directed by Rachel Ramsay & James Erskine
Any football fans here? Well, not me for sure. I’ve never understood the phenomenon of this game, but I’m truly fascinated by the scale of its success and popularity. I mean, you can end up in any place on our planet and you shall find football fans who can name your country’s famous players. Despite the fact I can’t imagine myself spending all those hours in front of a TV watching matches, I’m actually impressed by footballers, because running and scoring goals for 90 minutes (or even more) is a challenge. I can barely run several metres to catch a bus, so trust me, I have a lot of respect for such excellent physical condition. However, when you hear someone saying that there’s a football match, I bet you unconsciously imagine male teams playing the game. The documentary I’m recommending you today is focusing on the same horribly popular sport – just in a female version. Official and recognised FIFA Women’s World Cup has been organised since 1991, but it doesn’t mean that before there weren’t any female players. There were and they were excellent, but they all shared one thing that, apparently, was a huge trigger for Football Associations. All of them were women. That’s it. No matter how well they played, how exciting their matches were – their gender prevented them from being treated with the same respect that male footballers were receiving. In today’s film you may listen to stories of the women that took part in Women’s World Cup in 1971. It was an event organised by the Federation of Independent European Female Football, so as you might be guessing, not fully recognised by the male part of the society. Still, it was an important part of sport history because despite any obstacles and even unfavourable law (in many countries female football was banned), those women were practising, they reached an excellent level of game quality and amazed hundreds of thousand fans. I don’t want to spoil anything more, so I encourage you to see it yourselves. As I said at the beginning, I’m not into football and all I know is that there are two goals and the grass is green. However, this film is not really about the game – it’s about another example of inequality that had no reason to exist. It is sad to see the female football players in this documentary sharing their experiences, because you can tell they were passionate about this game, yet some men decided to deprive them of pride. Nowadays, women are very much recognised in sport and they often, unintentionally, embarrass their male colleagues with outstanding results. So what I get from this documentary is the feeling of gratitude – because thanks to the brave players of Copa 71, women all around the world can make their dreams come true and be treated not as a representative of a gender, but as a sportsperson. I believe in equality and I don’t watch football no matter who’s playing, but I cross my fingers for everyone who simply wants to enjoy this game.
My rating: 7/10
S.
I have nothing to watch 