Canadian spying scandal and Emma Hayes’ USWNT start: Football Weekly Extra

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Hello, and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly, a women's football special.

We begin with the Canadian drones.

Not a sentence I expected to lead a pod anytime soon with, but the coach suspended and shamed.

Wouldn't they have beaten New Zealand anyway?

And why is the sanction so much greater than the ultimate spy, Marcelo Bielsa?

Is it just because everybody loves him?

We'll talk about Emma Hayes and the US WMT and the rest of the Olympics before turning our attention to the WSL, including the Hazeless Chelsea, of course.

We'll discuss Big Sergey Ratcliffe seemingly deprioritizing of the women's teams team and cover the depressing demise of Reading.

All that plus your questions.

And that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today, Barry Glenn Denning, welcome.

Hello, Max.

We've already had our pre-show domestic, in which you were extremely condescending.

And

more or less suggested that I was just here for the ride because I haven't done any preparation for this podcast.

All I was suggesting was that the three people I'm about to introduce may know more about the women's game than you.

That's all I'm saying.

But

if you prove me wrong,

I will happily, once again, one of us will have to apologise.

We've been here before.

Susie Rack, how are you?

Good, thanks.

Ready to bow to Barry's superior knowledge?

Absolutely.

So you should.

Know your place.

Tom Gary, who joined the Guardian recently, women's football writer, making a pod debut.

Hey, Tom.

Good morning.

Lovely to speak to you.

Yeah.

I've just learned from Barry that Medamar signed for Man City and I'm frantically making some notes.

She's really quite good.

That's Sophie Downey as well from Girls on the Ball, Ghanian Women's Football Weekly Regular.

Hey, Sophie.

Hey, thanks for having me today.

No, thanks for coming on.

Let's start with the Canadian drones.

I mean, I guess it doesn't sort of matter so much because they're through anyway, but it's such an extraordinary story.

Their manager, Beverly Priestman, removed as head coach, suspended by the country's Football Federation after a drone was flown over a New Zealand training session.

Like, she got Canada the gold in Tokyo.

Has she been spying all the time?

It's hard to say, right?

Like, I mean, the evidence suggests that they potentially have been, which is what is most shocking.

In that, like, it seems it may have started with her predecessor, John Herdman, who's now with the men's team.

There may, it may be going on with the men's team as well.

Emails that were submitted as evidence to the appeal committee suggest that she,

um, Beth Peasman, that is, sort of guidance on how to deal with a staff member who refused to spy for more reasons.

So, like, clearly,

it was known to be wrong, right?

And still done.

And that, I think, is what is most concerning, especially from someone who is so, so well respected, was so, so well respected within the women's game.

I mean, it tarnishes the Tokyo gold,

even if that was sort of nothing to do with it, which, you know, we just probably, well, may never know.

I'm just staggered that

anyone thought it was okay

at any point.

That's what kind of really gets me is that, you know, they knew it was wrong.

And yet also, like, what kind of advantage do you actually get from that as well?

Like, I mean, how utterly minimal is it?

Is it really worth it, you know?

Yeah, Tom, what do you mean?

I mean, that's the thing is, I guess it's serious, but I'm finding it hard to take it too seriously.

I don't know how seriously

I should take this.

Yeah, I don't want to upset everyone in New Zealand, but I'm like Susie was just saying, like, what do you gain from it?

Like, they were spying on New Zealand.

Like, they're one of the worst teams in the tournament it wasn't like they were spying on Spain or the United States but um I I do think it should be taken very seriously I I think particularly there's a there's in an email that uh has emerged recently that Priestman is you know supposedly has written to HR internally at Canada soccer she you know alleges that all the top 10 teams are doing this all the time now clearly she's offering no proof for that but I suppose that does raise a question of just how common this might be and how widespread this might be.

And I suppose it's going to be up to to FIFA and lots of other FAs to sort of check that this isn't some sort of really widespread issue of cheating.

But I think it is.

Well, I think it is serious, but I found the one-year ban relative to the lengths of bans that we've seen for things like racism or Luis Suarez biting somebody at a World Cup.

I thought

sending a drone over New Zealand's training session, that felt a little bit sort of overly sensational for me relative to the crime.

Yeah, I would agree in a lot of respects.

I think the one-year ban was

the most surprising thing out of it all.

Beyond the, I also thought the six points, I didn't think that didn't help New Zealand really, because they were the ones who were kind of affected by it most in the way that they were the ones that were being spied on.

And they still lost that game to Canada.

So even though Canada got dropped six points, they still didn't gain that three points from the game that they had.

So they didn't really gain any sort of advantage from it.

But I do think

the year ban is really strong.

I just, as Susie said, I just don't understand it.

It's really hard to understand, but it also shows a sort of lack of trust in your players from my point of view.

You know,

if you don't think your players can deal with changes in lineup or changes in system or, you know, certain players being on the pitch or not on the pitch, then why

like that shows no trust in them whatsoever.

And surely your whole staff around the team team should be set up to be able to, you know, provide the preparation needed without having to spy.

You know, we have so much information these days on players, on footage of friendlies.

They play all the time, these teams.

It's not a surprise what they're going to bring up.

So I just don't really understand it.

It does sort of flabbergast me a bit.

Yeah, on the band, Barry,

BLS leads, you know, they spied on Derby County.

BLSA admitted that leads had spied on every opponent that season and he got away with a fine and a kind of slap on the wrist.

Is that just because you can't hate Bielsa?

Like, he can do whatever he likes.

Well, I suppose it's a different governed body, isn't it?

And

presumably,

not different rules, but just different punishments.

Bielsa got fined 200 grand, as I recall, and insisted on paying it himself and was...

did seem to be genuinely shocked that what he was doing was considered

cheating

and you know spoke at great length to the the press and was and was very contrite about it but I couldn't agree more with Sophie that doing this you know you've got to think this this is wrong this is morally wrong

and it does suggest a huge lack of confidence in your own

managerial skills your own players that you feel the need to do this because oh seeing what they do at corner routines or free kicks or line-ups, whatever,

is going to give us this significant edge, which might help us beat them.

