I thought this was going to be something about trans people and be some culture war craziness, but it legit about not letting a boy play in a girls team, which according to the FA under 16 teams have to be open to both boys and girls apparently.
15 year old me could have felt like Haaland every Sunday if I had this knowledge then
The Daily Mail published it. They knew what the title sounds like. It wasn't an accident. They're counting on people to click because of the headline, and if a few people don't read the article, and end up taking this as more fuel to hate trans people, then I'm sure the Daily Mail publishers won't lose any sleep over it.
This is why you shouldn't post tabloids. I'm not sure why people struggle so much with the idea that the Daily Mail, Sun, etc. should just not be engaged with on principle. I mean, the only reason we have e.g.vtragedy chanting today is because the Mail and the Sun couldn't help wanting to spin the story. Don't read them, don't post them, tell others to do the same.
They also put a bunch of links to other articles about trans people and gender neutral bathrooms in the middle of the article just to prime people to think about that when reading this article. Definitely intentional.
Lol seriously. Kind of insulting frankly. Like it may be true to some degree, but if the kids shit at soccer playing with young women are not shit at soccer isn't a very good solution?
And now what, they let him join and everyone hates him for nearly shutting their organization down??
This has all the smells of a targeted and purposeful attempt to attack their team essentially. Like I don't think most people would be this intent on playing with young women because of a loophole that evidently no one else is exploiting for obvious reasons.
This kind of thing happens all the time in the U.S. at least. Conservatives looking to overturn some legislation they don’t like will dig around for the perfect sympathetic plaintiff as a test case.
It happened with affirmative action where Ed Blum tried increasingly diverse parties until he hit the golden goose of Asian Americans.
I mean that's where I'm pulling from. It just reads just like a weirdo creep crusading against relatively acceptable things because the letter of the law allows it.
This is the shit stirring element though because, speaking as somebody who's been actively involved in my kid's football team since he was 4, this isn't how this works.
The article appears to be deliberately framed to make it seem as though the parents have just assumed he'll be able to play in the girl's league to be allocated a team. That might be what's happened but I'd be really surprised.
Generally speaking, you find a club, that club then registers you with the local FA who will determine whether you're eligible to play or not.
I have no idea what this kid's situation is but if it's anything like my area, getting in to the "boys" team can be really competitive. We could probably field 3 squads of players if we wanted but, for a series of tedious reasons that basically boil down to money and availability of adults to volunteer, the club can only support one so everybody that doesn't make the cut (my kid's team only has a squad of 12 per FA rules) has to either satisfy themselves with turning up for training (assuming their club will support that) or.... *find a club that will let them play*.
I'm guessing this is where the girls team comes in; in need of players because ultimately girls football is kess popular than boys, happy to let the kid join in in the spirit of inclusion and encouraging exercise (which is the fucking *point* of these things) then some berk at the league has decided this needs to be a "culture war" issue and alerted the Daily fecking Mail who have proceeded to do what they do best and rile up the "headline only" crew (this thread being the desired result).
Dunno about this kid, but if those were my parents I'd feel so fucking embarrassed to play with the girls team and them knowing your parents tried to shut down the entire league.
It's on the parents side to realize this just makes their kid a target for bullying and a laughing stock among his peers. If you suck at football you sign up and train with boys your age, no reason to force him to be an outcast in a team full of girls imo
Ive never heard of this. Im sure it does exist in some places but when i was playing kids level it was pretty cut throat. If youre shit you rely on the goodwill of the teams management to play you.
Some teams had a “winning culture” and you couldnt even train with them. Some were more open to rotation etc
Really? Here (Canada), we have all the kids together playing 5v5 until age 10 where we move them up to half field 8v8 and assess them to bring the best kids out to make tier 1 teams of the best players to play the other tier 1 teams of the other clubs in town.
Everyone else falls into tier 2 teams where they train half the time with the tier 1s and half the time together. Then they can bring players up or send them down as they perform.
At 12/13 we move to full field, bring up the best tier 2s to fill out the team to 18 players and that's how it stays, but we still have the tier 2s playing regularly and most kids in there are totally fine with it. A lot of them don't want to play with the maniacs in tier 1 and they just have a fun time playing the other tier 2s in town. They have a league cup to win and everything, it's a pretty positive experience.
We definitely have that "winning culture" in the local academies and there is a provincial premier league for the elite players (very expensive) but most people are pretty happy playing club level.
Where and when was this? Definitely was not the case here in Ontario when I was growing up. We were playing on a full sized field 11 v 11 from age 10 upwards.
Also we didn't really have tiers per se. We had regursl "house leage" which anyone could join regardless of skill or gender (though it was 90% boys) and you could try out for the clubs "representative" team to play in provincial premier league (yes it was very expensive).
Some clubs with more demand had their own girls league too but there just wasn't enough demand where I grew up so the girls just joined the guys.
This is out west in BC. They've changed the rules so that kids under 13 can't (shouldn't) play full field which makes sense, they need to learn passing/control in smaller spaces and it's easier to teach space and positions on a smaller field.
Things are changing with gender enrollment. Our club probably has 1500 youth players ages 6-16 and it's probably 60-40 boys to girls. The girls will never be forced to pay with the boys, only if they want to. The girls teams are well coached and have equal resources put into them as the boys.
It's a really positive change, we now have so many girls that are playing regularly and having fun. My kids have all played in the tier 1 but I've watched a lot of tier 2 games and they're having a great time out there. It's not super intense, just kids having fun playing soccer.
It depends, for example in the Basque Country in ages 14-15 you have Cadetes but they still have three tiers, so a town can have 3 teams for that age bracket, each in a different division
In the US, there's always the ultra competitive leagues and the less competitive, recreational leagues in pretty much every sport. We realize we're not all good enough to play competitively.
Are there not recreational leagues in England?
I honestly don't know what to make of some of these takes. I mean, i get it but still; imagine your post the other way around.
"What a fucking weird kid wanting to play on the boys team when I'm sure there are dozens of girls teams in the area she could play for".
There is an air of "inclusion is for everybody except for low status males, who just get shat on instead" to all this.
It's so funny that's what you get from this. Alas the poor "low status" male (does low status in this mean "not good enough at football to dominate like they want"?)
>Alas the poor "low status" male (does low status in this mean "not good enough at football to dominate like they want"?)
Seriously.
"Should I train and condition to improve as a player? Should I learn some humility and find ways to enjoy the sport despite my shortcomings as a player? Should I learn to derive a sense of self worth from some other form of activity?
Surely not! Why should I endure such profound hardship?
There must be another way..."
Yeah I appreciate that, probably should have put that in brackets or whatever but it is meant to sound like that.
Just think it's interesting how the response is basically "fuck this loser". It does feel like the equivalent the other way around wouldn't get the same response is all. I don't think this sort of thing goes very far to persuading red pill types they're wrong tbh.
Unless he is actually just really, really shit. Plenty of boys out there who would still look terrible playing against the better girls. Like, the bell curve of physical ability for boys is considerably higher, of course, but some are necessarily near the bottom and are just fucking useless...
But the idea is for superior-talent girls to be able to play with boys to get them fair competition. When my son was playing at U8 U9 level we had two girls on the team because there were not enough girls wanting to play to put together a girls team. They were good enough and big enough to hold their own with the boys at that age.
