The FA will allow boys and girls up to the age of 18 to play football in the same team. Currently, the sexes are split at 16.
“UEFA annually asks all European countries to declare their mixed football age limit,” says the FA’s national development manager for women’s football Rachel Pavlou to the BBC.
“All these countries feel strongly, like we do in England, that mixed football is an important additional choice to their female-only provision.”
But why is there any limit? There is no age limit in Denmark for men and women to play in the same team. The Dutch and Swiss segregate players by gender at 19. In Italy and Germany it’s 17.
We’re with the Danes on this one. An age limit is arbitrary. If you’re good enough and turn up on time, you’re in the team. Easy.
The FIFA website has a section on mixed-sex football.
It is worth noting that certain countries allow mixed-sex participation in football up to the age of 12, while others do not impose any category restrictions at all on mixed-sex football, which explains why football is so well-developed in these countries.
Allowing boys and girls to play together contributes to the emancipation of the two genders, improves tolerance and promotes mutual respect.
By playing alongside boys, girls gain a more positive image of themselves, increase their self-confidence and become more aware of their abilities.
How FIFA loves to politicise and puff its role in society. Girls get to be better people – less insecure and lacking in self-awareness – but the assured, magnanimous boys just get to play.
What utter balls. Sport should be blind to everything bar ability. How cruel, patronising and stupid to deny opportinuty to someone with enthusiasm. How pressurising to present boys as one-dimensional ideals.
FIFA stops just short of reminding boys that their role is to care for helpless females and that that football can keep a girl’s weight down.
Or keep their weight up, as the case may be…
The FA, however, if heading in the right direction, albeit in small steps.
Back in 2010, only under 11s were allowed to play in mix-sex teams. In 2011, the FA raised the age limit for mixed-sex teams to 13. The FA have applied a one-year increase for each of the seasons that have followed and now we’re up to 18.
That’s the age adults are free to make up their own minds, but the FA says you can’t. The kids are alright but adults need controlling.
That’s still better than in Wales, where the rule is:
Except in small sided matches involving players under the age of twelve years, no football match in which player of the opposite sex are involved shall be permitted to be played on any football ground within the jurisdiction of the Association, except that in those Area Associations, where there is no junior league available for girls… the age limit will increase to Under Sixteen.
In Scotland mixed-gender football is stopped at 15.
It’s time to end this nonsense that portrays girls as weak and boys as an ideal.
Lead photo: The Preston Ladies Football Club (formerly Dick, Kerr’s Ladies) represent England in a Women’s International match against France at Herne Hill, May 1925. Funds from the match went go to the Shipwrecked Mariners Society. English music hall star George Robey (1869 – 1954) kicks off.