Women’s World Cup: From China with Love
By: Jan | September 21st, 2007
The FIFA Women’s World Cup in China is in the difficult position, where it has to overcome negative prejudices towards women’s football as well as broadcast unfriendly match schedules for the European and American market. Let alone the impossible task to deviate our attention from the domestic leagues, the Champions League and Jose Mourinho. So a little spying scandal might come in handy to generate some publicity.
Denmark and New Zealand, who were both drawn to the same group as hosts China, publicly protested that they had been spied upon during closed training and tactical sessions. New Zealand claim that they had been monitored since their training camp in Auckland, while Denmark’s players caught two men behind a two-way mirror, trying to videotape a tactical meeting in the team’s hotel in Wuhan. This might prove that women’s football has finally progressed to a level, where stakes are high enough to make such a case of espionage plausible, as the Guardian’s Harry Pearson suggests. Now, all that is left to equal the men’s game is a rise in bad sportsmanship, ranging from dives to faking injuries.
But the FIFA isn’t ready yet, to grant the women a proper scandal. They concluded that there is no evidence that the spying is connected to any of the other teams in the tournament. The FIFA will leave it to the Chinese authorities to handle the case and find out who could be interested in surveilling people in a totalitarian regime.
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