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There is cynicism about the World Sevens — but this is why women’s football needs it

Women’s football will never recover. This will set it back years.

This, of course, not being the 50-year ban that actually set women’s football back years, but Everton Women carrying on-loan Manchester United full-back Hannah Blundell out in a suitcase-cum-coffin before their World Sevens semi-final against United on Saturday and resurrecting her. Or Everton giving birth to a football with the faces of the injured players on it 24 hours earlier, not long after Aston Villa’s team danced the can-can and Chelsea’s squad turned themselves into a corporeal skittles board, and the Sky Sports television cameras forgot that they were meant to actually record Leicester City’s goal against London City Lionesses.

According to certain pockets of the internet who caught a glimpse of the third iteration of the global seven-a-side tournament, World Sevens, at Brentford’s Gtech Stadium over the weekend, all of that and some of other stuff that occurred over this three-day whimsical jaunt of cartwheeling referees, no offsides and the revelation Manchester United manager Marc Skinner might actually know who Bad Bunny is marks the dead end for women’s football. This was an irredeemable insult to the great pantheon that is Elite Professional Football.

World Sevens, co-founded by American entrepreneurs Jennifer Mackesy and Justin Fishkin touched down in west London last Wednesday. Only in its second year of existence, the third iteration of the competition, with its 15-minute halves on a pitch half the size of that of a traditional 11-a-side pitch but still (at least before last week) spiritually in the testing phase of existence, made plenty of noise.

As Chelsea lifted the World Sevens trophy, along with half a million U.S. dollars in prize money following their 6-5 win against Manchester United, an overwhelming majority of that noise, on the ground, was positive. Players spoke about how much they had enjoyed it. Staff spoke of a sense of freedom and bonding that they aren’t generally privy to in the more demanding, high-stakes environment of club football. Directors of football and decision-makers spoke of the valuable opportunity to showcase their clubs as more than just women’s versions of their men’s teams, as original entities with personality in an increasingly personality-driven financial and media landscape.

Which, of course, got some people really, really angry online.

The majority of the criticism aimed at World Sevens zeroed in on its supposed unseriousness. Which, in an age of dedicated set-piece coaches, field tilt and referees with Go Pros on their heads, might as well be a capital offence.

Looking beyond the most obvious irony that men’s footballers do plenty of unserious things too, like have dedicated YouTube channels showcasing all of the raw milk they drink and name their dog Win, the bigger irony speaks to the ongoing challenge facing women’s football, specifically that at times it can feel like it cannot win.

Because how sustainable is unseriousness? How much money can actually be made by scrapping the offside rule and spending hours crafting dance routines to Sophie Ellis-Bextor? More pertinently, to what extent is it worth selling your soul? Your dignity? Your ability to wear the club’s badge across your heart as you and your teammate are roly-polying into your winger?

Women’s football is damned if it attempts to ask for cash hard earned by its men’s senior team, or considers itself a sport on an equal level. But it’s equally damned, apparently, if it attempts to find alternative means of cash that aren’t selling itself to itself or prostrating to a nation-state.

The backlash, too, is rooted in a fragility that transcends football, the fear of long-held traditions of being seized, of one’s comfort zone shifting.

To be clear, World Sevens never intended to invade any space. While it was initially sold narratively as a potential rival to the Women’s Champions League, organisers have insisted since the start its intention is to augment an already existing space, not displace what’s inside it.

And women’s football still needs to be augmented. Leicester City were relegated to the WSL2 this season and face a summer of total financial uncertainty after their men’s senior team dropped into League One, a demotion that will require the club to cut expenditure to revenue to 60 per cent, putting the women’s football programme squarely on the chopping block.

But there’s also a perfectly adequate argument to be made that something doesn’t have to be so serious. There’s an unquantifiable value in simply permitting players and staff to have a bit of fun.

As with anything, there are existential threats. Will World Sevens be able to make itself an immovable fixture in an increasingly busy international and domestic schedule? When does the risk of serious injury, as happened with West Ham’s Tuva Hansen — who is now confirmed to have suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury — being stretchered off during the group stages, outweigh the value of fun and branding? Or, more bluntly, what happens if/when the money runs out?

While the two prior iterations provided prize money pools of $5m (£3.76m) spread among its eight teams, a more humble $1.5m (£1.1m) awaited this time around. Participating clubs earned a guaranteed £70k, admittedly more than what other European clubs make for winning their respective leagues, and enough to cover the costs of entering. But it’s hardly a pot that might turn the dial of a club’s financial situation if it fails to win the thing.

Yet, World Sevens have at least made a compelling case after last week that they can move the dial elsewhere. A lasting cliche of women’s football’s value is its accessibility, its clarity of personality, its counterpoint to the sterile, money-soaked product of men’s football.

As the game has grown, women’s football has slipped at times closer in line with its male counterparts, with media training and carefully curated behind-the-scenes access.

For all the fun and disruption, the commitment to elite sport itself never felt reneged. Some of the goals scored were stunning, and the defensive interventions did not lack intensity. Jess Park crafted poetry. Chelsea’s Aggie Beever-Jones might as well have walked on water.

And in the end, it was enjoyable, a simple experience that can feel increasingly elusive these days.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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