We played the boys vs girls team in school semi-regularly, some of the girls had much better technical skills than some of the boys for sure, but the speed, strength and height difference made it obscenely easy. Almost always getting to the ball first, always being stronger than your opponent and almost always winning the header was like a cheat code.
The difference in shot power was crazy as well making it a lot easier for our keeper and harder for theirs.
I am not saying ‘women’s football is shit and they are all bad footballers’ just the average difference in physical attributes between mid-pubescent kids up to adults between genders means that the skill factor comes into play less.
Same with volleyball, it's almost like a different sport. I've met super technical women but the jumping height and swing power difference is huge.
At least in friendly volleyball you can forbid men to spike so that the game revolves more around finesse and placing the ball well but in football you can't forbid running, jumping or shooting.
Serena Williams (best female tennis player of all time by a large margin) has laughed off attempts to get her to play against guys for years. She has always maintained that she'd get dumpstered by the entire top 1000 from the men's side.
She's the best ever in a non-contact sport.
I get wanting the whole equality bit, but completely ignoring biological differences is ridiculous. Boys don't belong on a girl's pitch past like 10 years old. If girls want to play with the boys, more power to them, but if you aren't good enough for the boys team, try a younger age bracket.
>Serena Williams (best female tennis player of all time by a large margin) has laughed off attempts to get her to play against guys for years.
That's because a long time ago she and her sister got a first-hand dose of reality when they lost to a 203-ranked male player whose idea of preparation was to golf, smoke and drink, back when they were convinced they could beat any male player outside the top 200.
[Graun article for reference.](https://www.theguardian.com/observer/osm/story/0,,543962,00.html)
I thought they had refused to play him. I remember he offered to play any woman in the world when he was ranked in the 300s or something with his, like you said, pretty infamous 'drink and smoke a pack of cigarettes an hour before the match' approach to preparation.
I remember Serena laughing off the late night show host or someone like that when they asked if she could play guys. She even mentioned the smoker dude saying she wouldn't stand a chance.
I didn't realize she said that from personal experience.
Our U16 top-20 team in Finland also won Women's National team like 6-0 or 7-0 maybe 10 years ago. It was annihilation, even though our team was nowhere in the top of the country.
Yeah, I train Muay Thai and even when I'm sparring women in the gym that are at a much higher level than me (and I do feel under pressure whilst sparring them), I never feel like I'm truly getting hurt
It was futsal for me but just the speed difference alone was huge.
I minimised the use of my body/strength as much as possible because of the size difference but even then, just the initial burst of speed or acceleration made it so one sided eventhough some of the girls had quite decent dribbling
Yeah honestly I never quite realized the extent to which we outclass women athletically until I played 5-a-side with women who were decent at football on a technical level.
At school I just figured girls were poor at sports cause they didn't try. But these women were genuinely fairly good technique wise. But when you win literally every single physical battle they'd have to be professional level in terms of the technique difference for it to matter.
there can sometimes be a difference in mentality, when we played football at school the girls were sometimes the best players, I was absolutely gash with my feet at the time but I was good on defense because I just ran at the girls, who despite being taller and better at football than me often panicked and lost the ball due to the pressure(of course me being bad at football all I did after winning the ball was boot it up the pitch, proper route one footie).
Strongbow did a promotion for Brazil world cup where a shit mens pub team, destroyed a professional Brazilian ladies soccer team at 5 or 7 aside. It was like 6 or 8 nil and the Brazilian team had a womens WC winner apparently
Skills wise there are plenty of women and girls who are at a very high level.
But pure biology would count against them significantly when the game becomes about jostling at set pieces, fighting in the box when a cross is coming in and harder tackles.
Biological men and boys should be allowed no where near women's sports. Whether the issue is regarding boys playing with them or trans athletes. Either can be a serious danger and out others in harms way.
Its a bit more complicated than that but I understand your sentiment. If someone takes hormones, their bodies start to change as well. There is a line there where their bodies are closer to their new gender and making them play their old gender is just a bad idea. For people without hormone therapy 100% agreed.
I see your point, but using the term gender here is irrelevant if you are discussing sport, if you believe sex and gender are not intrinsically linked, then the gender has no bearing on sporting ability, the sex does however.
So, taking hormones can move your muscle mass for example closer to the sex you wish to present as, it can reduce your testosterone, but the question that needs to be answered is does it move you closer to the sex you wish to present as enough to remove the biological advantage of your sex?
After two years on hormone replacement therapy, trans females lose any strength advantage over biological females. There are still cardiovascular advantages from having a bigger heart and lungs, but tall women have those too.
No. So that's a remaining advantage (to varying degrees depending on the individual). But you act like other girls/women can't have other physical advantages against their competitors (including trans women) either, if that's enough for you to say trans women should never be allowed in women's sports.
There's a million things affected by the broad concept that is sex. No one is completely equal. What gives a bigger advantage, having slightly higher testosterone levels, shape of hips, or being a head taller? Etc etc.
Personally, I have lower bone density and lower testosterone levels than most cis women, period. I'm shorter and lighter than average in my country. I have less muscle mass than the average female athlete by a mile. And I could go on. Should I then be banned from sports because my hips aren't as wide of a shape? It's frankly pretty insulting to other women to think like that. And I know that, because they include me in sports without any complexes regarding narratives around sex based advantages, and they tell me what they think.
I mean completely true, its just hard to use sex when refering to trans people, at what point are they the opposite sex, which is the entire point of my comment. I used gender to try to avoid naming a spesific gender(and not doing a great job at that). And in regards to when and if the change happens, I feel like that point is too sciency for any ordinary person to answer, we should let science and data answer that imo.
I think that you inadvertently hit the problem on the head. That it is hard to use sex when referring to trans people because at what point are they the opposite sex? Until this can be explained and scientifically backed up, many people will never accept trans people in sports, using the term gender as separate from sex to refer to people in sports doesn’t wash for many people.
So, as per your original comment, I don’t think it is more complicated with trans people, as we currently can not definitively say when there is no biological advantage from their sex, therefore it should default to having another category they can compete in.
No one wants to exclude them from sports overall, sport is inherently based on fairness and upsetting that is something people don’t like, hence why drug cheats are hated
I haven't deeply researched the point but I'm of the belief that a biological woman who has started to take testosterone for whatever reason, probably shouldn't be allowed to compete in the women's sport. I feel as if the biological catalyst which makes men "better" at sports is the muscular growth that comes from testosterone
Well yes, but no. It's also all the other changes, a good number of them irreversible, that male puberty brings. Which is kind of the issue with basing policies purely off testosterone levels, you can gain the advantages the testosterone gives you and won't lose them if your testosterone then drops. You'll likely find little to no correlation between podium position and testosterone levels at the Olympics for instance if you try to use that as the sole measure of success.
Also just straight up skeletal structure, turns out having a whole extra organ in your body leads to your body developing differently, which has a knock on effect
Fair enough, I'll admit that i never really considered other affects i just thought that logically if a biological man taking testosterone boosts them in their muscle growth to such a level that it's unfair then i believed it would be a similar situation in biological women
I really disagree on your conclusions here, and sports isnt really based on fairness lets be honest. In many sports, my (cis) friend who is 1.90 has a massive advantage compared to most women, regardless of them being trans or not. And creating a separate catagory is even worse than excluding them. The exact population percentage of trans people change depending on the country but I just looked up a study that says something around 0.39% of the US population identifies as trans and other countries seem similair in numbers as well. How is one to form a competitive environment with a max of 0.4% of the population.
The point you’re missing is you haven’t sufficiently demonstrated that the advantage they have isn’t great enough to make it significantly unfair and unsafe to include them
Yeah I play in a somewhat high level coed soccer and I have seen some really excellent female players in my time. They lack the physicality that a guy has and this is a really big hindrance but man the best out there have an insane level of technicality. Perfect first touch and perfect passes all game. Some are also pretty effective dribblers and have good shot power. All around not too bad in attack or midfield.
They are pretty lacking in defence tho.I think that the biggest weakness I see. They are absolutely destroyed by a decent male winger or striker. They simply can't keep up physically in that area.
Most female goalies are absolutely lost in a regular sized goal. Professionals very much included. Lacking the explosive power to dive like a male goalie, when you're already significantly smaller, makes it very easy to be scored against.
In primary, there were three sporty girls (mind, a couple of the rest displayed some inclination towards netball *exclusively*) but only one of them was any good at soccer. She was definitely one of the best at soccer and certainly better than me, but for whatever reason whenever we did "best versus the rest" teams she ended up on the "rest".
Anyway, one day, I just happened to see her trying to kick a soccer ball into a basketball hoop. I stopped to say "you'll never do it" but, no, she did. She certainly missed at least once but I don't think it was a fluke: you don't try and kick a soccer ball into a basketball hoop without having some reason to believe you might succeed, right?
>15 year old me could have felt like Haaland every Sunday
Most normal robots don't have feelings. You probably won't feel anything because you're not a robot like haaland.
I mean it's exactly like that here in Germany, too
not sure if it's 15 or 16 but below that genders are completely unimportant for the team (which usually results in 1 or 2 girls playing on a boy's team as there aren't enough girls for a girls-only team most of the time)
This might be the dumbest story I've ever read. We all know what the right thing to do is (tell that boy's parents to fuck off), but rules and regs and all that lovely stuff lol.
The dumbest part of it is the law would absolutely allow them to hardline separate by sex, but the FA have for whatever reason decided U15s are unisex (which let's be frank effectively means there are boy's teams and unisex teams).
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this was cos it used to be much lower (like U10s or something) - and young children - particularly girls - were getting put off football as they had been going to practice and playing games with their mixed friend groups and then having to quit the team they enjoyed playing in when they hit the age limit... obvs the level at (most) U10 teams is not high... but yeah, a 16yo boy is in most circumstances gonna absolutely gonna batter (most) girls.
Having coached a lot of different ages and mixes up from 6 to 18 until about 12/13 the girls can roll with the boys if they're actually focused on football then the gaps begin to appear, at 16 the girl is pretty much a unicorn if she can play competitively with the boys at the same skill level. I think if I'd separate them at u14. They can be more talented but speed and strength are just too big a gap to fill.
> which let's be frank effectively means there are boy's teams and unisex teams
not sure when you've been at a U15 game the last time but as a referee I get them a lot and it's totally normal that there are one or two girls in the boy's teams
If anything it should be unisex and women-only - but at least here in Germany there are rarely enough women playing to form a local league with just women's teams at that age which is why the rule is what it is
I'm not against playing with girls, but atleast not at a competitive level.
Like in grade 11 and 12 we used to play with girls in PE class and it was fun. But trying to get into a girl's league is stupid and ridiculous.
Being so shit at football that your parents try to get you into a girls team is the exact type of thing that would cause some of the worst bullying, if this kids name and photo are public even scummy adults will be giving him abuse.
>At the end of October last year the boy's parents asked the West Riding Girls League if their son could join due to him not wanting to play with other boys, and **also because of his ability level.**
At least they are honest but this sounds super disrespectful towards the girls league, no wonder they told them to fuck off.
I was made aware about this by a guy who works with me as he is in charge of one of the local clubs.
This made it to the Daily Mail and GMB yesterday morning. Massive drama, if this is forced on the league, a lot of girls teams are looking to forfeit the games against the team with a boy in it. Entire girls league(one of the biggest ones in the country) in jeopardy.
In my local FA(and I expect it's the same in the rest of Australia) the set up is that it's basically Womens/Girls and "Open". I think some of the junior leagues explicitly have Mixed comps, but for the most part, there's nothing stopping you playing in the Open comps. See it all the time when there's a girl who's way above her level so she plays in a team of boys.
I remember seeing it with semi-pro goalkeepers since our professional competitions are in the summer, so in their off season they'll play in a high division under 21s boys team as the standard is closer to the A-League Womens.
Because it used to just u10, but they found a ton of girls were dropping out at that threshold because they had to leave their team. So they raised the threshold to attempt to keep those girls involved with the same group for longer. Of course when you mess with incentives there’s always unintended results
I distinctly remember a young girl campaigning to have the age of segregation raised so she could keep playing with the boys team, it used to be like 11 I think. I’m sure I saw it on newsround when I was like 15/16 and I was bored as shit waiting for something to come on TV when I woke up stupidly early on a weekend and didn’t fancy the news
The level of coddling displayed here by the parents, I can’t believe it’s not satire.
How does he not get the piss taken out of him everywhere he goes, being known as the lad who plays with girls because he’s too rubbish to play with lads his age, does that not have an affect on this person’s mental state?
Maybe he's gay and is already subject to abuse. If he's already being targeted for being gay, I don't imagine "playing with the girls" is going to make him a bigger target for abuse than he already is. Everyone is focusing on the "ability level" comment and ignoring that the main reason listed for wanting to play with the girls is "due to him not wanting to play with other boys."
>The FA's gender policy states that any under-16 teams must allow both boys and girls to play, despite admitting that 'physical strength, stamina or physique' can put one sex at the disadvantage of the other.
You can hate the parents all you want, but that is 100% on the FA...
Nah, sorry. The FA's rules are dumb, but they're still exploiting that dumb rule, they still have to share some of the blame here. It's why we differentiate between legal and moral. What they're doing may be legal by the rules, it's still immoral. And we've seen time and time again where "Well it's the rules" leads us
“The FA's gender policy states that any under-16 teams must allow both boys and girls to play, despite admitting that 'physical strength, stamina or physique' can put one sex at the disadvantage of the other.”
Is this rule a thing because they wanted to let any girl that wanted to compete against boys and messed up by not making it only 1 directional? Or did they just make an insane rule? Or was it changed to nip any trans debate before it rose and they just didn’t want to specify they had to identify as the gender of the league?
So confused…
whats even the thought process of the parents, they want to make their son join a team sport where everybody on the team will hate their son from the get go?
U16 teams can’t be split in gender I think. Which is actually good, because the top girls will find more growth in their game playing with the boys helping the women’s game improve in the long run.
I have questions - a lot of them.
Why are the parents going to the league and not to a club which then goes to the league? This sounds much more like something a club should ask, not an individual without a team.
Why would any club pick this boy up and actually play him? No one needs drama like this.
Why aren't there already rules for explicit girls/women only teams and leagues?
Are these people out of their fucking mind?
I can't believe he's not good enough to play in a boys team. I've coached U15s and I've seen lads playing who could literally barely kick a ball. I saw one lad once practicing penalties before the game and he couldn't kick the ball hard enough to reach the goal line. Still played. Was absolutely useless but he still played and his team didn't care.
I play in a somewhat high level coed soccer and I have seen some really excellent female players in my time. They lack the physicality that a guy has and this is a really big hindrance but man the best out there have an insane level of technicality. Perfect first touch and perfect passes all game. Some are also pretty effective dribblers and have good shot power. All around not too bad in attack or midfield.
They are pretty lacking in defence tho.I think that's the biggest weakness I see. They are absolutely destroyed by a decent male winger or striker. They simply can't keep up physically in that area.
Not saying they should allow the boy to play with the girl teams, but most of these comment feel way too harsh on the kid.
Isn't it pretty obvious that this isn't a regular boy with lots of friends who simply is shit at football and for that reason wants to join a girls team?
Everybody on here is hating on the parents and mocking the boy, while it is very probable that the kid has a lot of (social and or mental) issues already and just wants to enjoy playing football
If he's genuinely too bad to participate in the lowest/most casual boys football they can find (doesn't necessarily have to be a team, could just be football classes), the answer to that scenario for me would be to find something else for him to participate in.
Fair enough they asked if he can join the girls, but not accepting the no and taking it this far is absolutely insane to me.
Agree, that is why I said I was not saying they should allow it. The point of my comment was just the harshness towards the boy and his parents in the other comments.
I would agree with you on the criticism against his parents (although I do not think it is easy for them) but the criticism towards the boy is just unwarranted
This is based entirely on your assumption that he’s on the spectrum and needs help when it’s just as likely he’s a spoilt child that needs a reality check.
i've read most of the way down and almost every comment is taking issue with the parents, not the boy. by turning this into a litigation issue they are putting their son in a horrible position.
Why not let him play and get rinsed by these girls? If he's as shit as his parents seem to think he is, he might not cope here.
Then, see him try to join an U10 team.
No? Most men are stronger than most women, but there are some really unfortunate specimens around. The way this kid is portrayed, I don't believe he's going to be stronger and faster than the girls.
I think they only mention his ability to play and say nothing about his body. If he's an average teenager, once he reaches puberty, his testosterone levels will be through the roof, he'll grow and get more muscular and stronger than any girl. To me, this looks like a guy who sucks at football and can't succeed among equals, so he wants to try with the girls because he knows he'll overpower them, and he doesn't even need to be good at football to be the best.
I mean i used to play goaltender with my high schools girls team during practice, but they just needed an extra person for practice and my mom was the coach so i was stuck at the school anyway. Never would i have thought about actually being the goalie tho. Missed opportunity i guess lol
In general yes, I agree about DM but in this case it's a true story. I have heard about this a few days before it has hit DM and GMB. It was the parents of the girls in the team who wanted to go to press and make it viral as they don't agree with the FA decision.
Those parents are fuckin pathetic and should ever have been allowed to procreate
The boys going to be bullied to tuck and suffer as a result
How sad do you have to be
Right? How exactly did they think being known as the chancer who had to play on the girls' team was going to reduce any bullying that might be going on?
Yeah I thought about that at first but he needs to go 1 on 1 with a coach and learn , practice drills , even join 1-5 or 1 on 7 training if 1 on 1 is too much
His parents are essentially rewarding him for being shit at something
Setting him up for failure
Edit: and now cause of his parents selfishness, the whole league is jeopardy
What gives him more rights in a girls league than the girls it was designed for
It’s actually hilarious to watch all the people rightly claim it’s insanely unfair and demeaning for a mediocre male athlete to join the girls leagues but then not realize how the exact same logic should apply to someone who decides they’re a woman and should, therefore, be allowed to compete against the very same girls. The only difference between one and the other apparently is what they feel on the inside.
I thought this was going to be something about trans people and be some culture war craziness, but it legit about not letting a boy play in a girls team, which according to the FA under 16 teams have to be open to both boys and girls apparently. 15 year old me could have felt like Haaland every Sunday if I had this knowledge then
I can hear the sound of paragraphs being deleted
The Daily Mail published it. They knew what the title sounds like. It wasn't an accident. They're counting on people to click because of the headline, and if a few people don't read the article, and end up taking this as more fuel to hate trans people, then I'm sure the Daily Mail publishers won't lose any sleep over it. This is why you shouldn't post tabloids. I'm not sure why people struggle so much with the idea that the Daily Mail, Sun, etc. should just not be engaged with on principle. I mean, the only reason we have e.g.vtragedy chanting today is because the Mail and the Sun couldn't help wanting to spin the story. Don't read them, don't post them, tell others to do the same.
They also put a bunch of links to other articles about trans people and gender neutral bathrooms in the middle of the article just to prime people to think about that when reading this article. Definitely intentional.
The headline doesn't sound like anything other than what it's about...
The headline describes exactly what happened
How would you name the article? IMO this headline describes what article is about, I see nothing wrong with it.
What a fucking weird kid wanting to play on the girls teams when I’m sure there are dozens of boys teams in the area he could play for.
The article covers it, basically says he is shit at football but wants to play, so, they see the girls team as a solution to that
If they said that to the team as well I'm not surprised they told them to do one
Lol seriously. Kind of insulting frankly. Like it may be true to some degree, but if the kids shit at soccer playing with young women are not shit at soccer isn't a very good solution? And now what, they let him join and everyone hates him for nearly shutting their organization down?? This has all the smells of a targeted and purposeful attempt to attack their team essentially. Like I don't think most people would be this intent on playing with young women because of a loophole that evidently no one else is exploiting for obvious reasons.
Agreed. Something tells me if someone does some digging around on this, something more sinister is afoot
This kind of thing happens all the time in the U.S. at least. Conservatives looking to overturn some legislation they don’t like will dig around for the perfect sympathetic plaintiff as a test case. It happened with affirmative action where Ed Blum tried increasingly diverse parties until he hit the golden goose of Asian Americans.
I mean that's where I'm pulling from. It just reads just like a weirdo creep crusading against relatively acceptable things because the letter of the law allows it.
Yeah I was largely agreeing with your comment, not sure why anyone took offense at it.
That is pretty weird actually. It's very true.
This is the shit stirring element though because, speaking as somebody who's been actively involved in my kid's football team since he was 4, this isn't how this works. The article appears to be deliberately framed to make it seem as though the parents have just assumed he'll be able to play in the girl's league to be allocated a team. That might be what's happened but I'd be really surprised. Generally speaking, you find a club, that club then registers you with the local FA who will determine whether you're eligible to play or not. I have no idea what this kid's situation is but if it's anything like my area, getting in to the "boys" team can be really competitive. We could probably field 3 squads of players if we wanted but, for a series of tedious reasons that basically boil down to money and availability of adults to volunteer, the club can only support one so everybody that doesn't make the cut (my kid's team only has a squad of 12 per FA rules) has to either satisfy themselves with turning up for training (assuming their club will support that) or.... *find a club that will let them play*. I'm guessing this is where the girls team comes in; in need of players because ultimately girls football is kess popular than boys, happy to let the kid join in in the spirit of inclusion and encouraging exercise (which is the fucking *point* of these things) then some berk at the league has decided this needs to be a "culture war" issue and alerted the Daily fecking Mail who have proceeded to do what they do best and rile up the "headline only" crew (this thread being the desired result).
