Right: Chelsea FC’s Frank
Lampard at an FA Tesco Skills event. Below: Football is the largest participation sport among women and girls.
WOMEN’S SUPER LEAGUE O
n 13 April, Chelsea Ladies and Arsenal Ladies met each other at the home of Tooting and
Mitcham United in the inaugural match of the FA’s new Women’s Super League (WSL) – the competition the national governing body hopes marked a mile- stone in the female game. Birmingham, Bristol, Doncaster, Ever-
ton, Liverpool and Lincoln will also com- pete as part of the WSL, which has been created with two primary objectives – to professionalise women’s football in England, and attract a new generation of female players and supporters to the sport. According to the FA, football is the largest participation sport among
Football Foundation – comes with the proviso that each football project has targets that it aims to achieve. “Everywhere we put investment, we
monitor and evaluate those projects on an annual basis and we’ll see a steady growth in the increase in football. Al- though that’s not to say there might not have been some displacement – it’s quite a tricky one to manage because foot- ball’s pretty organic.”
Youth development Moving forward into the three-year ex- tension of the NGS, one of the primary areas of focus is to be the development of youth and mini-soccer. The FA has com- pleted the Youth Development Review (YDR), which outlined 25 recommenda- tions covering grassroots football and coaching and aims to give children ‘the best possible introduction to football.’ Nick Levett is the FA’s national de- velopment manager for youth and
Issue 2 2011 © cybertrek 2011
women and girls and its research has revealed that an additional 180,000 females aged between 16- to 34-years old are considering taking up the sport in the coming year. Head of the national games, Kelly
Simmons says: “It’s about putting a platform in place upon which top-level women’s football and clubs can help to develop a fanbase, commercial partners and broadcast partners, and ultimately generate revenue to become semi-pro- fessional and professional. “That will be aspirational in terms of
girls wanting to play the game and hav- ing a clear pathway through, being able to look up and see they can become pro- fessional footballers in their own right.”
mini-soccer – a role that is to play a cru- cial part in delivering revised aims of the NGS and the implementation of some, if not all, of the recommendations to come out of the YDR. This month sees the launch of an extensive consultation exercise fronted by Levett, explaining the review’s findings. “Now is a case of implementing the
youth development review alongside the NGS,” Levett says. “It’s a real focus on looking at the player pathway for chil- dren and the experience when they come into the game at Under 7 level. “Last month, we organised 16 national
events across the country to highlight the fact that we’d had a year of input, and where we thought football was heading, moving forward.” Although Levett says that nothing has
been finalised at this stage, some of the proposals could see a complete overhaul of the youth footballing landscape. A progressive approach from five-a-side
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