Karren Brady: Twenty years on from Bend It Like Beckham women’s football is making its own legends

THE FILM Bend it Like Beckham was of historic importance to English football.

It left its mark as surely as a muddy boot on a goalpost.

Two decades ago it told the story of “Jess” Bhamra, a Manchester United-loving young girl from a traditional Sikh family who plays football against her parents’ wishes, highlighting misogyny in sport.

It stirred women’s interest in our game — so much so that, 20 years after the film’s release in April 2002, 3.4million women now play football, as reported by the FA.

The growth is phenomenal.

The Bend It phenomenon freed women’s imagination in a way perhaps that The Beatles did 40 years earlier, although the effects were very different.

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Instead of screaming hysteria, girls were drawn to team competition, to companionship, to fitness and to the skills that came as easily to them as to the boys.

The FA and other agencies, driven by the sudden, overwhelming interest at schools and in classes run by good coaches, are doing an exceptional job.

A few males may still laugh at women playing what they call “our game” and that prejudice lingers among men who should know better.

Kenny Shiels, the Northern Ireland women’s team coach, only this week described women footballers as “more emotional” than men — a  comment made even more absurd by Atletico Madrid’s antics against Manchester City on Wednesday.

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Leading clubs having gradually, even grudgingly, accepted they have a major part to play in the advancement of the women’s game. They are now as switched on to it as floodlights.

At the moment this is a costly business. I do not know of a single WSL team that breaks even, let alone makes money, but it’s not always about money.

At West Ham we call ourselves United Women and that’s just perfect. Unity is all.

There are rewards, too. We reached the final of the Women’s FA Cup three years ago and today we are in the televised semi-final against City.

Professional football is broadening all the time and if women have had difficulties in being taken seriously, the crowd prejudice against ethnic players was, and sometimes still is, shocking. Bend It was also important because the star is Sikh. This made it a double coup.

In the five years after Bend It was first shown, the percentage of black, Asian and minority ethnic professionals in England rose from 22 per cent to 33 per cent and today the figure stands at 50 per cent.

However, there are only ten British Asians who represent no less than 7.5 per cent of the population.

That’s one great big hole in the canvas. The other is the lack of black managers.

I am sure this will change. It is beginning to among women because several clubs have appointed top managers in women’s football.

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One of them, Emma Hayes, has won four championships, four FA Cups, been runner-up in the Champions League and been voted FIFA Best Coach while at Chelsea.

Women’s football is making its own modern legends. I hope the next 20 years progress as much as the last 20.

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk