Equal: 5 women who have made a name for themselves in men's football
Dmitry Kurkin
Hardly women's football in the near future can be compared with men's by popularity, scale and size of fees: despite the fact that a hundred years ago in the “homeland of football” in England, he was no less in demand, and the women's teams went by hundreds, prejudices drove him to the sidelines, discarding the development of sports years Now, the reputation of women's football has been tarnished by sexism and is gradually restored, but even in countries where women's teams achieve more than men, the level of audience interest and, as a result, the salaries of players, coaches and functionaries are incomparable with those that are typical for men's football.
The women discussed below were not willing to wait for the status quo to change. They came to men's football despite the prejudices - and won the respect even of those who initially did not take them seriously or considered the gender barrier in the most popular game of the planet insurmountable.
Corin Dacre
trainer
Korin Dyakr was not the first female coach to lead the men's team: rumor attributes this achievement to the former Croatian national team player Tihana Nemcic. And she was not even the first female coach in the French club "Clermont": her predecessor in this post was Helena Costa. But the story of Nemchich and the club of the fifth Croatian division, which formally represented a village with a population of about 250, suffers inconsistencies and looks more like a badly crafted newspaper sensation. And Costa did not hold out at the helm of “Klermont” and fifty days: not having spent any official match as a coach, she quit, hinting at the sexist atmosphere in the club. The Dyakr that changed it is a completely different story: it managed the team of a relatively high professional level (second French league) for three seasons, simultaneously fulfilling the duties of a sports director, and forced others to treat themselves as a professional and not just an “exotic experiment” of the club’s president Claude Misha.
Dyakr failed to break the club curse and for the first time in history to bring “Clermont” to the top division. But the whipping team wasn’t in any way with her, and in the 15/16 season, despite a more than a modest budget, she went to the leading group, seriously claiming to be promoted. In 2017, Korin led the French women's team, but hardly anyone would be surprised at her return to men's football.
Zhan Yuanding
trainer
If Dyakr with trophies did not work out, then Zhan Yuanding coped with the task in the first six months. In the biography of a native of Hong Kong, there is everything that is necessary for a life-affirming biopic: being a fan of David Beckham in her youth, against the wishes of her parents, she received a sports education in addition to a diploma of a geographer; having started from the junior level and working as an assistant, by 2015 Yuanding had grown to the post of head coach. Having headed the Eastern club, Zhan brought him to the title of champions of Hong Kong (which had never happened to the club for twenty years) and entered its name in the Guinness Book of Records. Exalting this achievement is hardly worth it: the level of Hong Kong club football is still low (and the country's national team occupies the 144th out of 211 places in the FIFA ranking) and the competition among coaches in the country is not that huge.
Yuanding failed to build on her success, and in May 2017 she asked to be transferred back to the post of assistant coach. But given that now she is only twenty-nine years old, talking about the end of a beautiful career is clearly premature.
Rachel anderson
football agent
In a big business with a multi-billion dollar turnover, like modern football has become, agents leading the players and coaches have become an extremely influential caste. To women, the entrance to it, oddly enough, opened relatively early, and the man solely responsible for this is Rachel Anderson. In 1997, her, by that time, recognized by male pro colleagues (several years earlier she arranged for the transfer of West Ham defender Julian Dix to Liverpool for £ 3 million, setting a new record for the English Premier League) English Football Association: an organization that itself sent an invitation to Anderson, forgot to inform her that the rules prohibit women from attending FA meetings. Two years later, having spent more than 200 thousand pounds, Rachel through the court has made the abolition of discriminatory practices.
Anderson has repeatedly had to deal with misogyny in football, but the iron grip and inflexibility in the negotiations made their own. “Football needs more women,” she said. “There are many true professionals among us. It’s not necessary to know the whole inside of the game - you need to understand the negotiations and be able to find a common language with people. And I am good at it.”
Bibiana Steinhaus
arbitrator
Women judges are not so rare in modern football, but only a few get to the highest level - literally. The 39-year-old police officer Bibiana Steinhaus, who last season debuted in the Bundesliga (and became the first female arbiter in the European top leagues), is well known in German football. She has nineteen years of judicial experience, ten of them in the second division of Germany, where she earned the authority needed by any serious referee.
The path of the pioneer is difficult, and Steinhaus felt it on her own experience. During her work in men's football, she has repeatedly found herself in the centers of sexist scandals and simply awkward episodes. In one of the matches, the player of “Hertha”, Peter Niemeyer, managed to crush her chest, after the other one, Bavaria’s then coach, Pep Guardiola, frivolously embraced her (both of them later apologized to the referee). The remote Steinhaus from the field Kerem Demirby hastily announced that women arbiters have no place in football. The German Football Union disagreed with the player and disqualified him for five matches, fining 10,000 euros at the same time.
“The time has come for the women referees because the gender of the football referee does not matter,” said Jürgen Klopp after one of the Mainz matches, which Steinhaus judged. Thanks to her patience and experience, it really came. At least in Germany: in Iran, when showing the match “Bavaria” with “Cologne” Bibian was cut out of the broadcast.
Marina Granovskaya
Executive Director
Calling Marina Granovskaya "the most influential woman in football," the edition of The Times, if exaggerated the scale, then only a little. Roman Abramovich’s right hand in London’s Chelsea, she leads an extremely private life, but the glory of the gray cardinal and chief business strategist at the club has been firmly established for her for a long time - long before she was appointed executive director in 2014.
Granovsky is known as a tough negotiator, and thanks in large part to this skill, Chelsea has turned from a bag of money, scattered over tens of millions, into a club that not only buys players for big money, but also sells them for no less. In addition, she managed to reconfigure the system for working with young players and make a profitable deal with Nike (technical sponsorship brought £ 60 million to the Chelsea treasury). Granovsky’s no less important ability, noted by insiders, is his ability to smooth out conflicts: it was she who contributed to the return to Chelsea of one of the most successful coaches of our time, José Mourinho, who Abramovich left in 2007 without being too friendly. The result was another championship title.
Photo: Feng Yu - stock.adobe.com, Getty Images (2)