Yes, women football pundits ARE very irritating! Lifelong fan AMANDA PLATELL puts the boot into the blast critics of ‘dinosaur’ Kevin Keegan
I know I’ll be attacked for this, declared a traitor to my sex… and all the rest. But when football legend Kevin Keegan last week confessed that he wasn’t keen on female pundits discussing the men’s game, I fist-pumped as fervently as I do whenever Tottenham Hotspur’s Son Heung-min scores from an exquisite Richarlison assist.
In case you can’t tell, I’m a devoted Spurs fan. I have loved football since my Australian childhood when, growing up in a sports-mad family with my dad and two brothers, every birthday brought a present of a new shirt from our local team, Swan Districts, rather than a Barbie doll.
Moving to London 40 years ago and living near White Hart Lane, my new team was only ever going to be Spurs. I’ve also watched with joy as, over the years, the female game – and, in particular, England’s Lionesses – have achieved huge success on the world stage.
But, like Kevin Keegan, I know how different the women’s game is from the men’s.
Keegan’s frustration was clear. ‘If I see an England lady footballer saying, ‘If I’d been in that position, I’d have done this,’ I don’t think it’s quite the same,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it crosses over that much.’
When football legend Kevin Keegan last week confessed that he wasn’t keen on female pundits discussing the men’s game, I fist-pumped
While I would never have used the phrase ‘lady footballer’, he is right. The men’s game is on a totally different level to the women’s. Personally, I don’t find women’s matches as exciting as men’s – and I’m not ashamed to say so.
It’s slower, more languid, less aggressive. There are more long, soft passes; fewer crunching tackles. We don’t need one of the many sophisticated databases to show how Premier League players make more passes per match and with greater accuracy and at higher speeds than their counterparts in the Women’s Super League.
Technically, the men are far better. So seeing the preponderance of women commentators passing judgment on men – which, let’s face it, is mainly because broadcasters are obsessed with diversity targets – is baffling. The truth is that women pundits, though easier on the eye, are less insightful, less convincing and often, I’m afraid to say, very irritating as a result.
Inevitably, Keegan has been dismissed as a misogynistic dinosaur, with some saying he’s a ‘1970s icon for a reason’. The Women In Football organisation called on Keegan to ‘think twice before speaking’, saying his views advocated ‘a kind of gender apartheid’. It added that the 72-year-old, ‘and people of a similar mindset’, have ‘a moral obligation to keep their opinions to themselves, rather than add weight to the narrative that enables online abuse and threats of violence’.
Gender apartheid in football? Nelson Mandela, that great enemy of apartheid, would surely have laughed at such a concept.
As Keegan conceded, there are some very astute female commentators, such as Gabby Logan (pictured) Karen Carney and Alex Scott
As Keegan conceded, there are some very astute female commentators, such as Gabby Logan, Karen Carney and Alex Scott. But he was only saying what very many football fans think. They prefer games being analysed by a man with a long career in the Premier League.
It’s a pity that this basic truth can’t be expressed without the risk of an online pile-on from extremist feminists and the woke mob.
If this view makes me a ‘dinosaur’, so be it. Yesterday, I watched on TV as Spurs beat Luton from the privacy of my own home from where I will continue to shout at the screen politically incorrect comments such as ‘Please! Not another woman commentator!’
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