April 2022. Cars drive on their own, robots do housework and choose the music we listen to. And we still need to debate sexist statements.
The author of the most recent one here in the UK is Kenny Shiels, head coach of the Northern Ireland women’s football team. Losing 5-0 to England, Shiels told the press conference: “In women’s football, if you look at patterns, when a team takes a goal, it takes a second in a very short time. It happens in women’s football because girls and women are more emotional than men. So they don’t deal well with conceding goals”. Faced with incredulous looks, he added, “I probably shouldn’t have said that.”
It would be a memorable night. More than 15,000 people attended Windsor Park in Belfast, a record attendance in women’s football. Don’t know who Shiels is? I didn’t know either, until this became one of the most talked about topics of the week. But you’ve probably met someone like that.
Shiels is that “no filter” person. Throughout his coaching career, mostly with teams in Northern Ireland and Scotland and in men’s football, he has accumulated suspensions for controversial comments about refereeing and rivals. He has already said that national team football was no longer the same and that if a player takes Guinness, he can represent Ireland. The doctor himself recommended that he stop giving post-game interviews because he tends to become emotionally unbalanced. When he took over the women’s team in 2019, he qualified the team for the European Championship, the first major tournament in its history. He called this “the greatest sporting achievement in the UK of all time”.
The statement that women take more goals because they are more emotional than men is wrong in many ways, but guys like him don’t think it’s necessary to back it up. There is no scientific data that shows an emotional flaw in the female brain causing the problem. Obviously it can happen to men. As a recent example, PSG conceded three goals from Real Madrid in 17 minutes in the Champions League.
Shiels uses a familiar tactic. Instead of acknowledging their own mistake, that their players are inexperienced (England is 8th in FIFA’s rankings, and Northern Ireland, 46th), praising the superiority of rivals, resorted to an old trick: disqualifying women using a physical characteristic. or accusing them of being emotionally weak, fueling the narrative that they are dramatic and out of control (and I imagine he’s seen Cristiano Ronaldo break a fan’s cell phone, Zverev swipe the referee’s chair and Manchester City’s final minutes against Atlético from Madrid).
In the face of criticism, what did you do? She apologized. Typical. In the interview, when criticizing his athletes, he does not change the tone of his voice. One gets the impression that the head of a country’s adult football team really believes what he said.
Finally, he makes a mistake: thinking it’s wrong to have emotions. If there are emotional reactions, so what? Isn’t the beauty of sport just that? If you don’t like it, why continue in football? But it’s not time to retire yet. For the good work he did, he remains in office and with the same players, at least until the Euro Cup, in July, a classification he is so proud of. If someone with a history of unhappy statements has no regrets, at least the sport should learn from it.
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