Men in football get full rein to pursue their dreams while women must compromise | Jonathan Liew
Two female WSL managers are leaving for reasons of work-life balance. When it comes to sacrifice, it’s not the same for men
Famously, when Emma Hayes was agonising last autumn over whether to leave Chelsea and take the US national team job, she sought the advice of her son, Harry, at bedtime. “Let’s go to the USA, Mummy!” came the reply, a moment that Hayes later described as the “endorsement” she needed. And so we must at least brook the extremely funny possibility that an entire era of modern women’s football – from this season’s enthralling WSL title race, to the trajectory of Chelsea, Lyon and their European rivals, to the fate of the next Olympic Games and World Cup – will swing on the verdict of a sleepy five-year-old child.
And, frankly, why not? When you consider some of the decisions adults have taken for the health of the game in recent years, it’s hard to make the case that children would have done a markedly inferior job. A five-year-old child would certainly not have sanctioned the introduction of VAR, because waiting is boring, and they would have been right. A five-year-old child could have devised far better World Cup venues than Qatar or Saudi Arabia, although it remains to be seen whether Pizza Express would have had the capacity to host a gathering of such magnitude.
