A group of leading women footballers, furious at being forced to play next year’s World Cup on artificial pitches, have filed a lawsuit against football’s governing body claiming sexual discrimination.
The 24-team tournament will be held at six venues across Canada. But unlike World Cups that involve male players, not one of these venues has a natural playing surface.
And I agree that is both discriminatory and just plain unfair.
Fifa are supposed to be nurturing the women’s game, helping it grow in popularity and improve in standard. But none of that will be achieved by forcing female players to play their most important tournament on substandard pitches.
It’s true that artificial turf has come a long way in the past few decades. It is no longer a surface that is guaranteed to give you third-degree burns just for trying a sliding tackle. When plastic pitches were first created you would have been safer playing football on a gigantic cheese grater.
However, despite the advances in design and technology, synthetic turf is still not a good enough substitute for the real thing, both in terms of potential for injury and in how the ball plays on it.
In my opinion these players are 100 per cent justified in their claim of discrimination because, frankly, Fifa would never try to do this with the men’s tournament, as they know they would have a worldwide revolution on their hands.
Can you imagine Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi being told to play the biggest games of their lives on artificial turf? They just wouldn’t bother getting on the plane. So why try and impose these on women players?
Fifa’s argument will probably be something along the lines that Canada doesn’t have enough grass pitches to host the tournament or that the weather in certain regions means grass pitches are not practical.
While I doubt that is really the case, if it is I would like to make a suggestion to Fifa which may help solve this and other problems they are facing: stop awarding your major tournaments to countries that are not capable of hosting them.
Putting the fans last
The idea of playing top-flight games overseas has reared its incredibly ugly head once again.
According to reports, the Premier League is now looking into the possibility of taking some of the existing scheduled matches and transferring them to another country, with the US top of its list.
This idea originally surfaced a few years ago when it was revealed that the PL were looking into having an extra round of matches, all to be played overseas. The so-called ‘39th game’.
Well, it was an appalling, selfish and unworkable idea back then and, despite some slight tinkering, is an equally repulsive idea now.
Dedicated, hard-working fans already struggle to attend matches due to exorbitant prices. Moving games to another country is just adding insult to injury.
It smacks of nothing other than pure greed and is a proposition so shameful it would force me to turn my back on football for good if it ever came to be.
The Hornet’s nest
Watford are now on their fourth manager of the season, giving whole new meaning to the concept of manager of the month.
One quit, one had to leave for health reasons and the last one, Billy McKinlay, was replaced after just eight days in charge.
Last week’s head coach is former Chelsea midfielder Slavisa Jokanovic, who joins the club after forging a rather successful managerial career in Europe.
I would like to make a suggestion to Fifa: stop awarding your major tournaments to countries that are not capable of hosting them
However, the way things are going at Vicarage Road I wouldn’t suggest he gets too comfortable in his office, which probably has a revolving door installed by now.
Having said that, the constant upheavals in the coaching department don’t seem to be having too much of a negative effect on the players – Watford are joint top of the Championship after 11 games.
And that kind of makes a mockery of the theory, which I subscribe too, that teams need managerial stability to be successful.
Meanwhile, if you thought McKinlay’s reign was a short one at just eight days, it was a long way off the record.
Leroy Rosenior was appointed manager of Torquay United in 2007 on the same day as a takeover of the club was completed. Inevitably the new owners wanted their own man in charge and Rosenior was out of a job – just 10 minutes after signing.
I doubt even Watford, with their current manager-of-the-week approach, will be able to beat that one…
Russ justice
Talking of football managers, I always find it incredible how quickly they go from heroes to zeros.
Russ Wilcox was sacked last week by Scunthorpe after a poor run of form. Nothing unusual there really as we are now entering the phase of the season where chairmen start to hit the panic button.
However, it is not that long ago that Wilcox was being hailed as a manager of unusual brilliance. He only took on the Scunthorpe job last season but went a staggering 28 games without losing, breaking a record that had stood for 125 years in the process.
That incredible run saw his team gain automatic promotion to League One and meant Scunthorpe had to fight hard to hold on to their in-demand manager at the end of season.
A few months later and he is clearing out his desk and walking out the door with his manager of the month trophies in a cardboard box.
When teams like Scunthorpe aren’t prepared to stick by a manager going through a lean spell, is there any wonder English football is struggling to attract a new generation of young coaches?
It must be one of the most volatile and thankless jobs in the world…
Of course, getting the sack as a manager is not always bad news – as we were reminded last week when Roberto Di Matteo got his first job since being binned by Roman Abramovich in 2012.
The Champions League-winning manager took over at struggling Bundesliga side Schalke, and to be honest it’s good to see him back in business.
What I had forgotten, however is that Di Matteo was still on the Stamford Bridge payroll up until June of this year.
The Italian was essentially being paid £130,000 (€165,436) a week not to manage Chelsea.
What a waste of money… I would have not managed them for half that.
Wage to go
I came across an interesting fact about world football’s governing body last week: the average salary at Fifa, which employs 412 people, is a rather staggering $220,000 (€174,202) a year. Is there any wonder the organisation is so incredibly out of touch with the real world and the normal fan when their own wages are so massively inflated?
sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade