THE WORLD CUP should remind us that women’s football remains a protest movement.
We know this most obviously in respect of our own team, who took control of their own destiny in taking a stand at Liberty Hall, and where once the Irish players used airport toilets to change out of other people’s tracksuits, last week they flew first-class to Australia to change other people’s lives.
This origin tale is not singular to the Irish squad because mutiny is a condition of going to the women’s World Cup.
Co-hosts Australia withdrew from a US tour in 2015 in protest at pay conditions and basic standards and in 2019, 13 players representing the other co-hosts, New Zealand, signed a letter saying they would no longer play under manager Andreas Heraf, accusing him of bullying.
Canada went on strike in February to agitate for equal pay, a couple of months after the conclusion of a lawsuit taken by US players against their federation over the same matter. Nigeria are unique in Ireland’s World Cup group in not having at least threatened strike action lately, but relations with their federation are currently so fraught they are beating back reports they will boycott their opening game.
It doesn’t stop there. Locked in pay disputes with their federation, South Africa last week skipped a World Cup warm-up game and a shadow side featuring a 13-year-old girl took to the pitch under federation orders instead. A statement from the Jamaican squad last month admonished their federation over a host of issues including pay. The Colombian players protested against their federation before a game last year. Denmark pulled out of 2017 friendlies with the Netherlands and Sweden when negotiating for better pay and conditions.
Argentina didn’t play any matches at all between 2015 and 2017, with the federation not even bothering to hire a replacement manager after the 2015 World Cup. They eventually improved the squad’s pay and conditions in 2018 after their hand was forced by – and stop me if you’ve heard this one before – a player strike.
France this year sacked manager Corinne Diacre after ambient murmurings opposing her coaching methods coalesced in captain Wendie Renard quitting the squad. Herve Renard was brought in and now Wendie will captain France at the World Cup. Ada Hegerberg, meanwhile, is travelling as part of the Norway squad having ended a five-year exile from international football in protest at a perceived lack of respect for the women’s game. Fifteen Spanish players last year walked away from the national side in protest at coach Jorge Vilda, but in this instance the federation stood by their manager. Thus only three of the original 15 are going to the World Cup.
Overall, almost half of the sides at this year’s World Cup have had to take a public stance against their own federations within the last six years. Linking all of these individual acts of resistance is a resolve among players that they must define and then challenge unacceptable treatment from authority, but it is that very same demand that has sicklied over Ireland’s World Cup preparations.
Unlike the aforementioned episodes, however, nothing regarding the allegations made against Vera Pauw while she was at Houston Dash is clear-cut, aside from one self-evident truth: it is a disgrace that the NWSL’s report included Pauw’s name alongside the names of men accused of far more serious transgressions.
Apart from that, however, the story has become a tennis match of claim versus counter-claim; of anonymous allegation against stringent denial. A report from the NWSL last December accused Pauw of weight-shaming and exerting excessive control over players’ eating habits, which she forcefully rejected while vowing to clear her name. These allegations were largely reheated by the Athletic in a 7500-word article last week, which included a couple of added allegations against Pauw, which she has again rejected.
The whole story is murky, complex and belies neat explanation because it centres on differing interpretations by individuals with self-interest of what constitutes acceptable behaviour in a private setting.
The FAI have been criticised for their handling of the issue, backing Pauw in December and then doing so again last week. They could have compartmentalised the issue by conducting a review of the Irish set-up and clarifying that there was nothing untoward happening within their purview but this would also have forced the FAI to adjudicate on the difficult questions now playing out in public.
What is an acceptable way to talk to players? What level of control is appropriate for a manager to exert over their players? And who should be allowed to answer these questions? How much emphasis should the opinions of the players not selected under a manager hold in comparison to the players who are regularly selected? How much weight should be given to the manager’s own views in all of this? Can the background and age of a player and manager be allowed to inform their opinions on what constitutes acceptable behaviour?
Pauw herself says she is the victim of gender bias. “Go through the allegations and put Pep Guardiola, Louis van Gaal or Mourinho in that and you would laugh about it”, she said last week, having previously drawn attention to Guardiola’s blunt public comment that Kalvin Phillips returned from the World Cup overweight.
Her lawyer Thomas Newkirk last week elaborated on gender bias when he appeared on Today with Clare Byrne on RTÉ radio. “If a female is raising her voice – which Vera rarely does – or a female uses foul language, which Vera never does, we interpret that as being more likely to be abusive, or mean or rough or bullying. A male can do exactly the same things and we’re not bothered by it in the same way.”
Another reason Guardiola and others are not challenged or criticised over these methods is not just because they are men, but because they are working in the men’s game. The men’s game has rarely had to debate acceptable behaviour and challenge authority in the way the women’s game has.
We cannot adjudicate on the merits of the claims made against Pauw here, but we can say it is deeply regrettable that questions around the behaviour of people in authority are currently coalescing around her. It is a consequence of the culture of the women’s game colliding with Pauw’s profile and truculence in the face of the allegations.
The willingness to challenge authority is one of the reasons this women’s World Cup will be the biggest yet, and we can recognise that fact without condemning Vera Pauw, who is embroiled in a story so knotted that no firm public judgement can be passed.