Asia.

The greater number of teams with a genuine chance to lift that treasured golden trophy arguably makes the women’s game all the more exciting.

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