It has been an up and down year for the defending UEFA women’s football champions England.
While they won the title last year, the team was stuck in a battle with the English Football Association over pay, which threatened to derail their chances to knock off two-time defending champions USA as the 2023 Women’s World Cup kicked off this past week.
Speaking exclusively to Betway, former England and Arsenal footballer Rachel Yankey has lifted the lid on her frustration about the women’s team not receiving their World Cup bonuses.
She has also reiterated the challenges she faced to make it as a professional player with so much scrutiny against the women’s game when growing up.
I’m disappointed in the FA after row over bonuses… we have to keep moving forward
“I’m disappointed that the row between the FA and the players happened. Going into a World Cup, you don’t need anything off the pitch that could disturb the build-up to the tournament,” Yawkey said.
“After winning the Euros and the way that the WSL is changing, the FA have backed the England team so much and have invested in them so highly. While it paid off because the team won the Euros, to not have something agreed and to not have something in place doesn’t look like we’re moving forward. Other nations can start to take over and if you’re a team that wants to be successful you always have to be moving forward and pushing. So that to me is a bit disappointing.
“I suppose the good thing is that the players, I think for their principles, are standing up to it and saying ‘no this can’t happen’ – and that might not be for these players, but it might be for the future generations that you have to put things in place, so I back those players and what they’re doing to stand up for what’s right, but we’ll see what happens.”
Sarina Wiegman is good enough to manage in the men’s game – she is a winning manager
“I think that would depend on the team, the philosophy and whatever coach they wanted to bring in. Obviously I think when you win the Euros twice with two different teams, it makes you a leading candidate in your own right for whatever job, whether that’s mens football or women’s football, but I think the team would have to be right for whatever she wants to do. The opportunity and the project would have to be the right one for her, but if you’re a winning manager, surely people want successful winning managers.
“The way I look at it is, to become a coach you need to pass a qualification, where you start at the bottom with your license, your B-license, your A-license and your pro-license. There isn’t that for men and women, it’s the same thing. So, she has the best qualifications to be a football manager, so she can manage anyone. You don’t look at school teachers and go ‘that school teacher has a certain qualification, so they can’t teach my son, but they can teach my daughter’. So, in the way I look at it is, she has the highest qualification and is obviously good at her job because of what she has won, so if that is enticing to any team in terms of whether they would want to recruit a manager of her caliber, then get in talks, negotiate, and see what happens.I don’t think there is any difference between whether a player is male or female, it really doesn’t matter.
“Coaching is all about teaching and how you relate to people and how you give them the confidence in how to play as well as the tactical knowledge her and her staff has. So to me, it doesn’t matter about men or women.”
Financial gap will close between the men’s and women’s games, but only if the women’s game gets the external things right
“It goes to external things like in the men’s game it sells merchandise and is a big business. Can you get that in the women’s game? If you can get that in the women’s game, the gap will close.”
To play football, I had to break down barriers and stand up for what I believed in
“In the early years there was a lot of discrimination regarding that girls shouldn’t be playing football. That is one of the hardest barriers to be able to break, but if you’re willing to challenge, go against what people are saying, stand up for what you believe in and have a go then you can change it over time. So they were probably the biggest barriers for me.”