You know, you should have enough faith in your own team to not have to spy on New Zealand.

I'm like you, Max.

I think it is serious, but I find it hard to take it seriously.

And I think maybe it's because we're not used to this kind of thing going on in the women's game.

Like yesterday, Manchester City men's team...

were fined over 2 million quid for repeatedly delaying kickoffs in games and coming out late for the start or the second half.

And now we all know nobody would ever question Manchester City's commitment to transparency, probity and fair play.

But the most recent and most egregious of those incidents was in the very last game of last season when they kicked off against West Ham nearly three minutes late.

Now that could have given them a very significant advantage in the title race.

And I think that's more serious than flying a drone over a new zealand training session yeah susie what so what what did what happened with that email so someone said to be honest bev i don't really want to be a spy you know i'm here to be a coach i don't want to wear a long macintosh and like cut some eye holes in a newspaper like what what what happened there Yeah, I mean, according to reports in Canada, that is what the argument is, is that she sought guidance on how to deal with a staff member who refused to spy for moral reasons?

So, like, someone's raised their hand and gone, hang on a second, isn't this something we shouldn't be doing?

And they've gone to HR to deal with it, which is even more insane, right?

Like, someone points out that you're wrong and you pursue them.

I just, it is laughable, right?

But the ban, the length of, I agree with Tom and Sophie, the length of Bev's ban, I think, reduces

the humor a little bit because it is like a really,

really,

like, like devastatingly long time to be out of the game for someone who was so highly rated you hope that you know she feels pretty crap about this situation and like you know the idea of someone ever doing it again I suppose it's the the evidence like this which points to it being not like Beelzez who was a bit like oh okay this is something I shouldn't have been doing but like a you know clear planned thing that they knew was wrong and kept doing like that's the thing that like obviously reduces the sympathy a little bit.

But, yeah, I mean, I just, yeah, I'm baffled by it.

Like, I mean, I completely agree with the points that Sophie and Baron made about the advantage and the message that sends to your players.

I mean, Canada had a really, really good team going into this tournament.

That is what is so baffling.

They're forward line, you know, Lacasse, Heitmer, Adriana Leon, who's been brilliant lately, Nichelle Prince, Janine Becky, these are really good players, right?

And then you've got, you know, Jesse Fleming and Quinn and Grosso in the middle, like really, really solid defensively.

They've always always been good defensively, but they've actually got a pretty decent midfield and attack going into this tournament that they are the defending champions of.

But the most laughable bit, again, I agree with Tom, is the spying on New Zealand of the teams that they're playing.

Well, one presumes, like New Zealand was the first game.

One presumes that once that was out of the way.

It's football of very much one game at a time.

They take each game as it comes.

So they possibly would have had plans to spy on other teams' training sessions as those games came around.

One thing I'm interested to know that John Herdman, who's Priestman's successor, both of them are from Consert in County Durham.

Do they go back a long way or is that just a mad coincidence?

I think that's a complete coincidence in terms of where they're from.

But

we shouldn't forget that Bed Priestman was Phil Neville's number two at England.

And there's been no suggestion that this was going on in England, but there's certainly an element of irony because...

They weren't doing very well.

Well, during the World Cup, 2019 world cup people might remember that uh head of the semi-final against the united states phil neville was really up in arms and quite angry because a u.

staff member had been spotted near the england hotel i think or was it in the reception lobby of the hotel in leon um and neville in the press conference was kind of furious he was sort of you know really throwing shade on the US for maybe trying to spy on something they were doing at the hotel.

And, you know, Priestman was Neville's number two at the time.

So the idea now that she's potentially overseen this sort of reign of drone spying brings a little bit of irony.

But no, Herdman,

I think that's a relative coincidence.

But certainly there are a lot of English connections to this case.

And Andy Spence, who stepped up,

who was Priestman's assistant in Canada and has stepped up very admirably in the two games since then, and they've got through the group.

underspence, kind of defying the point seduction.

He's also from Merseyside.

So there's

a lot of English connections to this whole story.

Can I ask?

If

so, Canada have, despite their six-point deduction, got out of their group and are now in the quarter-finals.

If they go on to win this tournament,

it's going to look bad for the Olympics, it's going to look bad for Canada.

I don't know if it's possible for them to meet France in the final.

If they were to beat France in the final, it would be hilarious.

That's not going to go down well, is it?

Yeah,

it would be

probably a predictable script, maybe in in women's football, that that's going to happen, that they are going to win the Olympics now.

Yeah, I think it won't look good on anyone if that happens.

And

that's the sad case, right?

Because it brings the whole tournament into kind of question and it brings the whole of the Canadian players into question.

And I know they've been sort of railing against this for the last week and sort of saying, well, we knew nothing.

It's not our fault.

kind of please stop talking about this.

You know, we're not cheaters as players.

But actually, it's a team sport, right?

And under a team sport, you get tarred with the same brush as other people within that team if they've been found to doing, mean doing something wrong.

So unfortunately for them,

the crowd will continue to hang over them, I think.

Yeah, I just like the HR meeting, Susie.

Did HR, we don't know if HR took, you know, Priestman's side, in which case, suddenly you're your coach and now it's literally it's like the KGB, isn't it?

Like you have to be a spy.

It's an HR meeting.

It's like, you have to be a spy.

That's totally mad.

Has anybody, Susie, sort of because if she said, Look, this is happening everywhere, have other managers been asked about this?

I presume they all flat bat it and say, Oh, no, nothing to see here.

I mean, I guess we surely there'd just be drones everywhere, right?

And if it's if it's it can't just be in the women's game in the men's game as well, it'd just be all over the place.

I don't know if others have, do you know if others have been asked, Tom, so I've not heard of any others being asked, but it's definitely a good question to be asked at this tournament.