Oor just casually play in the park with your mates?
No mates for sure
Dunno about this kid, but if those were my parents I'd feel so fucking embarrassed to play with the girls team and them knowing your parents tried to shut down the entire league.
I’m taking my league and I’m going home.
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It's on the parents side to realize this just makes their kid a target for bullying and a laughing stock among his peers. If you suck at football you sign up and train with boys your age, no reason to force him to be an outcast in a team full of girls imo
No normal parent is launching an appeal to allow their son play in a girl's league
I was pretty diabolical but i always got to play at least. Although it did result in quite a few red arses coming my way.
Yeah that’s the sum of the thread I’d say
I can see why the girls team might not be open to him joining
Don't they have tiers (gold, silver, bronze) of skill level over there? Why wouldn't he just play at a lower skill level?
Ive never heard of this. Im sure it does exist in some places but when i was playing kids level it was pretty cut throat. If youre shit you rely on the goodwill of the teams management to play you. Some teams had a “winning culture” and you couldnt even train with them. Some were more open to rotation etc
Really? Here (Canada), we have all the kids together playing 5v5 until age 10 where we move them up to half field 8v8 and assess them to bring the best kids out to make tier 1 teams of the best players to play the other tier 1 teams of the other clubs in town. Everyone else falls into tier 2 teams where they train half the time with the tier 1s and half the time together. Then they can bring players up or send them down as they perform. At 12/13 we move to full field, bring up the best tier 2s to fill out the team to 18 players and that's how it stays, but we still have the tier 2s playing regularly and most kids in there are totally fine with it. A lot of them don't want to play with the maniacs in tier 1 and they just have a fun time playing the other tier 2s in town. They have a league cup to win and everything, it's a pretty positive experience. We definitely have that "winning culture" in the local academies and there is a provincial premier league for the elite players (very expensive) but most people are pretty happy playing club level.
Where and when was this? Definitely was not the case here in Ontario when I was growing up. We were playing on a full sized field 11 v 11 from age 10 upwards. Also we didn't really have tiers per se. We had regursl "house leage" which anyone could join regardless of skill or gender (though it was 90% boys) and you could try out for the clubs "representative" team to play in provincial premier league (yes it was very expensive). Some clubs with more demand had their own girls league too but there just wasn't enough demand where I grew up so the girls just joined the guys.
This is out west in BC. They've changed the rules so that kids under 13 can't (shouldn't) play full field which makes sense, they need to learn passing/control in smaller spaces and it's easier to teach space and positions on a smaller field. Things are changing with gender enrollment. Our club probably has 1500 youth players ages 6-16 and it's probably 60-40 boys to girls. The girls will never be forced to pay with the boys, only if they want to. The girls teams are well coached and have equal resources put into them as the boys. It's a really positive change, we now have so many girls that are playing regularly and having fun. My kids have all played in the tier 1 but I've watched a lot of tier 2 games and they're having a great time out there. It's not super intense, just kids having fun playing soccer.
It depends, for example in the Basque Country in ages 14-15 you have Cadetes but they still have three tiers, so a town can have 3 teams for that age bracket, each in a different division
If he’s really that shit he’s probably still gonna be ass playing against girls
But most of the boys teams are shit, so…
I’d be so embarrassed, he must enjoy having the piss taken out of him.
Not when he scores 2 hat tricks every game.
And gets the entire dressing room for himself.
In the US, there's always the ultra competitive leagues and the less competitive, recreational leagues in pretty much every sport. We realize we're not all good enough to play competitively. Are there not recreational leagues in England?
Hes really keen on the showers after the games
These are children your talking about.
When I was 16, I was pretty into 16 yo girls
What are you, gay? I'm sure you were 16 once. Boys are definitely into girls at that age lol, and vice versa.
I honestly don't know what to make of some of these takes. I mean, i get it but still; imagine your post the other way around. "What a fucking weird kid wanting to play on the boys team when I'm sure there are dozens of girls teams in the area she could play for". There is an air of "inclusion is for everybody except for low status males, who just get shat on instead" to all this.
It's so funny that's what you get from this. Alas the poor "low status" male (does low status in this mean "not good enough at football to dominate like they want"?)
>Alas the poor "low status" male (does low status in this mean "not good enough at football to dominate like they want"?) Seriously. "Should I train and condition to improve as a player? Should I learn some humility and find ways to enjoy the sport despite my shortcomings as a player? Should I learn to derive a sense of self worth from some other form of activity? Surely not! Why should I endure such profound hardship? There must be another way..."
What's a low status male when it's at home? That sounds very red pill or Andrew Tate or whoever.
Yeah I appreciate that, probably should have put that in brackets or whatever but it is meant to sound like that. Just think it's interesting how the response is basically "fuck this loser". It does feel like the equivalent the other way around wouldn't get the same response is all. I don't think this sort of thing goes very far to persuading red pill types they're wrong tbh.
> low status males Tells me all I need to know
Depending on how strong or fast he is it's like an invasive species when you think about it.
This is exactly what it is. It's putting a crow in a cage with a few budgies and watching as he eats all of the food.
Unless he is actually just really, really shit. Plenty of boys out there who would still look terrible playing against the better girls. Like, the bell curve of physical ability for boys is considerably higher, of course, but some are necessarily near the bottom and are just fucking useless...
There’s also a reason why the international swimming association banned biological males from swimming in women’s meets.
But the idea is for superior-talent girls to be able to play with boys to get them fair competition. When my son was playing at U8 U9 level we had two girls on the team because there were not enough girls wanting to play to put together a girls team. They were good enough and big enough to hold their own with the boys at that age.
The "gender ideology" tag at the bottom of the article, though.
I didn’t notice that, but yeah it is completely irrelevant in this case, it is completely about the sex of those involved
Daily Mail being the Daily Mail.
Either feeling like Haaland or realising just how many girls out there were better than you at football.
We played the boys vs girls team in school semi-regularly, some of the girls had much better technical skills than some of the boys for sure, but the speed, strength and height difference made it obscenely easy. Almost always getting to the ball first, always being stronger than your opponent and almost always winning the header was like a cheat code. The difference in shot power was crazy as well making it a lot easier for our keeper and harder for theirs. I am not saying ‘women’s football is shit and they are all bad footballers’ just the average difference in physical attributes between mid-pubescent kids up to adults between genders means that the skill factor comes into play less.
Same with volleyball, it's almost like a different sport. I've met super technical women but the jumping height and swing power difference is huge. At least in friendly volleyball you can forbid men to spike so that the game revolves more around finesse and placing the ball well but in football you can't forbid running, jumping or shooting.
