Although closing WSL wouldn’t limit the growth of women’s football elsewhere in the world, it would raise the simple question of why any team outside of the favoured few in WSL should invest in their women’s side. What would be in it for them? Promotion would be off the table and with opportunities limited below the top tier, there would be little hope of any team outside that system holding onto their players and creating a dynamic, upwardly mobile team.
Any savvy businessperson, or indeed anyone with any degree of stock and heart in the women’s game, knows that more investment is needed. Being open to traditional and new sources of investment, rather than rigidly trying to follow a men’s football template — especially one that simply mirrors the biggest teams — is how the game can thrive.
In the last year we’ve seen community club Lewes FC partner with Xero — who have since gone on to sponsor the England women’s national team — with a view to increasing the financial health of clubs around the country. Or in a very different way, we’ve seen the founding of Angel City, an NWSL expansion side co-owned by some of the USA’s sporting and celebrity elite from Sarena Williams to Natalie Portman as well as some 14 former U.S. women’s internationals.
With men’s football so firmly stuck in a mould, the onus is on women’s football to be brave enough to forge its own path rather than repeating what’s already been done.
Ultimately, Levy’s “idea” of closing off the WSL smacks of the same arrogance and entitlement that led to some of the richest teams in the world thinking they deserved their own European Super League regardless of how their teams actually performed on the pitch.