There's not a huge number of British journalists out there, as far as I'm aware, covering the tournament because of the lack of the lack of Team GB in the tournament.

There's only, you know, kind of the ones and twos out there.

But yeah, it's definitely something that I would,

Barry mentioned it earlier, that it would, you know, like presumably had they got away with it, they would have gone on to spy on the US and

Germany.

I would have loved it to have happened to the US and to have seen MA's reaction to it.

Like, I just, I mean, it would just be incredible to have that kind of showdown over it.

Yeah,

I would pay good money for

that drama being thrown into the mix.

But yeah, we just don't know.

One presumes that managers have drones recording their own training sessions.

So maybe it's just time to arm these drones and they can just have dogfights over the training ground, shooting each other out of the sky.

Yeah, they have to have insignia on them.

You know, you have to have like Team US on the drone so

you know it's your drone.

Is that your drone?

Are you flying that drone?

There's other things that go on though, isn't there, right?

Like, you know, you have players leaking team sheets to other teams and things like that before like major games and stuff.

There's loads of like little dodgy things go on here and there, but I mean, obviously, this is a different scale.

I did see a, I thought, I think I saw an advert for a Canadian, like the original advert for the Canadian like analyst job, and it did say flying a drone.

And I think everyone, when they thought they saw that, they were like, oh, oh, that's just in their own thing.

I don't think anyone thought they saw that it meant to go to your opponents and try and start spying on them.

But that was quite funny.

Yeah, you have to be able to keep secrets and just be able to drop a briefcase walking past someone and wearing exactly the same outfit as you by Waterloo Bridge, don't you?

Tom, how is Emma Hayes

taken to life as US head coach?

So far, so good.

She's in a sort of that

cliche honeymoon period right now where everything's going very well.

There are some difficult challenges ahead, not least Japan in the quarterfinal.

But I think what struck me last night in particular was the massive improvements in style of play from the Americans.

It's only a year ago, in fact, a year ago today, that the US played a goalless draw against Portugal in the World Cup, their final group stage game.

And in the women's game, Portugal are not particularly, you know, highly thought of.

And this was a game the US should have won.

And they actually ended up with, you know, the Portuguese having the higher senses of possession.

They were the better side.

I thought they probably should have won the game.

The US were very lucky to scrape through.

They looked really disjointed.

They didn't really seem to have a cohesive style.

They weren't comfortable in possession.

And then all of a sudden, last night, you've got the US team a year later.

I think they had 72% of the ball against the Australians who have finished fourth in the World Cup.

They look really fluid and cohesive.

It's not perfect yet.

There's still a bit of defensive vulnerability, possibly, and they're not as clinical in front of goal as you'd think they might be, but

they're a lot more more fun to watch than I've seen the US be before.

I think historically, when the US have done well, we've maybe there've been reasons behind it, like the resources or the fact that the players have maybe been fitter and stronger and more athletic or that you know that there's just a greater pool of players.

But now we first time I'm really starting to admire the US style of play.

So far, so good.

There's still, I'm not, I don't want to sit here and say she's going to lead them to gold because there's just some really good sides in it as well, like Spain.

And I think that that's hard to call.

But yeah, at the moment, Hayes, maximum of nine points from nine.

I think she'll be really happy with the way they've started.

So would you say she's working with better players

or about the same?

Like,

if, you know, what's the, in terms of the quality of the players that she has to coach, Chelsea compared to the US?

I wouldn't say they're better.

I think they're, you know, really both, both sides of the game, they're really top quality these days.

I think for years, it was always with the US national team that they were always, by far and away, the strongest team.

And they had the systems in place in the US to really capitalize on, you know, their success when they won in 1999 and all of those, you know, famous years, which really catapulted them up the,

you know, the levels.

But now the rest of the world is catching up in terms of the structures that we have around women's football in Europe and, you know, the professional structures, the WSL, you know, even across the other leagues in Europe, everything is caught up with that gap.

So I would say the quality is pretty much the same.

She's always gone after really top quality players.

If you look at the squad that she left behind with Chelsea, you know, you've got world-class players in that squad, the Sam Kerrs of the world, the Cat Macarios, who unfortunately isn't at this tournament because she suffered any injury.

But yeah, so I think it's pretty much the same.

I think it's just for her, it's adapting to...

life being an international football coach instead of a domestic one where you're not, you know, she's had a six weeks where she's very involved.

And after this tournament, she won't be very involved until the next international camp.

So it's about managing that.

I think that's the main difference for her at the moment.

Other big stories from the Olympics, obviously, Australia had that mad game against Zambia, didn't they?

They were 5-2 down and 1-6-5, but they're out.

And their manager, Tony Gustafston, has they've parted ways.

I think he's just got the boot, hasn't he?

It's not been a great tournament for them.

I mean, there was quite high hopes going into the competition that they, you know, had had the, I think he said they'd had the best training camp they've ever had prior to the tournament.

Um, obviously, had the, you know, the brilliant one to the semi-final of the World Cup last year, and then

to suffer defeat at the group stage of a tournament where eight of the 12 teams go through to the next, uh, to the next stage, the knockout phase.

It's like it's pretty poor to not kind of claw your way out of that.

Disappointing.

I mean, obviously, you can blame sort of the loss of Sam Kerr

to her ACL injury, like your captain, your talismanic striker, but you've got enough quality there on the pitch without her to be able to do some real damage.

And it was really sort of disappointing performances.

I'd say particularly against Germany, who haven't necessarily been the best team in the past year, although look really, really good now in this tournament.

And, you know, a pretty weak performance against the US.

you know, despite the scoreline being a bit closer, I think they've got to be really disappointed with that.

And the Zambia game, whilst the scoreline is like particularly hilarious and it was just one of those like, what the hell is going on here games as you watch it speaks to the problem, like the depth of the problems in that side that you're, you know, they're able to be cut through so easily

and can score goals, but, you know, clearly not against the big teams.

Just finally on international game, Tom, is Serena Vieveman not as good slash all-powerful as she was a couple of years ago?

I think is it two years to the day, maybe, or three years to the day that we won?

Two years ago, yesterday.

Yeah, that England won the Euros.

Yeah, is she not as all-powerful?

Like, like they've sort of stuttered a bit, it seems.

Oh, that's a good question.

I certainly maybe England don't have that.

There was a period in the maybe 18 months after Vegman took over when they won the Euros and they went on a run where she hadn't lost a game until nearly two years in charge.

And they beat the US at Wembley, and there was kind of an aura about the Lionesses and Viedman, who they seemed a little bit invincible.

I think that has changed probably over the last year.

But I also don't think that England have been stuttering quite as much as maybe we think because we cannot forget how unusually weird their qualifying group was for those Euros, and they've still managed to come through it.

So,

I won't go through all the tiny details and bore everybody to death, but essentially, England ended up in a group with three of the four European semi-finalists in the qualifying group,

plus Ireland, who also went to the World Cup.

And there were teams in kind of the same pot as England in that draw, who England had put seven goals past in February in Italy.

Right.

To have lost games to France at home, that's kind of no major panic.

But you're right in that I don't think there's the same fear about people playing England as there maybe was, yeah, two years ago when they were really on top of the world.

But

I, I, yeah, I don't think anybody in the camp is really panicking about the fact that they they haven't been winning every match as they used to because it was you know unusually difficult uh group that they had over the summer i shall stop panicking excellent i i saw yesterday at the olympics marta got sent off playing for brazil and was incredibly upset was she upset because she felt she shouldn't have been sent off uh

sort of narrator's voice she should have been sent off or is she upset because this could be her last action on a football pitch It's her last action on a football pitch, I think.

Not on a football pitch, on an international football pitch for Brazil.

I think that's the big fear: that's the last time we're going to see an absolute legend of the game.

And, you know, she's changed women's football.

She's been around so long at the very highest level.

And she's still playing at the highest level in the NWSL.

But I do think it's the end of an international career unless she could be convinced to stay on for two more years and go to Brazil World Cup in 2027.

I wouldn't put it past her to be to be able to be doing that, but as it stands, that's...

Sorry, Brazil Aaron Dows with the Olympics.

No, no, but she's got sent off, hasn't she?

So she's going to at least serve, I would imagine, at least two match suspensions.

So

the big fear is that she's not going to be playing another international game for Brazil.

But yeah, Brazil have the World Cup in 2027.

They're hosting it.

And I just wouldn't be surprised if she goes back, makes a bit of a U-turn on her decision to quit international football.

I mean, what's the difference?

There's no difference between being like 67 and 69 playing at this level, is there?

Anyway, look, that'll do for part one, part two.

We'll look at the WSL.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Or Gunguna says, who are the realistic contenders for the WSL title this year?

Just Chelsea and City?

And what does Eidervell need to do this season to keep his job?

Those crowds won't keep coming to the Emirates without tangible success.

Susie.

I mean realistic contenders at the moment with no Emma Hayes, any of them, right?

Like, I mean, that's where we can sort of

throw the net wide open.

I mean, Chelsea have a monumental task on their hands if they're going to remain sort of on top.

without Emma Hayes, like, and with, you know, kind of the number of players that are going and arriving, like, that's a really, really difficult thing to do.

So, that sort of leaves the door a little bit open for the Arsenals and Man Cities of the world.

I find it really hard to look past Man City at the moment.

The recruitment of Viviana Miedemer, you know, that sort of

double threat of her and Bunny Shaw up top, whether you play, you know, both together or one or the other, just gives them a level of depth that they maybe didn't have in that position before.

You know, the games that they struggled in were the games that Bunny Shaw was missing for last season.

So, like, you maybe throw her in the mix when she throws Mirama in the mix, say, when

Bunny Shaw was injured towards the end of the season, and you're looking at a different league winner, essentially.

So,

for me, it's hard to look past Man City for the title.

Like, if you're looking straight at Arsenal being a little bit chaotic and not quite finding their rhythm, losing Mirama, although they've, you know, gained Mariona Caldente, and

you know, Mirdama is such a huge player to lose in terms of goals.

Um, and you look at sort of the massive turnover at Chelsea managerially and

in playing staff then

like I imagine the other two will agree I find it really really hard to look past Man City at this moment in time but you know my predictions are notoriously bad on the women's football weekly pod so you know

Arsenal going to win the league then yeah and Sophie Arsenal City opening day so so that's that that around Midamar is brilliant isn't it yeah I mean that's another you know script waiting to be written I think I have a few concerns about City myself myself.

I think the way that they sort of fell apart, and I do agree that Midamar brings depth to that forward position.

But I think when I look at the rest of their squad, and if they want to go deep into competitions, like not just the league, but the Champions League, if they get past round two and the cup competitions, it's not the deepest at all.

And you know, they made two signings this season, this off-season.

One of them is now injured, Risa Shimizu, who she picked up in the injury

with Japan at the Olympics.

So we don't know the extent of that yet.

Hopefully, it's not

what we fear it was in terms of it being an ACL.

I really hope it's not.

But they still haven't added that much depth.

And I do really worry.

We saw what happened last year when Bunny Shaw got injured in the latter stages of the season.

Now, Bunny Shaw is an exceptional player, and no one can replace her.

I think that will always cause a team any problem.

But I do just worry about their

strength and depth.

Whereas Arsenal have kept a pretty solid squad.

They've lost, obviously, a couple of players, but they're not going in like they were last year, completely, you know, off the cuff, sort of refreshed and having about two weeks off.

So I do think it's going to be a really interesting situation.

Tom, on Manchester United, obviously we've spent a lot of time talking about big Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

It doesn't seem like he's overly concerned about the women's team.

I don't know if that's an unfair characterisation from me.

No, I think that's he's almost been openly admitting that, really, in interviews where he has said on the record, you know, that they haven't really gone into too much detail yet on the women's side since the Enios group came in.

He's been quite blunt about the fact that the men's team are the big priority and sort of almost wants to fix everything they can within the men's team and then feels that the rest of the club will follow.

And yeah, that's certainly,

it doesn't mean that they're totally ignoring the women's team.

There still are quite a few positive things going on behind the scenes, but I think in general, the fact that Ratcliffe didn't turn up to the Women's FA Cup final, um, and just the tone of things, and I think more than that, the tone of what we hear from staff within the club about the kind of internal noises that the women's team really are, you know, very much playing second fiddle.

Now, hey, commercially, Man United fans and mensible fans will probably be listening to this thinking, well, of course, commercially, the men's team, most important, but I really think that some of the things that Ratcliffe says and does, you know, are going to

be remembered by women's team fans and players around the world who may or may not want to sign for Manchester United, you know, are being put off by that.

We broke a story in June at The Guardian that the women's team were being moved out of their women's team building into like temporary portable buildings for this coming season at Carrington so that the men can go into the women's building while the men's facilities are kind of being revamped.

And I think

that was, I think that was just handled really quite, really quite badly.

It's a bit of a,

It just looks awful for the football club that the women were going out into portable buildings.

There are positives still, you know, they've revamped all the women's pictures at Carrington.

They look really, really

impressive.

They've got, you know, improved facilities for the women's players around things like the

kind of recovery facilities in the spa and the strength of conditioning.

All of that stuff's been improved this summer.

But the fact they're currently at St George's Park for pre-season while, you know, it's just all of it looks looks a little bit off.

And I think that comes from the culture at the very, very top that the men are deemed to be the most important.

Yeah.

And look, Susie, it's just, I suspect a lot of clubs, you know, if they had to prioritise, you know, who do we want to win something this season might pick the men's team, right?

That doesn't surprise me, but having the owner sort of say that out loud and given the difference in amount of finance that is needed, just to hear that.

for for the you know for that to come from the top and to be said publicly on the record just feels so damaging Yeah, I mean, the amount of money required to have a significant impact on women's football and become league contenders is like pocket change for any of these huge,

like

massively wealthy Premier League clubs.

Like, it's really, really nothing.

And yet, you look at like, say, the NWSO in the US, where Angel City are being valued at $250 million.

And you can see the potential there is there for like your women's division to be a really successful business in and of itself and yet you're undermining the the very very base of that by by telling the world by telling you know elite players that you want to attract by telling commercial investors um and by telling you know your your opposition that you don't really care i mean it's not really setting yourself up for success even like even if you're not willing to invest even if you you truly believe that your you know your your money and your your efforts and your staffing are best put into the men's team and elsewhere.

You don't say it, right?

Like,

you don't put it out there and tell everyone that you're kind of handing them a big advantage because you're massively undermining your team in the background.

Like, that's what's weird about it for me is that

the attitude is so blase

towards the women's team and the women's setup that they

put it this way: I look at it as, you know, when Man United was sort of lured into setting up a women's team by the FA, you know,

rejigging the licensing criteria around entry into the league that allowed Man United to bid to come in at the championship level or at WSL level if they had wanted to, and skip sort of, you know, founding a team and working their way up through the leagues.

They sort of had put a lot of pressure on Man United to found a women's team as one of the few teams in the Premier League to not have one.

And for me, this is a little bit of that sort of skipping all of the steps and sort of almost being slightly pushed into setting up a team, coming home to roost a little bit.

They weren't, they were never like ideologically wedded to the idea of a women's team as a part of their club, like they were never you know, really that keen on the idea.

Um, you know, all of the soundings had been that you know, they didn't really want one.

When they wound up the team previously, uh, I think it was 2015, they um,

or maybe earlier than that, uh, but anyway, they um were quite, you know, quietly public about the fact that they just saw it as a bit of trouble.

So the idea that, you know, they kind of, you know, launched a team slightly under pressure to do it.

You know, public pressure is there, private pressure from the FA and stuff is there to sort of come on board.

All the Premier League clubs are doing it.

We've got to join it.

But not actually really wanting it is now coming back to bite a bit.

So I kind of think that like lot that sort of you know short-term gain of getting them in hasn't actually paid off in the long term so far.

And it needs like a complete rejig, uh, structurally at the club to make that happen.

But the thing is, is they've just had a big rejig structurally at the club, and it is still the thing that is the least valued part of it.

So, yeah, the signs aren't great.

Um, and I think the decision to keep Mark Skinner will, you know, potentially be prove costly as well because, um, you know, you see we've seen player after player leave in the past two years being quite critical of or

either critical or

like deliberately omitting any praise for the, you know, the staffing, the coaching, blah, blah, blah.

And the fact that, you know, it seems from the outside that the club have looked at an FA Cup win and gone, well, you know, that's enough without kind of like putting a little bit more thought into

the deeper issues that

from the outside look to be kind of quite

damaging is

a pretty damning indictment of their

their care for the women's setup as a whole.

I think the fact that um Ratcliffe didn't go to the women's FA Cup final and went to some inconsequential men's Premier League game instead on the same day speaks volumes.

That he just doesn't seem to care about women's sport.

Interestingly, or not as the case, maybe INEOS Grenadiers don't have a women's cycling team.

Now, that's quite unusual among the big, big teams in cycling.

So, that again suggests he's just not interested.

I mean, even one of the Glaziers managed to get himself to Wembley for the cup final.

But I would have thought that a successful Manchester United women's team, and I totally get why he's not prioritising them.

And if he came out and said, well, now, I mean, I've got my feet under the table, my number one priority is going to be

hosing money at the women's team and making them, you know, the majority of manchester united's global fan base will be up in arms so i get that but i would have thought that a successful manchester united women's team would be commercially profitable and you know if there's one thing that's going to perk ratcliffe's um perk him up it's the bottom line and the possibility of making a few quid for me it's short-sightedness because we all like we've all seen all of the reports like have been there have been and the research that's been done around women's sport and women's football in particular and how it's one of the fastest growing areas in the sport.