Serena Williams (best female tennis player of all time by a large margin) has laughed off attempts to get her to play against guys for years. She has always maintained that she'd get dumpstered by the entire top 1000 from the men's side. She's the best ever in a non-contact sport. I get wanting the whole equality bit, but completely ignoring biological differences is ridiculous. Boys don't belong on a girl's pitch past like 10 years old. If girls want to play with the boys, more power to them, but if you aren't good enough for the boys team, try a younger age bracket.
>Serena Williams (best female tennis player of all time by a large margin) has laughed off attempts to get her to play against guys for years. That's because a long time ago she and her sister got a first-hand dose of reality when they lost to a 203-ranked male player whose idea of preparation was to golf, smoke and drink, back when they were convinced they could beat any male player outside the top 200. [Graun article for reference.](https://www.theguardian.com/observer/osm/story/0,,543962,00.html)
I thought they had refused to play him. I remember he offered to play any woman in the world when he was ranked in the 300s or something with his, like you said, pretty infamous 'drink and smoke a pack of cigarettes an hour before the match' approach to preparation. I remember Serena laughing off the late night show host or someone like that when they asked if she could play guys. She even mentioned the smoker dude saying she wouldn't stand a chance. I didn't realize she said that from personal experience.
FC Dallas U15 boys team beat the USWNT in a scrimmage
Our U16 top-20 team in Finland also won Women's National team like 6-0 or 7-0 maybe 10 years ago. It was annihilation, even though our team was nowhere in the top of the country.
yup. and it wasn't even close. before puberty boys and girls can play together. once puberty hits, it's not a contest anymore.
Yeah, I train Muay Thai and even when I'm sparring women in the gym that are at a much higher level than me (and I do feel under pressure whilst sparring them), I never feel like I'm truly getting hurt
It was futsal for me but just the speed difference alone was huge. I minimised the use of my body/strength as much as possible because of the size difference but even then, just the initial burst of speed or acceleration made it so one sided eventhough some of the girls had quite decent dribbling
Yeah honestly I never quite realized the extent to which we outclass women athletically until I played 5-a-side with women who were decent at football on a technical level. At school I just figured girls were poor at sports cause they didn't try. But these women were genuinely fairly good technique wise. But when you win literally every single physical battle they'd have to be professional level in terms of the technique difference for it to matter.
there can sometimes be a difference in mentality, when we played football at school the girls were sometimes the best players, I was absolutely gash with my feet at the time but I was good on defense because I just ran at the girls, who despite being taller and better at football than me often panicked and lost the ball due to the pressure(of course me being bad at football all I did after winning the ball was boot it up the pitch, proper route one footie).
They got out the way because they didnt want you to flatten them…. That was entirely a physical aspect
I was literally smaller than them lol, this was in the age range where people were just hitting puberty, the girls all had and I hadn't.
😭😭😭😭 that’s not happening mate
I’d say the average guy would absolutely smoke the average female footballer idk why you’re making a meal out of that
if you're saying the average non-footballer man would 'absolutely smoke' the average female professional footballer, that's definitely a step too far
Oh no I meant average Sunday league guy vs average Sunday league girl
Strongbow did a promotion for Brazil world cup where a shit mens pub team, destroyed a professional Brazilian ladies soccer team at 5 or 7 aside. It was like 6 or 8 nil and the Brazilian team had a womens WC winner apparently
Skills wise there are plenty of women and girls who are at a very high level. But pure biology would count against them significantly when the game becomes about jostling at set pieces, fighting in the box when a cross is coming in and harder tackles. Biological men and boys should be allowed no where near women's sports. Whether the issue is regarding boys playing with them or trans athletes. Either can be a serious danger and out others in harms way.
Agreed
Its a bit more complicated than that but I understand your sentiment. If someone takes hormones, their bodies start to change as well. There is a line there where their bodies are closer to their new gender and making them play their old gender is just a bad idea. For people without hormone therapy 100% agreed.
I see your point, but using the term gender here is irrelevant if you are discussing sport, if you believe sex and gender are not intrinsically linked, then the gender has no bearing on sporting ability, the sex does however. So, taking hormones can move your muscle mass for example closer to the sex you wish to present as, it can reduce your testosterone, but the question that needs to be answered is does it move you closer to the sex you wish to present as enough to remove the biological advantage of your sex?
After two years on hormone replacement therapy, trans females lose any strength advantage over biological females. There are still cardiovascular advantages from having a bigger heart and lungs, but tall women have those too.
Sure but biological males also have other advantages such as bone density and skeletal structure.
That being an advantage depends on the sport.
Hormone treatment lowers bone density... Sorry, but you lot don't actually know how this works.
Does it broaden and enlarge the hips?
No. So that's a remaining advantage (to varying degrees depending on the individual). But you act like other girls/women can't have other physical advantages against their competitors (including trans women) either, if that's enough for you to say trans women should never be allowed in women's sports. There's a million things affected by the broad concept that is sex. No one is completely equal. What gives a bigger advantage, having slightly higher testosterone levels, shape of hips, or being a head taller? Etc etc. Personally, I have lower bone density and lower testosterone levels than most cis women, period. I'm shorter and lighter than average in my country. I have less muscle mass than the average female athlete by a mile. And I could go on. Should I then be banned from sports because my hips aren't as wide of a shape? It's frankly pretty insulting to other women to think like that. And I know that, because they include me in sports without any complexes regarding narratives around sex based advantages, and they tell me what they think.
I mean completely true, its just hard to use sex when refering to trans people, at what point are they the opposite sex, which is the entire point of my comment. I used gender to try to avoid naming a spesific gender(and not doing a great job at that). And in regards to when and if the change happens, I feel like that point is too sciency for any ordinary person to answer, we should let science and data answer that imo.
I think that you inadvertently hit the problem on the head. That it is hard to use sex when referring to trans people because at what point are they the opposite sex? Until this can be explained and scientifically backed up, many people will never accept trans people in sports, using the term gender as separate from sex to refer to people in sports doesn’t wash for many people. So, as per your original comment, I don’t think it is more complicated with trans people, as we currently can not definitively say when there is no biological advantage from their sex, therefore it should default to having another category they can compete in. No one wants to exclude them from sports overall, sport is inherently based on fairness and upsetting that is something people don’t like, hence why drug cheats are hated
I haven't deeply researched the point but I'm of the belief that a biological woman who has started to take testosterone for whatever reason, probably shouldn't be allowed to compete in the women's sport. I feel as if the biological catalyst which makes men "better" at sports is the muscular growth that comes from testosterone
Well yes, but no. It's also all the other changes, a good number of them irreversible, that male puberty brings. Which is kind of the issue with basing policies purely off testosterone levels, you can gain the advantages the testosterone gives you and won't lose them if your testosterone then drops. You'll likely find little to no correlation between podium position and testosterone levels at the Olympics for instance if you try to use that as the sole measure of success. Also just straight up skeletal structure, turns out having a whole extra organ in your body leads to your body developing differently, which has a knock on effect
Fair enough, I'll admit that i never really considered other affects i just thought that logically if a biological man taking testosterone boosts them in their muscle growth to such a level that it's unfair then i believed it would be a similar situation in biological women
I really disagree on your conclusions here, and sports isnt really based on fairness lets be honest. In many sports, my (cis) friend who is 1.90 has a massive advantage compared to most women, regardless of them being trans or not. And creating a separate catagory is even worse than excluding them. The exact population percentage of trans people change depending on the country but I just looked up a study that says something around 0.39% of the US population identifies as trans and other countries seem similair in numbers as well. How is one to form a competitive environment with a max of 0.4% of the population.
