I don't think that Blatter would challenge male footballers to produce a barnstorming competition to the same degree. It's taken as a given that whatever type of competition they produce, whether it be a memorable one like WC2014 or a relatively uninspiring one like EURO 2004, where no team, save eventual winners Greece seemed to play to their true potential; it's just what we get, and we can take it or leave it; like it, or wait until the next one. It's almost as if he's threatening to curb funding or cancel future competitions for the international women's game unless they pass his arbitrary standard of excitement. This is sexism, pure and simple.
But what else can you expect from the cringeworthily self-appointed "Godfather"of women's football, who once voiced the idea that women's football should broaden its appeal by making the players wear "tighter shorts"? Screw you, Blatter. The sooner we get shot of him and bring in someone more progressive, the better. You know, someone who stops telling women what to do and lets them express themselves. Actually, whatever happens at WWC15 will just have to do. There is no guarantee that it will be an exciting or memorable competition. But the high standards of the teams this time and more competitive leagues around the world suggest it will be excellent. Let's hope so.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2473483-sepp-blatter-had-no-idea-who-poty-finalist-alex-morgan-was-at-ceremony-in-2012
Unbelievably, Blatter still has his ardent defenders. People who think it's OK and not indicative of corruption AT ALL for the same man to be in charge of a large multinational organisation for 17 YEARS. People who will argue that it was actually OK for him not to recognise Alex Morgan, the most recognisable face of US women's soccer, star striker and all-round international superstar with 1.6 million Twitter followers. Let's go over some of their Blatter apologetics. So yes there may have been an element of "do you know who I am" here, but she was probably expecting some sort of recognition from Blatter. Even her bikini modelling is brought up.
"Oh look at the attention whore! That's why she's known - as a babe not a footballer".
Let's get this straight - that has nothing to do with football. Beckham was fine for all his extra-curricular activities.
"But she has not won anything". Irrelevant- as the non-recognition was at an event for Player of the Year in 2012 in which she was one of the finalists .
But even if we accept all the Blatter apologetics' points, we're left with it simply being Blatter's job to know the most influential people in football. It's clear where his definition of influence lies (i.e. those who'll help him continue his reign) if he can't be bothered to find out who Alex Morgan is.
I'm sorry but Blatter is just someone who sees absolutely no obligation on himself to do anything to help grow his sport for his half the world's population. However, he's perfectly OK to allow a pretty ridiculous selection for a host of the 2020 world cup which will have it's final around Christmas time because of the heat! And, by extension, OK for mistreated workers to die slaving away in ridiculous heat with no worker's rights to protect them.
------
FIFA16 game to feature WoSo players for first time
I had no interest in getting a FIFA game, but now, despite FIFA's current worries, I do.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/32915815
Needless to say, the critics were out in their droves taking to social media to decry this outrage. Most arguments are not worthy of mentioning, but I will anyway, as there are a few unnecessary responses from advocates of WoSo that I'd like to look at. For example, the point was made that a player of the game could lose their star striker for 9 months if she got pregnant. The response to this was that actually women can play on for a while into their pregnancy and come back quite quickly after giving birth, so actually the time out was only about seven months. Excuse me? That has not tackled the principle of the objection, just shortened the length of the problem to 7 months not 9.
It's better to examine the philosophical angle the point is coming from than argue its factual content. The issue of pregnancy is routinely dealt with within WoSo. It is actually quite rare. Of the 22 woman England World Cup squad, only 2 players have any children. Believe it or not, most of the top players who are serious about their careers either have their children before they become (semi) professional, or after they've retired. This is an issue of female bodily autonomy - women rightly have the ability to decide when this huge change to their lives occurs, if it does at all. We now have family planning, contraception and even abortion as options to allow women to have autonomy. This is very important, and I question the person who made this point's respect for female bodily autonomy if he doesn't think that it is women and not men that should control when women become pregnant.
There are exceptions to footballers not becoming pregnant during their career, notably players like England's Katie Chapman, but these can be managed within the framework of most teams. Pregnant players should be given all the support they need, and be able to fulfil alternative roles during their time away, but it should be made clear that a quick return to the team is not guaranteed unless they can make it on merit. It may seem harsh, but at the end of the day a player goes and gets pregnant during the height of their career, then they will have to deal with those consequences. For a manager (or a player of FIFA) this should simply be seen as an extra challenge in terms of managing your personnel. Most gamers revel at the thought of extra challenges, and do not offer them as an excuse not to participate. At most, it is another reason why WoSo requires a different support structure, and possibly why wages for players will forever remain at slightly depressed levels compared to the men's game.
Quick responses to other arguments.
We didn't want women we wanted better reliability/stability and more fun!
You'll always want more reliability/stability and more fun no matter what new features are introduced. You could say the same if they improved the game's visuals with a new graphics engine. It's an irrelevant point.
Resources could have been better spent elsewhere!
Better for who? And again, this argument could be made for any change they decided to make that you didn't agree with. In fact, the game makers have massive resources available for development, with FIFA football's huge sales, and have had for years. This is demonstrated by the way they scan in each player's likenesses into the game and do movement tracking models. Such luxuries could be easily omitted if resources were the limiting factor to development.
Let me say that it was pretty ridiculous to not have the option of female players and teams in a football game. Whether or not there was much demand for it (and I'm not going to burden myself by claiming that there was much demand) if there was any demand at all, then the first developer to introduce it was going to get at least a small advantage in content, props for equality and the media interest that goes with it. These things are worth it alone. Maybe we could excuse smaller developers who'd have to put resources into new character models for not getting on WoSo in their games sooner.
The FIFA developers have a lot of resources though, so have no such excuses. But the FIFA franchise still has issues - why do all the players have to be scanned in? I know it's standard for the male stars, but some brevity would be acceptable in the interests of getting things moving. This seems to me to be an excuse for a slow rate of inclusion for WoSo. Develop some generic models with 4 or 5 faces and hairstyles etc. and just put out a fully featured game with the players names and teams, or even non-names (remember Ryan Goggs?) with altered team names if they can't get the licences / rights or whatever to use the official ones. And footie management games? No excuse for no WoSo really, especially if they had no or limited viewable match engines.
No comments:
Post a Comment