NZME’s world-renowned football blog Goalmouth Scramble is back. Our rotating stable of football writers are offering daily hot takes on all the action from the World Cup in Qatar. Today, Bonnie Jansen looks at the appointment of an all-female refereeing team.
OPINION:
From the moment Qatar was handed the hostingrights for the 2022 Football World Cup, fundamental questions have arisen about the message this sent to the world.
The biggest sporting code on the planet has been commercialised and celebrated in a nation with entrenched inequality for women and LGBTQ+ communities.
There’s been an abundance of controversy at Fifa’s World Cup, perhaps more than any World Cup to date — the appalling fatalities among migrant workers and the protests for women’s rights in Iran have been centre stage.
But where Fifa made a very poor decision in handing the hosting rights to Qatar, they’ve made a game-changing one taking effect on Friday morning. For the first time in World Cup history, an all-female lineup will officiate a match, with three women running the Group E encounter between Germany and Costa Rica.
Whether it’s a display of feminism or a token gesture, it hardly matters. For the world’s biggest event to make this call, is a ground-breaking step in the right direction.
French referee Stephanie Frappart will make history in the crucial Group E encounter as she leads two assistant referees, Neuza Back of Brazil and Karen Díaz Medina of Mexico. It’s the second time in the tournament that Frappart has smashed through the glass ceiling after she was the fourth official in the Group C Mexico-Poland clash.
It’s not about gender — Frappart has rightly earned her spot after refereeing several high-profile matches during her career. In 2019, she refereed the UEFA Super Cup between Liverpool and Chelsea and the Women’s World Cup Final between the USA and the Netherlands. In 2020, she became the first woman to referee a UEFA Champions League match between Juventus and Dynamo Kyiv.
Referee Stephanie Frappart. Photo / AP
Costa Rica, needing three points against Germany to keep their knockout stage hopes alive, are excited to be a part of history. Coach Luis Fernando Suarez believes the milestone appointment at a men’s World Cup is a significant step ahead for the “very sexist” world of football.
“I admire everything that women have conquered and I like that they want to keep on conquering things,” Suarez said. “This is one other step ahead, which speaks volumes of this lady, of her dedication of doing issues.”
On progressive issues of politics and society, players have pushed and challenged Fifa throughout this tournament, shining a light on women’s rights and equality when the governing body failed to do so. In their opening matches, England and Germany both intended to wear “One Love” rainbow armbands, showcasing support for LQBTQ+ communities.
However, Fifa stopped them from doing so, threatening players with sanctions during the match out of concern the message would clash with Qatari values. So instead players hid the armbands under their shirts. In their pre-match team photo, Germany covered their mouths, protesting against Fifa.
Iranian players did not sing their national anthem in the opening match, a move widely seen as supporting the protests on the streets of their homeland.
These might seem like small gestures, but actions like these have seldom been seen at World Cups through the decades.
In a weird way, Qatar’s World Cup could be doing a better job of highlighting calls for basic human rights than any of the tournaments that came before.