And

yes, you're not going to get a return on your investments straight away.

It is going to take time.

But by all of the measures that we are looking at, the potential of the future, and we see what is happening in America and the NWSL, is that it can have, if we're open-minded about it, it can skyrocket if we do it.

We're prepared to think about outside of the box about the women's game.

But it's just short-sightedness from Manchester United and other owners that we've seen this summer, that they're not willing to

wait for that kind of return of investment.

I also think there's always that sort of pressure of revenue put on the women's game that is not expected in other areas of the sport.

You know,

there's so much money spent on men's football, on the men's side of the game, that's kind of lost.

And, you know, a lot of these clubs run at a loss at times.

And just the idea that we always have to justify every single kind of penny that we put into women's sport is kind of really is

frustrating to me.

Brighton and Villa seem to be really getting the finger out in that regard, don't they?

And Brighton are always held up as this is how a club should be run.

You know, so if Brighton are doing it, everyone else should probably be doing it too.

I think Villa are going to play all their WSO games at Villa Park this season.

I mean, that's a big thing, isn't it?

Yeah,

Manchester United announced yesterday that they're going to play three games at Old Trafford, which I suppose is in quite big contrast to the 11 games we're going to see at the Emirates.

And as you just said, there,

the full season at Villa Park.

Although, we should say, for balance, that Lee Sports Village, where Manchester United's women play the majority of their games, you know, it's significantly larger than the places like Boreham Wood and King's Meadow, where Arsenal and Chelsea's kind of backup is.

So

that's worth pointing out.

But yeah, I mean, Brighton's a great example because that's a club where Paul Barber and Tony Bloom really genuinely care about the women's game and have put their money where their mouth is, you know, in that regard.

They're building one of the best women's football training facilities in Europe for the players.

They haven't quite got things right on the pitch yet at Brighton.

I think recruitment's been maybe hit and miss over the last four years or so.

They've had a succession of different managers, but in terms of the infrastructure they've set up there, it's very impressive.

And one of the things that struck me, and maybe this will be a big conversation over the next few years, is that I get the impression there are quite a lot of investors out there at the moment who are quite keen to buy women's women's football clubs, but aren't doing so in England because

they're affiliated to men's clubs, and men's clubs aren't always very willing to let the women's arm of that club go from their club.

An example I would give on that would be Michelle Kang, who is now, she owns Washington Spirit in America and Leon in France and now London City Lionesses.

But the implication very much seems to be that she's bought London City Lionesses because they're an independent club and they were kind of significantly easier to purchase.

She was actually, Kang was asked a question in a press conference

about Manchester United in Ratcliffe Comments and she said words to the effect of, well, if you don't want to fund your women's team, then let somebody else buy it.

Now,

I'm not

trying to suggest here that Michelle Kang was trying to buy Manchester United, but certainly the investors that we speak to end up only looking at the independent teams, not the club.

And I can't help but wonder if we're reached a point where there are some clubs where, you know, their potential may be held back by the fact that they are owned by the men's team that kind of has the brand name.

And it'll be fascinating to see over the next five years whether there are any clubs that end up being sort of purchased.

The women's arm of the club is purchased and they go more private and then they can put in their own investment because I get the impression that a lot of men's football club owners are very willing to buy success for their men's team.

They don't mind about losing money on the men's side of the club because let's face it, how many men's clubs make any money?

They don't mind buying success for men, but they're very reluctant to buy success of the women.

There's always this, oh, when's it going to make money?

When's it going to be sustainable?

And that's a really interesting debate for the next maybe like five years.

Yeah, I suppose that's interesting, Susie, isn't it?

Because if Jim Rackham sold Man United women, we'd be on this panel going, This is a disgrace.

And then my hunch would be like, They don't care at all, even if actually that would be better than going, We don't care, but we've still got it.

I mean, yeah, in an ideal world, you want them to care, right?

But I think there is a point to what Michelle Kanger said, where it's, you know, if you don't care, then

let someone who does take control.

I think that Chelsea's move to split the business of the women's team off from the business of the men's team is a really interesting step in this direction.

Like, I think they have had interest from private finance in the women's side separately from the men's.

Like, they made sort of no secret of that.

And this move to do that almost implies that they are willing to court investors, which, you know, obviously the change in ownership at Chelsea as well means that you know, they may have a slightly different attitude to the women's side too.

But

the key point is that they plan on remaining the majority shareholder within that Chelsea women business and still have the footballing sides like quite closely linked and all the facilities used and all that kind of stuff.

So I think that is a really interesting thing that is taking place at Chelsea.

And it wouldn't surprise me if within the next sort of like three to five years, we saw that club go a similar route to what Leon have done, where Michelle Kang has sort of bought the women's team at Leon, sits on the board of Leon as well.

And they've got a relationship, but they're being run independently.

You know, she's talking new stadium for the women's team, new training facility, hopefully attached to that,

but you know, a new training facility regardless,

and then being invested in and run as a separate entity to the men's.

And I feel like Chelsea have made the steps in that direction.

The fact that, like, now Arsenal

are, you know, starting to make profit from their Emirates games, that the FA Cup final made a profit for like either the first or second time ever,

that, you know, Chelsea is starting to find a way to fill Stanford Bridge for some of their biggest games and also eking towards, you know, sort of breaking even, turning a profit, like all of those are signs that...

there is money to be made and I think you've got a situation at a club like Manchester United where they they want to cling to it because they know that the potential is there, but they don't actually want to invest to make that potential become a reality, right?

Like, they're sort of like, well, we just sit it here while everyone else does the work, and then eventually it's just going to by osmosis of everyone else in the league doing well, our team is going to become super valuable, and then we can either sell it or then we'll start investing in it at the point it turns a profit.

But that's like, you know, just contrary to every site, like business 101 rule, right?

You've got to invest money to make money.

money.

I mean, you can quote like as many like frivolous, like TV phrases from like crap programs.

