Friday, May 24, 2019

It's only a dream until money comes into it








I know you're not paying much attention to The Women's World Cup. But I am. I am paying so much attention! I am running a large scale, super elaborate, Women's World Cup Pool at my job. When I try to find out certain information on the Internet, for the sake of my ornate set-up on this pool, it sometimes seems like no one is paying much attention the The Women's World Cup. But then, it's still more than two weeks away. Nevertheless...

Here is the biggest story I could find. It hardly leaped out at me. I had to dig for it. It's not very good news:

The quite possibly best Women's soccer player in the world won't be at The Women's World Cup this year. At first glance it appears Ada Hegerberg, who is from Norway, is not playing in the World Cup to highlight the pay differences in the men's and women's game. At second glance no one actually knows what the hell is going on because, while Ada Hegerberg is willing to talk about... stuff, she won't really say anything much else about this. She doesn't want to say what her problems are with the Norwegian Football Association. She doesn't have much to say about this pay gap except that she respects elite male players for the oodles they earn, and that it's not about the money for her, but an investment in the future for girls in soccer. And... that's about all.

In my disappointment it is easy to criticize Ada Hegerberg, a mere 23 year old, for sacrificing the quality and importance of a World Cup that would only serve the cause of Women't Soccer by being a better tournament, all to highlight something she is not highlighting at all! But I am a little too familiar with National Football Associations, and there is something pretty fishy about Norway's here. Norway's Association has been quiet about all of this, but when you have a serious stab at winning The World Cup, which Ada Hegerberg would have given her team in spades, you might just want to cave on almost anything that's being asked of you. Because 20, or 50, or 1,000 Norwegian Football Associates, working round the clock to promote Women's Soccer for 100 years, will not do nearly so much for it as one 23 year-old scoring a winning hat trick in a final.

Of course, on the other hand, well, I'll withhold that thought in order to highlight how much more James Patterson gets for his writing than I do for mine.










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