Now the women are getting more beautiful, putting on make-up. They go in the field in an elegant manner. Women’s football used to copy men’s football. Even the jersey model, it was more masculine. We used to dress the girls as boys. So the team lacked a spirit of elegance, femininity. Now the shorts are a bit shorter, the hair styles are more done up. It’s not a woman dressed as a man.
The above quotes are the sort of cringe inducing comments that show up every now and again that help to undermine the women's game. What makes it all the worse, is that these come from Marco Aurelio Cunha, the head of co-ordination for women’s football in Brazil. That is the man who's job it is to promote the game. When you have someone like that in charge of developing women's football it is no wonder that it takes such a back seat to the man's game in football mad Brazil.
The quotes are shockingly similar to Sepp Blatter's famous comments from 2004 where he suggested that game might benefit from the players wearing tighter shorts. It seems that there hasn't been much progress in the last decade.
In other news from the Women's World Cup, Brazilian legend, Marta, pulled off this delightful bit of sill against Spain the other night.