There are podcasts all about that, Susie, which you know

which occasionally we're critical of.

Anyway, before we end part two, I want to tell you about a live event you might be interested in.

Evening with Adrian Chiles.

I'm a big fan, Barry.

I don't know about you.

Ever since he wrote a column about whether he was going to install a urinal in his house,

amongst other excellent columns.

I was once inspired to buy kitchen utensils by an article he wrote, which concerned the dizzying number of wooden spoons he owned.

He owned about 38 wooden spoons.

I remember.

And like Alanis Morissette, all he needed was a wooden knife.

And then I looked at my kitchen.

I had sort of one wooden spoon.

So, yeah, I was out in the market one day and saw wooden spoons, you know, they're quid each or whatever, so I bought four or five of them.

And how's it been going for you?

It's great.

They're various different lengths, handles, yeah, so it depends what you're making.

If you're making a big stew, you go for a long-handled

wooden spoon.

If it's something small, it's a short-handled wooden spoon.

Right.

So, yeah, I bow to no man in my admiration for Adrian Charles.

It might sound like I'm being sarcastic.

I really am not.

And it's not just because he's married to the boss.

He just seems like a thoroughly nice man.

Yeah, in my dealings with him, he's always been lovely.

And you can have an evening with him on the 10th of October, 7.30 p.m.

It'll be at a central London venue, or there'll be a live stream.

He'll be in conversation with fellow Guardian columnist Zoe Williams, talking about his brilliantly bemused tour of British life as captured in his new collection of Guardian columns, as we have explained.

That's going to be a pretty short book.

Well, it is.

Anytime I have to write a column, it's like 850.

Yeah, how's he getting away with 250 words?

He gets away with 250 disgrace i'd love to just file 200 words go there's my friday one mate off you go anyway uh football weekly listeners can get 20 discount when they use the code adrian20 at the checkout uh if you go to theguardian.live uh right that'll do for part two back in a sec

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Tom, you've done a lot of reporting on Reading

and their women's team.

Can you explain what has happened?

Because I think we were quite Eurocentric around this and didn't really focus on it enough.

Yeah, essentially, Reading, who were in the WSL just a couple of years ago and four or five years ago were a top four side in the WSL, are now going to be playing in the fifth tier of the pyramid next season with a totally disbanded

setup from on a professional basis.

They,

yeah,

amidst real financial uncertainty at the football club with the ownership situation on the men's side, they've taken the decision to stop funding a championship women's side and drop down the leagues, not just a little bit, but right down to grassroots kind of regional level of football.

And a lot of people are being made redundant at the football club, which is desperately sad.

And the entire squad of players now will

be different for next season.

And I feel

incredibly sad about it for the fans, the players, and the staff.

It was actually a completely surreal 24 hours in the championship at the end of June because on the third, last Thursday in June, we were a lot of the press pack were in Mayfair in one of the most sort of lavish hotels in London for a Michelle Kang press conference where she announced a new manager for London City Lionesses and declared their ambition to win the WSL in the future and that she was going to build a world-class training centre.

And about 21 hours later was the first of the meetings for staff at Reading where they were being told you're losing your jobs and we're not applying for the championship for next season.

That was a real kind of juxtaposition of where things are at financially in the championship.

But the situation at Reading specifically

is unique because the club, the whole club has really been running to the ground by Diyunga.

The Reading men's fans have been protesting for a very long time.

I think the real, really sad thing is that the

youth academy and the professional game academy set up there is also

being really, really shrunk down.

And there are so many promising young players at Reading.

Their youth team won a senior cup last season, beating Milk King Dons' adult side only a couple of months ago.

And that team is now essentially not running anymore.

So there are so many young players in Berkshire being hit by this.

It's not just the first team.

And I think it's just been

desperately sad that.

Once again, we are seeing

when a club is running out of money, cutting funds on the women's side is one of the first ways that they look to try and save costs.

And that, I think, is really been quite a depressing message over the course of the summer.

Sorry to really bring the tone down, but it has been a very sad story, really, to cover.

No, no, no, not at all.

There are two parts of it, Sophie.

One is just the real sadness for those players and that coaching staff and that club.

And then it is

like, how worried should we be that this is a this is a precedent that this this could happen elsewhere how many clubs are in a similar situation i think that um there's no other clubs in an immediate situation where that might happen but it's certainly a worry over the next few years that as the costs involved with you know competing in the championship or above rise teams that are wholly reliant on the arm of funding from the men's team are vulnerable to this you know you as a women's team as a women's player you have no control over who owns the men's arm of the club and you have no control over whether the men's team get relegated or dropped down to league one as reading have done in the men's side of things um and we've seen it before when um

sunderland got relegated out of the uh the premier league there was a reduction in funding for the women we saw when knotts county men were running out of money, they cut the women's team on the eve of the 2017 season.

I think it was about 48 hours before the first match, and the owner there, Hardy, just said, I can't afford it anymore.

And the women's team was discarded.

And I think

we should be worried that we will see this again because

for all the good intentions you might have as women's staff at a football club, you have no control really over what the ownership or the you know the men's side might decide to do.

So, and costs are rising.

You know, I think Greading were a little bit disingenuous when they claimed that they would have had to go back to full time to stay in the championship that's that's not our understanding of the license criteria for the championship so I don't think it would have cost them as much as they they claimed and we should point out that you know there has been a lot of money spent at readings only a couple of years ago reading paid more than 500,000 pounds to their highest paid director and that would run a relatively safe championship team i think anyway um you wouldn't be going up but you i think you could stay in the championship yeah uh to answer your question, worried, yes, that it could happen again.

I fear it will happen again, but at the moment, for the time being, it's quite a specific case for Reading and there's no other kind of imminent possibilities of it happening elsewhere.

Actually, Sophie, an interesting point from that is, and sort of what we were talking about in the previous part, is that actually it might make sense to sort of separate yourself, right, from what happens in the men's game sometimes, but also I wonder...

Is this something a regulator could help with?