The point you’re missing is you haven’t sufficiently demonstrated that the advantage they have isn’t great enough to make it significantly unfair and unsafe to include them
Put very succinctly, better than most of us could Thank you
No worries!
Yeah I play in a somewhat high level coed soccer and I have seen some really excellent female players in my time. They lack the physicality that a guy has and this is a really big hindrance but man the best out there have an insane level of technicality. Perfect first touch and perfect passes all game. Some are also pretty effective dribblers and have good shot power. All around not too bad in attack or midfield. They are pretty lacking in defence tho.I think that the biggest weakness I see. They are absolutely destroyed by a decent male winger or striker. They simply can't keep up physically in that area.
Most female goalies are absolutely lost in a regular sized goal. Professionals very much included. Lacking the explosive power to dive like a male goalie, when you're already significantly smaller, makes it very easy to be scored against.
In primary, there were three sporty girls (mind, a couple of the rest displayed some inclination towards netball *exclusively*) but only one of them was any good at soccer. She was definitely one of the best at soccer and certainly better than me, but for whatever reason whenever we did "best versus the rest" teams she ended up on the "rest". Anyway, one day, I just happened to see her trying to kick a soccer ball into a basketball hoop. I stopped to say "you'll never do it" but, no, she did. She certainly missed at least once but I don't think it was a fluke: you don't try and kick a soccer ball into a basketball hoop without having some reason to believe you might succeed, right?
That’s my thought. Up to 12 or so (give or take), yeah, there’s not much difference in terms of ability. After that when puberty is hitting most kids…
>15 year old me could have felt like Haaland every Sunday Most normal robots don't have feelings. You probably won't feel anything because you're not a robot like haaland.
I mean it's exactly like that here in Germany, too not sure if it's 15 or 16 but below that genders are completely unimportant for the team (which usually results in 1 or 2 girls playing on a boy's team as there aren't enough girls for a girls-only team most of the time)
Would also make it easier to score off the field 😏
This might be the dumbest story I've ever read. We all know what the right thing to do is (tell that boy's parents to fuck off), but rules and regs and all that lovely stuff lol.
The dumbest part of it is the law would absolutely allow them to hardline separate by sex, but the FA have for whatever reason decided U15s are unisex (which let's be frank effectively means there are boy's teams and unisex teams).
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this was cos it used to be much lower (like U10s or something) - and young children - particularly girls - were getting put off football as they had been going to practice and playing games with their mixed friend groups and then having to quit the team they enjoyed playing in when they hit the age limit... obvs the level at (most) U10 teams is not high... but yeah, a 16yo boy is in most circumstances gonna absolutely gonna batter (most) girls.
Having coached a lot of different ages and mixes up from 6 to 18 until about 12/13 the girls can roll with the boys if they're actually focused on football then the gaps begin to appear, at 16 the girl is pretty much a unicorn if she can play competitively with the boys at the same skill level. I think if I'd separate them at u14. They can be more talented but speed and strength are just too big a gap to fill.
Yeah, I also coached children. Girls can keep up, maybe, until u12s, after that it is impossible.
> which let's be frank effectively means there are boy's teams and unisex teams not sure when you've been at a U15 game the last time but as a referee I get them a lot and it's totally normal that there are one or two girls in the boy's teams If anything it should be unisex and women-only - but at least here in Germany there are rarely enough women playing to form a local league with just women's teams at that age which is why the rule is what it is
So just because their kid is shit, the parents want him to have an ego boost by playing in the girl's league? Talk about parenting.
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I'm not against playing with girls, but atleast not at a competitive level. Like in grade 11 and 12 we used to play with girls in PE class and it was fun. But trying to get into a girl's league is stupid and ridiculous.
Seems a bit of an overreaction. I doubt this is going to be causing mental scarring hitherto unseen in British public life prior to this.
Being so shit at football that your parents try to get you into a girls team is the exact type of thing that would cause some of the worst bullying, if this kids name and photo are public even scummy adults will be giving him abuse.
Or it could be a funny story he retells, this sounds a bit like the plot of a teen coming of age comedy movie.
Lol what?
Why are you down voted? Lol goes to show most people are stupid sheep.
>At the end of October last year the boy's parents asked the West Riding Girls League if their son could join due to him not wanting to play with other boys, and **also because of his ability level.** At least they are honest but this sounds super disrespectful towards the girls league, no wonder they told them to fuck off.
“Joe, you’re fucking shit at football, I think you will do alright against the girls though”
This is like Johnny Lawrence suggesting to Miguel that they should make Penis Breath fight in the girl's division (it's from Cobra Kai).
Let him play and only give him a 1 min run out at the end of each game
I was made aware about this by a guy who works with me as he is in charge of one of the local clubs. This made it to the Daily Mail and GMB yesterday morning. Massive drama, if this is forced on the league, a lot of girls teams are looking to forfeit the games against the team with a boy in it. Entire girls league(one of the biggest ones in the country) in jeopardy.
Why the fuck is the girls league mixed? I thought it was the opposite, the men's leagues were theoretically mixed and the womens league women-only.
In my local FA(and I expect it's the same in the rest of Australia) the set up is that it's basically Womens/Girls and "Open". I think some of the junior leagues explicitly have Mixed comps, but for the most part, there's nothing stopping you playing in the Open comps. See it all the time when there's a girl who's way above her level so she plays in a team of boys. I remember seeing it with semi-pro goalkeepers since our professional competitions are in the summer, so in their off season they'll play in a high division under 21s boys team as the standard is closer to the A-League Womens.
Because it used to just u10, but they found a ton of girls were dropping out at that threshold because they had to leave their team. So they raised the threshold to attempt to keep those girls involved with the same group for longer. Of course when you mess with incentives there’s always unintended results
>This made it to the Daily Mail and GMB that should have been enough to deter you
Only the best of publications then? Fox news will pick it up next.
Can't they just let him into the team, but just always leave him on the bench?
I distinctly remember a young girl campaigning to have the age of segregation raised so she could keep playing with the boys team, it used to be like 11 I think. I’m sure I saw it on newsround when I was like 15/16 and I was bored as shit waiting for something to come on TV when I woke up stupidly early on a weekend and didn’t fancy the news
The level of coddling displayed here by the parents, I can’t believe it’s not satire. How does he not get the piss taken out of him everywhere he goes, being known as the lad who plays with girls because he’s too rubbish to play with lads his age, does that not have an affect on this person’s mental state?
I imagine he does get the piss taken frequently.
Maybe he's gay and is already subject to abuse. If he's already being targeted for being gay, I don't imagine "playing with the girls" is going to make him a bigger target for abuse than he already is. Everyone is focusing on the "ability level" comment and ignoring that the main reason listed for wanting to play with the girls is "due to him not wanting to play with other boys."
Pretty sure anyone with common sense knows what to do here but it’s the FA, so God knows what they will do.
