Boys, can women be as good as men at football?

Women's football has experienced a well deserved period of large growth in popularity, media coverage and revenue in recent years. So you'd think in a country full of football obsessed men, they'd be excited and supportive, right? More football, the game improving every year, role models for young women in their life, what's not to love, right?

Well you'd be wrong because despite this, the women's game is still largely treated as a joke in a lot of male circles, the next time you're with the boys, have a good listen to their opinions on women's football; you'll be shocked at how readily views, steeped in ignorance and sexism are gleefully offered.

Or will you? After all, the standard is much lower than the men's game, that one professional team lost to the team of 14 year old boys, they'll never be as good as men and women don't even watch their own game, right? Are these greatest hits of male condemnation of the women's game really misogynistic? Why can't we insult their game because ours is better?

A lot of men are happy to self identify as 'not a misogynist' without doing the work to be able to even understand feminist issues, let alone have these values and so it's important to listen and learn on the occasions when you find your opinion facing criticism. The common response from most men when challenged on their misogynistic beliefs is to reject the label and try to rationalise and justify their opinion, because how could my opinion be sexist if I'm not sexist, right?

Well, we'll talk about men's general attitude and towards the sport and the patriarchal reasons for the women's game being at a lower level than the men's another day, for now, I will address one particular misogynistic take on the women's game 'they'll never be as good as the men'.

To be clear, the view a lot of men hold is that specifically a woman could never be as good as one of the best male footballers simply because they are a women. It's just biology, they aren't as big, fast or strong, they could never reach the levels we could.

If you find yourself agreeing with this train of though, as yourself this, do you consider Lionel Messi to be among the best male players we've ever seen? Of course you do, now ask yourself, could a woman be as strong as Messi? Could she be as quick? Kick the ball as hard? Could she be his athletic equal? Well standing at 5ft7 and weighing under 70kg, we might be in luck, we've already seen shot speeds and top running speeds recorded in the female game that are comparable to Messi's limits let alone capacity shown by women in other sports to surpass this.

If that's true then why haven't we seen anyone at that level then? Well, the reasons we haven't seen that level of player in the women's game are for another article as that is its own complex issue.

So what's the take home here? Well the notion that women are held back by a biologically imposed, athletic threshold from being as good as a man at football, simply isn't true. So the next time you hear your mates spout off any of this nonsense, get them to have a real good think about what they're saying. So often our default opinions that seem obvious on the surface are formed by the subconscious misogyny that the patriarchy thrives on.