Women's football update

Yesterday Spurs got dumped out of the Champions' League, but it hasn't all been doom and gloom for the beautiful game. This may be an important week for women’s football, which regular readers will know I’ve long thought should get more support. Yesterday was the first day of the inaugural season of the Women’s Super League, which is the most professional women’s league my country has ever had. And as we all know, if you want something done well, you should get a professional. The WSL is receiving about three million pounds of investment from the Football Association, and everyone seems pretty pleased about it. Or at least, women seem to be pleased about it. Jose Mourinho and David Beckham don’t seem to have been asked.

The hope is that the WSL will be more competitive than the Women’s Premier League, which has been dominated by Arsenal for ages. The FA investment is being shared around so more clubs will be able to pay more women to be at least semi-professional. That’s a step in the right direction, though it’s still way off what goes on in the US. A more competitive league should increase standards all round, but Arsenal are still top of the WSL at the moment, of course. So we probably won’t win the World Cup this year, but maybe we’ll win Canada 2015. But we probably won't win that either, because we're really not putting very much money in. Sponsors don't seem to have been that taken with it and as a result the WSL is getting a lot less financial support than was initially hoped. So I'm pleased, but I'm only a little bit pleased. I still think we should give this a try.