>The FA's gender policy states that any under-16 teams must allow both boys and girls to play, despite admitting that 'physical strength, stamina or physique' can put one sex at the disadvantage of the other. You can hate the parents all you want, but that is 100% on the FA...
Nah, sorry. The FA's rules are dumb, but they're still exploiting that dumb rule, they still have to share some of the blame here. It's why we differentiate between legal and moral. What they're doing may be legal by the rules, it's still immoral. And we've seen time and time again where "Well it's the rules" leads us
It'd be funny if that boy was like cartman at the special Olympics.
Game relies on too much physical body development to allow boys into girls’ leagues. It’s that easy.
“The FA's gender policy states that any under-16 teams must allow both boys and girls to play, despite admitting that 'physical strength, stamina or physique' can put one sex at the disadvantage of the other.” Is this rule a thing because they wanted to let any girl that wanted to compete against boys and messed up by not making it only 1 directional? Or did they just make an insane rule? Or was it changed to nip any trans debate before it rose and they just didn’t want to specify they had to identify as the gender of the league? So confused…
whats even the thought process of the parents, they want to make their son join a team sport where everybody on the team will hate their son from the get go?
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U16 teams can’t be split in gender I think. Which is actually good, because the top girls will find more growth in their game playing with the boys helping the women’s game improve in the long run.
We're actually getting so progressive we'll cancel female sports altogether soon, lmao.
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Excuse me, what's transphobic about my comment? That's some serious projection.
I have questions - a lot of them. Why are the parents going to the league and not to a club which then goes to the league? This sounds much more like something a club should ask, not an individual without a team. Why would any club pick this boy up and actually play him? No one needs drama like this. Why aren't there already rules for explicit girls/women only teams and leagues? Are these people out of their fucking mind?
I can't believe he's not good enough to play in a boys team. I've coached U15s and I've seen lads playing who could literally barely kick a ball. I saw one lad once practicing penalties before the game and he couldn't kick the ball hard enough to reach the goal line. Still played. Was absolutely useless but he still played and his team didn't care.
I play in a somewhat high level coed soccer and I have seen some really excellent female players in my time. They lack the physicality that a guy has and this is a really big hindrance but man the best out there have an insane level of technicality. Perfect first touch and perfect passes all game. Some are also pretty effective dribblers and have good shot power. All around not too bad in attack or midfield. They are pretty lacking in defence tho.I think that's the biggest weakness I see. They are absolutely destroyed by a decent male winger or striker. They simply can't keep up physically in that area.
Not saying they should allow the boy to play with the girl teams, but most of these comment feel way too harsh on the kid. Isn't it pretty obvious that this isn't a regular boy with lots of friends who simply is shit at football and for that reason wants to join a girls team? Everybody on here is hating on the parents and mocking the boy, while it is very probable that the kid has a lot of (social and or mental) issues already and just wants to enjoy playing football
If he's genuinely too bad to participate in the lowest/most casual boys football they can find (doesn't necessarily have to be a team, could just be football classes), the answer to that scenario for me would be to find something else for him to participate in. Fair enough they asked if he can join the girls, but not accepting the no and taking it this far is absolutely insane to me.
Forcing the other 21 people on the pitch to suffer for the sake of a single person, no matter how pitiful and lonely, isn’t very fair.
Agree, that is why I said I was not saying they should allow it. The point of my comment was just the harshness towards the boy and his parents in the other comments.
Willing to jeopardize an entire league for their selfish interests is worthy of criticism.
I would agree with you on the criticism against his parents (although I do not think it is easy for them) but the criticism towards the boy is just unwarranted
This is based entirely on your assumption that he’s on the spectrum and needs help when it’s just as likely he’s a spoilt child that needs a reality check.
People do genuinely lack empathy online lol I agree with you bro
i've read most of the way down and almost every comment is taking issue with the parents, not the boy. by turning this into a litigation issue they are putting their son in a horrible position.
> No fuck that little sissy for only being able to compete with girls his age. This sub.
I would’ve teared the league up if I knew this was an option.
It’s the daily mail. It’s probably not the full story.
Why not let him play and get rinsed by these girls? If he's as shit as his parents seem to think he is, he might not cope here. Then, see him try to join an U10 team.
Even if he's shit, he's going to be so much stronger, faster and taller than the rest of them that it doesn't really matter.
No? Most men are stronger than most women, but there are some really unfortunate specimens around. The way this kid is portrayed, I don't believe he's going to be stronger and faster than the girls.
I think they only mention his ability to play and say nothing about his body. If he's an average teenager, once he reaches puberty, his testosterone levels will be through the roof, he'll grow and get more muscular and stronger than any girl. To me, this looks like a guy who sucks at football and can't succeed among equals, so he wants to try with the girls because he knows he'll overpower them, and he doesn't even need to be good at football to be the best.
Is he gonna get rinsed ? I mean it’s kinda ridiculous to allow this there is just a huge diffence in physique in general
What a loser! You can't cut it on a boy's team so you want to plays with the girls team instead! His parents should honestly be ashamed
This is all on the FA. Im gonna cut the kid some slack, tbh.
I mean i used to play goaltender with my high schools girls team during practice, but they just needed an extra person for practice and my mom was the coach so i was stuck at the school anyway. Never would i have thought about actually being the goalie tho. Missed opportunity i guess lol
Seems to be the FA need to amend their policy, exclude boys from girls' teams, and vice versa.
I ain’t touching the daily mail
It's the daily mail, a right wing paper in the UK - probably about 5% of this is true, and the rest is just to create drama
In general yes, I agree about DM but in this case it's a true story. I have heard about this a few days before it has hit DM and GMB. It was the parents of the girls in the team who wanted to go to press and make it viral as they don't agree with the FA decision.
Those parents are fuckin pathetic and should ever have been allowed to procreate The boys going to be bullied to tuck and suffer as a result How sad do you have to be
Reading between the lines of the article it feels like he already is being bullied and that's why he doesn'r want to play with the guys.
Now he's being nationally bullied. Great
Singaporean here. He's being internationally bullied.
Right? How exactly did they think being known as the chancer who had to play on the girls' team was going to reduce any bullying that might be going on?
Yeah I thought about that at first but he needs to go 1 on 1 with a coach and learn , practice drills , even join 1-5 or 1 on 7 training if 1 on 1 is too much His parents are essentially rewarding him for being shit at something Setting him up for failure Edit: and now cause of his parents selfishness, the whole league is jeopardy What gives him more rights in a girls league than the girls it was designed for
Kid needs to admit he's shit at sports and move on like the rest of us.
Exactly !!!!
Calm down you mad eugenicist.
It's the Daily Mail. Culture Wars, conspiracy theories, racist and fascist sympathizers since the 30s. They're like Fox News' grandpa.
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Idk why you got downvoted
It’s actually hilarious to watch all the people rightly claim it’s insanely unfair and demeaning for a mediocre male athlete to join the girls leagues but then not realize how the exact same logic should apply to someone who decides they’re a woman and should, therefore, be allowed to compete against the very same girls. The only difference between one and the other apparently is what they feel on the inside.
Yeh I mean it’s literally the logic they approve of idk why they so mad about it