I don't know if you would know the answer.

I'm just trying to think if there was a provision to say you can't just, you know, if shit happens there, you can't just say, oh, well, we'll just sack off the women's team.

So, yeah, I mean, first point, it's a tail is all the time that this happens.

You know, we

look back at the old like Fulham days when that happened to them as well.

They were the, back in the day, they were one of the strongest teams in women's football.

And, you know, as soon as they hit financial difficulty, they're the ones to go.

So

it's not a surprise.

It's a surprise that still in 2024 this is happening, but it's not a surprise in the sense that it's always the women's team that gets cut first um when when financial issues happen i think i've always been of the belief that it could be written into contracts of clubs so if you're a premier league club you should be you know it's part of your due diligence to the wider work of football that you're you know you have it in your contract that you run a women's team and that you commit to that because

both sides of the game has have to be thriving.

I think we can't look at it as kind of, you know, the men's team are dominant anymore.

You know, we've moved on from that stage.

And I know, in terms of revenue, yes, the men's bring in more money.

But at the same time, I think when you're thinking about your community and, you know, the

operations, the locality that you're working in, you have to be showing that, you know, women can play football, girls can play football,

and that you've got mechanism in place to do that.

So I think there is a way of doing that, whether that's through the regulator, I don't know.

But I think there could be a more formalized process, that's for sure.

Yeah, I think a regulator could do some interesting things.

But, like, any part of football could do some interesting things if there was a wheels of way.

Like,

you know, the FA could say that any club that wants to compete in the FA Cup has to have a women's team.

Like, you know, little things like that that could have a huge impact.

You can make it sweet for clubs, right, as well.

You could say that money spent on women's football can be offset in your, you know, financial fair play in the financial fair play regulation so that, you know, you're allowed to spend a certain amount on women's or on the men's game or transfers if you're spending a certain amount of money, a certain percentage on women's football.

There's all these ways they could make it really incentivise for teams to have thriving women's football teams

if they wanted to.

But then again, you float back to the issue we were talking about with Manchester United where, you know, how much do you force teams to do things?

Because if you force teams to do things or pressure them enough to do things,

you know,

will it backfire in the long term?

Will it actually be effectual?

Will Will it actually create change in a more meaningful way?

Like, I would argue that some of those things, you know, like any team that wants to keep eating the FA Cup has to have a women's team would be like, you know, a really good move to make.

But yeah, so many different considerations.

Amanda Staveley is no longer part of the Newcastle setup.

And whatever you think of her and her motivations for being involved with the club, she did seem to really champion the women's team and get them going.

Now that she's gone,

do any of you have any indication as to what might happen there?

Well, so far,

so good.

They've made some good recruitment in the summer window.

They're looking like they're going to make a real fist of the championship promotion battle.

But there is a concern, I think, privately that, you know, Staveley was a huge driving force for their recent rise.

And also as well, Dan Ashworth, I think, who

by all accounts

does genuinely care

about the Grayford Women's women's football.

And I think both of them leaving Newcastle in one summer, that would probably worry me a little bit because there's not,

aside from Stageley, there's no sort of guarantee that the ownership group from the Middle East at Newcastle necessarily care that much about the women's game.

So I.

Are indeed women?

Well, yes,

quite.

But

I suppose there's no necessary evidence of an immediate drop in funding, but I'm I'm more, I worry over the longer term of just

whether there will be the same level of

real vision from the top.

But for the time being, they've got what looks to be a really decent looking side

with a huge fan base that I think they will come in with probably the largest average crowds in the championship next season.

And they're going to make, I think, a real fist of the championship this season.

So, but whether, yeah, maybe ask me that question in four years' time and see where we are.

Dan Ashworth going to Manchester United as well, that's the one bright thing that we left out of the Man United conversation earlier.

Such a huge advocate of women's football that, you know, if Ineos and Ratcliffe aren't being the change, he could potentially be.

The one thing I'd add about Newcastle, the thing that probably gives me hope in that situation is that appearances really matter.

and money not so much to the owners of Newcastle, right?

So they are wanting to make themselves look good at any possible opportunity.

And if they suddenly cut the funding to their women's team that they've been, you know, bang on about how much they're going to support over the next few years and their ambitions and it, I think that would be a massive blow to the appearances, which means so much to them.

We'll finish with an email from Brody who says, ahoy Max Barry and friends, long time listener.

My brother Dylan, who's also a big fan of the pod, is getting married to his fiancée Kate on the 10th of August.

And I was wondering if Barry can give them a shout-out.

Dylan hangs up the boots at the end of every season, only to bring them back out midway through the next.

Being a central midfielder, he's always shied away from contesting a header.

Having played this way for 20 years of his football career, the last two seasons something has drastically changed.

He's counted 11 headers

in as many games.

Dylan has even suggested his recent onset of back pain is because of the sheer pressure and amount of headers compressing his spine.

I was wondering if the spirit of big Barry Glendenning has taken over him.

If not, are there any tips that Barry could give Dylan to make sure he wins every headed contest before he hangs up the boots again at the end of the season?

Gusto to you, Brody.

So this is Dylan and Kate who are to marry.

And Dylan is the central midfielder who has suddenly developed a penchant for heading the ball.

Well, I reckon Dylan isn't actually playing central midfielder.

He's got so old and decrepit, he's just moving further and further back.

And

he's now an auxiliary centre-back,

which is why he's been called upon.

I've found in my less than distinguished football career, just closing your eyes, jumping and hoping for the best

generally work for me and I wish Dylan Kate every every happiness of course lovely all right then that'll do for today thanks everybody thank you Susie thanks guys fun thank you Sophie thanks very much tears Tom thank you so much thank you Barry uh you were tremendous as always I mean everybody was but you know given our row before the pod thought you did a thought you did a really good I would say it was more a frank exchange of views we don't do really do those I thought there there you were really excellent you had a really good try, Barry.

Well done.

Football Weekly, as produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Christian Bennett.

This is The Guardian.