## 25 Women Football

As long as I remember, my first contact with women football is in 2011 with the World Cup. If I was interested in Football in my youth in the 80s, it was not a great passion for me. In 1998, I was doing my Military Service and I was in the streets for the final France vs Brasil but I missed a few matches. Modern football with  cheating, simulation, or the impact of tackles compared to virtuosity is something I don't like. It's the same now with professional rugby. But with women football, I saw what I liked in football : No protests, just beautiful play, teamwork, no time-wasting, and no cheating. And it was the first good results of the French team with the white sorcerer Bruno Bini. And 14 years after that, I'm still watching every match of the french team and great competitions like World cup, Olympic games or European championship.

It's now UEFA Women's Championship during one month and for the moment I saw every match of the competition. It's in Switzerland and no problem of time difference. It's still nice to see every team and the level is more homogeneous than before. Of course there are top teams like Spain, Germany, Sweden ...but the level of the "little" countries is not so far. Except for a 5-0, there are no more 10-0 and one-sided matches. Now women football is professional in most countries but we can's the the adverse effects of professionalism like in men football or in rugby. I hope it will continue like that, and as I can see in women rugby too. It's quick, it's technical, and France is still in the outsiders...with great players like Delphine Cascarino, Sandy Baltimore, Marie-Antoinette Katoto, those who succeed Sonia Necib, Marinette Pichon, etc... Marinette had even a biopic !

There are more and more women coaches and I think that Corinne Diacre (former coach of the french team) was right with her choices but there were political powers against her in Lyon (the OL is (was?) the greatest team in Europe) to keep the players of Lyon in the national team. Now the coach did a radical choice about those famous players : They are not in the team anymore, despite good results in the national championship. Exactly what Corinne Diacre did with less diplomacy and ...timing. It seems that the team is more collective than before and I remember a match against Japan in Paris where I saw little groups inside the team and sometimes animosity (a famous affair happened in the PSG women team..). That's past and I wish the best for this team, even if I'm not a great fan of this coach.

I also saw a great change between the World cup 2011 and the Euro 2025 : We can see every match on TV without paying a fee. It will certainly help the popularity of this sport. Women sport is late in France and when I talk about women football with friends and colleagues, I still hear sexism, machismo, preconceptions and mistakes. There are a lot of videos showing great actions in women football and showing it's not always slower than you could think. I heard a lot of thinks like that in Tennis, Athletics, Basket-ball a few years ago...And when I see that major sport media are not speaking of women sport, like L'équipe does most of the time, there's a lot to do. The OL (olympique lyonnais) football team won 8 titles in European Championship, more than every men teams...and was not celebrated as it should have been. Women sports are still interesting for media when it's "sexy" and that's why tennis was the exception for years...or why media spoke of beach volley more for small shorts than for results. 

If you have never watched a women football match, it's time to look at your TV with this great cup. Of course, Stadium are still smaller but you don't have hooligans and violence in the audience. You can go with your family without fear. It's what I liked in sport because competition if not all : It's also a meeting, a way of surpassing oneself, of feeling free, making friends... It was what I lived in High Jump in Athletics in regional level but that's another story. 

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