It’s a fair assumption that women’s football hasn’t been in the best of places in recent months with the saga surrounding the Mark Sampson and Eni Aluko allegations as well as the continuing decrease in competitiveness in the WSL. The later point the FA continues to try and address and I’ll address in this article too, while the first point the FA has failed get hold of the situation, a bit like a slippery eel. Anyway, the point I’m addressing today is the issue surrounding the league with the FA announcing this week that the licence format including a league revamp will start next season with a new 8-14 team top tier made entirely out of professional clubs, while WSL 2 (the current second tier) will become a semi-professional league. I believe this will be catastrophic for the game as it has become clear over recent seasons that a professional women’s club is only sustainable if it has significant financial backing from their men’s side (if associated), as clubs who don’t have this fail as seen with the demise of Notts County and the continued uncertainty surrounding Sunderland. In my honest opinion the structure is broken as the top priority of FAWSL when it was launched in 2011 was to increase popularity of the sport and to increase participation amongst girls taking up football. By making the league fully professional and by changing the criteria to get a WSL 1 licence some clubs will see attendances decrease and struggle as a result, while aspiring footballers will be left without a top tier side in close proximity. My reservations, which I have stated numerous times if you follow me on Twitter is that the WSL 1 will just turn into the women’s equivalent of the men’s Premier League, where positions are dictated by money and where the participating teams will be from London and the North-West only meaning it erects barriers to aspiring footballers from other parts of the country. My radical idea, not that anyone will take note of it as money talks, would be to implement a franchise system where teams are not backed by a sole individual / club as they will be based in regions. Let me explain, an example would be to give a franchise to the South-West where the likes of Plymouth Argyle and Exeter City can support a franchise and games can alternate between stadiums. This in my opinion is a much more sustainable approach to the women’s game in the country as it allows teams to be spread fairly evenly across England while not relying on one sole party to bankrole it, thus decreasing the likelihood of teams going out of business. Hopefully this approach would also increase competitiveness of the league and give girls from all over the country a chance to access professional football and not just the ones lucky enough to live within a certain area. Below is the list of regional franchises I believe the FA should focus upon with examples of clubs which could invest:
· North-West (Everton, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United) · East Midlands (Leicester City, Mansfield Town, Nottingham Forest, Notts County) · West Midlands (Aston Villa, Birmingham City, West Brom, Wolves) · South-West (Bristol City, Bristol Rovers, Exeter City, Plymouth Albion, Yeovil Town) · North-East (Newcastle United, Middlesbrough, Sunderland) · London (Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur) · Oxfordshire & Thames Valley (Oxford City, Oxford United, Swindon Town) · East Anglia (Cambridge United, Ipswich Town, Norwich City, Peterborough United) · South-Yorkshire (Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Rotherham United) · West-Yorkshire (Bradford City, Huddersfield Town, Leeds United)
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