REPUBLIC OF IRELAND women’s manager Vera Pauw has hit out again at the decision to hand Phil Neville the English job ahead of her and a number of other females in 2018.
Experienced Pauw has guided the Republic of Ireland to their first-ever World Cup finals later this year.
But she’s still frustrated about being overlooked for the English job, claiming Neville had ‘no experience’ when the FA appointed him and that such appointments remain a big problem generally in the women’s game.
Pauw criticised the FA at the time when she said there are ‘too many male coaches who can’t get jobs in the men’s game but are then given chances with women’s teams’.
She reignited the debate at a discussion in Dublin on the findings of a KPMG backed report about the impact of sport on women in business.
“Now the game is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, there is more money coming in,” said Pauw. “Also, more status is coming in and you can see everywhere that men are jumping on to use women’s football as a stepping stone for jumping back to men’s football, or to start their career.
“And I think Phil Neville is the best and most famous example of it. He had no experience, had coached one game in his life. There were about 50 women applying for the job. A few women were asked to apply, I was one of them. We all didn’t…none of us did get an interview. At a reception, they were asking Phil, ‘Oh, think about it, call you next morning’. And the next day at 12 o’clock he signed a contract, without any background.
“Just because of his name and being a male. That is a big, big problem in our game.”
Pauw has previously coached in her native Holland, Scotland, Russia and South Africa. She claimed that women being ‘selected out’ of top jobs, on and off the field, or being ‘pushed out’, is still common.
It was suggested to Pauw that the majority of coaches at next summer’s World Cup finals in Australia and New Zealand will be male.
“It’s very unfortunate because from 2000 until now, all the major championships have been won by women, apart from one, in 2011, when Japan won the World Cup,” she said.
“Somehow, women can bring something extra with women players out of their bodies, out of their team. Because we have lived it all through. Whereas men coming into the game, they need at least four years to adapt to the game because we have a different structure, we have a different history, we have different bodies, we grow up different in principle than boys and I can see that because I grew up as a boy, as one of triplets. I’m still surprised at times about how we are perceived.”
The KPMG backed report reveals that 88% of women in business believe that skills learned through sport have transferred into career success.
