General Football Nonsense

[Mac76]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/61636875

[Letters]

Ooft. That could have ended up going horribly wrong!

[Mac76]

Ukraine

Scotland

Tierney

Tartan

Haggis

McEwan's

Rabbie Burns

Rab C Nesbitt

Caber-tossing

[Letters]

The Krankies

[Letters]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/61700518

Messi

[Letters]

Stand up if you hate Tottenham...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/62029516

[Letters]

England 8 Norway 0

Womens football.

[GP]

I would 8 - 0 be from Norway

[mandela8]

eQuaL pAy

[Letters]

eQuaL pAy

I was having this discussion with someone at the weekend, we started talking about football and then moved on to tennis. With the latter he went down the "ThE WoMeN OnLy PlAy ThReE SeTs" road, which I always think is a spurious argument. Because if that's the argument then why wouldn't you pay women and men footballers the same, they're both playing 90 minutes. But that's not how it works in sport, there's no hourly rate. It's not even about ability - clearly the top men in tennis would hammer the top women. The point is where does the money come from to pay them the prize money? It comes from ticket sales and sponsorship. When you have billion pound TV deals for the women's game and they're filling stadia with the same ticket prices as the men's game then they get equal pay. But none of that happens, because people don't care about the women's game. Or not enough. I didn't watch last night because I don't care. If we get to the semi-finals then I might watch (make up your own "they give me a semi" joke here). With tennis it's different, there is roughly the same interest in the women's game as the men's. So fine, they can have the same pay. But that money doesn't come from nowhere, if the women's game isn't generating the same interest as the men's, in any sport, then they don't get the same pay. It really is that simple.