Does anyone here watch women's football?
I can't "I watch it" as in regularly, but when the World Cup or Euros or something is on I definitely watch it and enjoy it.
I think in most sports when you watch a contest between two people or teams, it's not just the overall level of the teams involved that makes for entertainment, it's more to do with the level of competitiveness between the teams involved. At least when the sides are above a certain level. I would rather watch a premiership relegation thriller that finishes 5 - 4 than see Italy grind out a 1 - 0 victory over Spain in extra time in which the mean Italian defence ultimately triumphed over the constantly probing (but never actually shooting) possession game of Spain who had eighty-four percent of possession and at one point strung together a record 873 consecutive passes.
From what I can tell women's football reached a level such that an international game is entertaining long ago. I would say that when I first saw women's footie twenty or thirty years ago they basically hadn't figured out goalkeeping which... was a problem, but it aint like that any more. Sure you can go on youtube and find an hilarious clip with four women miskicking the ball in a row, or that one (that is actually pretty funny) where the goalie has mistaken the nearby post as the other one and, as a result, totally mispositioned herself so that instead of standing to cover the near post she's actually standing beside the goal - and it is funny cos the attacker is running unopposed the length of the half with defenders trying to catch her, and the goalie is all the time psyching herself up for the coming challenge, and then the attacker just rolls it in the totally unguarded net.
But... and it's quite a big but, all the - I'm sure totally serious - comments underneath saying "And they think they should earn the same as men" etc are clearly based on the idea that the entirety of women's football should be judged on these freak occurrences. I find those comments far more concerning than the events they critique.