Within a few weeks, Casey Stoney has completed the job many soccer coaches would envy and some find daunting: assembling a squad completely from scratch.
Thirteen years after Manchester United women’s team was disbanded to prioritize resources on the men, gender equality has returned to one of the world’s richest sports teams.
Only 83 days after being granted a license by the English Football Association, United’s women’s side is to play today against Liverpool.
Photo: AP
“It was a blank canvas,” Stoney said in an interview. “I wasn’t coming in and clearing up anyone else’s mess. I wasn’t inheriting players. It was stressful.”
Stoney’s appointement was a statement by United. The former England defender is one of only eight female coaches among the 22 teams in England’s top two women’s divisions.
Concerns over sexist attitudes are also still encountered, particularly when Stoney is accompanied by assistant coach Willie Kirk.
“People automatically go and shake Willie’s hand,” Stoney said. “They think because he’s the man, he’s the head coach. I think it is a really strong decision by Manchester United to put a female coach in, because the more you make it the norm, the more people will respect it.”
The women’s game has been transformed in England since women last pulled on United jerseys in a senior fixture in 2005.
The Women’s Super League (WSL) has been growing in status since its launch in 2010 and the entire 11-team topflight is now fully professional. United has a squad of 21 professionals trying to gain promotion from the second-tier Championship.
“I come from an era where we used to pay to play,” said the 36-year-old Stoney, who appeared 130 times for England.
Just as Manchester City has overhauled its men as the dominant force in the English Premier League, the Abu Dhabi ownership has also invested to turn the women’s team into WSL champions.
United is playing catch-up due to famed coach Alex Ferguson’s determination to focus resources on his men’s pursuit of English and European supremacy. The women’s team was scrapped months before United was bought by the Florida-based Glazer family in 2005.
United vice chairman Ed Woodward in 2012 said that the idea of reviving the team had never been discussed by the board.
By March, Woodward realized that girls deserved the chance to graduate from the existing youth ranks to play for United — just like Marcus Rashford and Paul Pogba did.
“There was whispers just after Christmas that Manchester United were thinking about coming in and everybody in the game got excited,” Stoney said. “I put myself forward, because for me it’s one of the biggest jobs in football.”
Stoney has accomplished what would be unthinkable in the men’s game: persuading seven players to cross the northwest divide and leave Liverpool for United, including goalkeeper Siobhan Chamberlain and defender Alex Greenwood.
“We want to play a style of football that entertains,” Stoney said.
“I’ve never been at a club where I’ve felt so much a part of the club,” Stoney said. “There’s not a day gone by since I took the job where I haven’t gone: ‘Wow.’ It’s what I’ve dreamed of in terms of where the women’s game needs to be.”
However, Old Trafford stadium remains the preserve of Jose Mourinho’s side. Casey’s team is to play at the 12,000-seat Leigh Sports Village with adult-season tickets costing £39 (US$49.75) compared with £532 for the cheapest at Old Trafford.
Attracting larger crowds is crucial to generate more revenue for women’s soccer. An average 953 fans are watching WSL matches.
Stoney told her players how important they are to spur the game’s growth.
“I’ve got two young daughters. I want them to come to a game and ... [think]: ‘I want to be one of those girls,’” Stoney said. “If they can inspire my little girls to play football, then to me that’s the legacy.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier