RESPECT

That's what women's football demands more than anything. Its status has grown exponentially during FourFourTwo's lifetime, but finally the long and arduous battle for recognition is starting to pay dividends

- Jessy Parker Humphreys

On a Sunday afternoon in April 1994, just 1,674 hardy souls watched Doncaster Belles defeat Knowsley United in the FA Women’s Cup final at Scunthorpe’s Glanford Park. Fast forward to May 2024, and 76,082 packed into Wembley as Manchester United beat Tottenham in the showpiece three decades on.

It’s hard to think of any area of football that’s changed as immeasurably as the women’s game since FourFourTwo launched 30 years ago. It was almost an entirely amateur world sport. The World Cup was just three years old and even then, FIFA didn’t allow it to be called as such – instead, 1991’s maiden event bore the following name: 1st FIFA World Championship for Women’s Football for the M&M’s Cup. Catchy.

Today, there are multiple professional leagues across the world, with professional teams in England as low as the third tier of the game. International and domestic matches regularly draw crowds of more than 50,000. The pace of change has at times been glacial, and there’s still a long way to go to overcome the harm caused by the bans that kneecapped the game’s growth in the 20th century – between 1921 and 1971, the FA banned women’s football from all affiliated grounds, relegating the sport to park pitches. Registered referees were prevented from officiating matches.

Progress since has been heartening. The 1990s brought a seismic shift, as national governing bodies began to take back control of women’s football. As bans were initially lifted across the world – Germany, France and Brazil all imposed similar directives – independent organisations had governed the women’s game. In England, that was the Women’s Football Association, who in 1991 began a 24-team national league. However, two years later they voted to be taken over by the Football Association – although the Women’s FA Cup had commenced in the 1970s, the 1994 final was the first to be fully organised by the FA.