HEADING into the latest
round of matches, Germany are in first place in group four closely followed by
Russia, with Scotland in third, their highest placing in a qualification
campaign. The pressure is on Germany, who will need to pick up all three
points as Russia, who play Switzerland today, can catch them if they slip
against the Scots.
IT SEEMS strange that
the world and European champions can arrive in a football-obsessed country
such as Scotland with little fuss and fanfare.
Unless, that is, the
champions in question are from the women’s side of the game, as is the case
with the visit of the German national women’s team for their World Cup
qualifying match with Scotland at McDiarmid Park, Perth, this afternoon.
Almost one million
television viewers are expected to be watching in Germany but the needs of
that massive front-room audience on the Continent will severely limit the
exposure the game will receive in Scotland.
“It’s a shame it’s
on at the same time as the Old Firm,” is how Anna Signeul, the Scotland
women’s national coach, sees it. “We had the game scheduled for Sunday but
German television — ZDF — have a deal to transmit all the games live, both
away and home, and they asked for the game to be on Saturday at two o’clock.
“We said that wasn’t
such a good time and then pressure came from the German federation. It’s
money for the German FA and it’s also money for us but it’s a shame
because I think we will lose a lot of spectators and a lot of media coverage
as well.
“BBC Radio wanted to
come — they were at the Finland game and they thought it was great — but
they said, ‘Saturday, two o’clock, no way’.” However, there is some
good news as BBC Two plans to show highlights at 6.30pm tomorrow.
Signeul, 45, an affable
and witty individual, has been Scotland coach since leaving her native Sweden
to take up the post 18 months ago and she believes that the Scottish national
women’s team desperately needs high-impact events to make a dent in the
national consciousness.
“In Sweden, when the
national team reached the World Cup final in 2003,” Signeul says, “three
million of a nine million population watched this women’s final. That was a
huge step forward and was when TV said, ‘This is good entertainment.’ Now
we have women’s Premier League football on TV every Saturday, with 300,000
viewers; full-time players; and crowds of 1,500 at matches.”
Coaching has been
Signeul’s life for a quarter of a century, first at club level and then for
nine years at national level as under-19 coach for the Swedish FA. She
experienced the struggles in Sweden to have women’s football accepted on
equal terms with the men’s game so, with that target achieved in her native
country, was apprehensive about coming to Scotland, where she knew she would
be fighting the same battles for acceptance all over again.
“Sometimes, in this
business, you wish that you had actually been born a man,” Signeul says,
“because it’s much easier to be a man and to be interested in football
because the whole organisation is there for you. We have always to fight for
our rights.
“I think the Scottish
women’s team could go far, because the interest in football in this country
is so big. Of five million inhabitants, I think four million nine hundred
thousand like football... Watching women’s football is not the same as, for
example, watching Celtic play but it’s still enjoyable, good football and I
think that very many would like the game if they saw it.”
Among those in the
Scotland team who could attract a new audience are Jo Love, an attacking
midfield player and “a high-class player”, according to Signeul, and
Suzanne Malone, a powerful and direct forward.
Then there is the
peerless Julie Fleeting, with 93 caps and 83 goals for Scotland, who draws
serious praise from Signeul. “She is a world-class player. If she had been
born in any other country — Germany or Sweden or Norway — she would also
have been in the starting XI there. She means a lot to the squad both as a
person and a captain, and as a player.
“If we can take
[female] Swedish players and American players and Scottish players, in the USA
(World Cup winners in 1999) they have great fitness and can run and shoot but
in reading and understanding the game they have very many problems. In Sweden,
they have good fitness and a skill level that is so-so but they understand and
read the game very well because they have very good coaches.
“Of these three
countries, Scotland have the best football players because the football
culture is here although tactical awareness is something that’s missing.
Scottish players can still take good decisions on the pitch but it is often
through instinct rather than tactical awareness.”
It is Signeul’s job to
instill tactical nous and better fitness in the Scots to enable them to
compete with powerful, well-established women’s footballing nations such as
Germany, which has 35 years of tradition in the women’s game and is awash
both with television money and players — there are one million footballing
frauleins.
Qualification for next
year’s World Cup finals is now out of reach for the Scots but to win even a
point in Perth today would represent enormous success for Signeul and her
side. Drawing a decent crowd, in the face of the competing Old Firm
attraction, would be almost as much of a triumph.
