
The Case of FCK Women
Publicerad: 2025-04-21A mere 8 months ago, the launch of FC Copenhagen Women put a defibrillator to the heart of Danish women’s football, setting national attendance records and new standards for women-centered commercial approaches, all while delivering the results to match. Arena71 sat down with Rebecca Steele, Head of Women’s Football in FC Copenhagen, to talk about how risk-taking and solicitude has served as a guiding light in the launch of the women’s side of ‘the biggest club in Scandinavia’.
It might be too arrogant to suggest that the launch of FC Copenhagen Women (FCK Women) – the club of the Danish capital and ‘the biggest club in Scandinavia – a mere 8 months ago lit a fire under Danish women’s football. Afterall, other clubs like Brøndby IF Women and independent women’s club Fortuna Hjørring have been grinding in the best Danish league for decades, winning championship after championship and even reaching Champions League quarter- and semi-finals. In comparison, one of the two founding clubs of FCK, Kjøbenhavns Boldklub (KB), has historically been a ‘men only’ zone and didn’t offer football for girls until 2018, a solid 142 years after KB was founded. Also, FCK Women’s beginnings are far from conducive to taking on arrogant airs, starting their journey in the third tier last August after having fused with and taken over the spot of independent women’s club FC Damsø.

However, there’s no denying that in the brief life span of the team, FCK Women have created a new blueprint for what is possible in Danish women’s football and beyond. Through taking risks by employing first-of-its-kind – in Denmark or anywhere – commercial approaches with the purpose of building a unique women’s team brand identity that caters to an often overlooked female fan base, FCK women are also proving that, tended to properly, women’s football can attract both huge crowds and big investments. This vision goes beyond the pitch, the team behind the FCK Women pushing for female empowerment and making football more inclusive for women. On the pitch, the ambitions are equally big: The long-term goal is to win Danish championships and compete in Champions League.
On the commercial side, as one of very few clubs in the world with both a men’s and a women’s side, FCK Women and club sponsor adidas decided to create bespoke home and away kits for the team.
Let’s review those first 8 whirlwind months: On the commercial side, as one of very few clubs in the world with both a men’s and a women’s side, FCK Women and club sponsor adidas decided to create bespoke home and away kits for the team. Think of teams like Chelsea F.C. Women and Manchester City Ladies of the English Women’s Super League; all playing in kits originally manufactured with their globally famous male counterparts in mind, the jerseys carrying sponsors who signed up to support these men’s sides.
So far, the initiative has been quite the slam dunk on all parameters; more than 2,000 jerseys have sold, a number similar to what a men’s club in the bottom of the Danish top tier will sell, and notable players have been eager to get on board: The Unisport flagship store, the holy grail of football jerseys in Copenhagen, now carries both jerseys, making it their first time ever to sell third-tier team jerseys. And no other than Emily, or rather Lily Collins, the lead in the hugely popular Netflix show ‘Emily in Paris’, and Copenhagen home owner, showed up to lend her stardust and 29 million followers for the jersey launch in August last year.

In another commercial rarity for a women’s team affiliated with a men’s team, a lifestyle collection was launched exclusively for FCK Women in collaboration with strategic and community partner and leisurewear brand Planet NUSA. The brand is female-founded and community-driven – they organize events like boot camps and community runs – and have gained a level of popularity that makes people refer to NUSA as a ‘Copenhagen cool girl’ brand. To give a sense of the level of innovation this partnership presents: World-renowned Italian club AC Milan launched their first ever women’s lifestyle collection this spring, but not in collaboration with any long term partner for the women’s team.
The risk-taking paid off. The collection generated long lines in front of the FCK fan shop – historically known to have a very limited selection of styles for women – upon the first release in November, and several styles sold out instantly. A new collection has just been released, and both have already trickled down into the stands of Vanløse Stadium, the home ground for FCK Women, Parken, the home ground for FCK, and the streets of Copenhagen. Look out for a logo depicting a planetary ring orbiting the most dominant part of the FCK logo, a lion’s head.
A record crowd of 5,156 spectators came to lend their support for FCK Women’s first match ever in August 2024. Keep in mind, FCK Women play in the third tier.
When it comes to factors surrounding the matches themselves, a record crowd of 5,156 spectators came to lend their support for FCK Women’s first match ever in August 2024. Maybe more, the tellers allegedly lost count because of the overwhelming interest. That is a national record for a match between two Danish women’s teams. Keep in mind, FCK Women play in the third tier. The record in the 44 year long history of the best Danish women’s league is 2,200, while the average attendance in the fall 2024 for that same league was 363. The attendance for FCK Women’s matches after their debut match has kept a steady level, now averaging around 1,000.

All this is well and good, but if the results on the pitch don’t follow suit, all these commercial initiatives, celebrity endorsements and record crowds might feel a bit hollow. However, FCK Women came out guns blazing in the fall, conquering the league in undefeated manner. Now they are playing for promotion, still undefeated two matches in. For the cup tournament, the team came close to creating a true sensation. Had they not lost out to Fortuna Hjørring in the second leg of the semi-final in extra time a couple of days ago, they would have been the first third tier team in the history of the tournament to reach a final. And again, all this is in their first season.
Arguments for and against FCK Women
It might be tempting to make the case that the success of FCK Women is, at least in part, due to privilege and circumstance. Don’t they have endless funding? Didn’t they just put together a roster of players that are way too good for the third tier? Didn’t they just establish a women’s team because they were forced to by the UEFA demand that clubs with ambitions of playing in European tournaments must launch a women’s team by the 2024-25 season? And doesn’t it make sense that they would draw record crowds, standing on the shoulders of such a huge brand and team as FCK? For context, FCK has been dominant on the national stage with 15 championships since their launch in 1992, and is by far the most successful Scandinavian team overall internationally with continuous, impressive Champions League runs, most recently reaching the round of 16 for the 23/24 season. This success translates to the financial statements; FCK is as of March 2025 worth €77 million, making them the most valuable club in Scandinavia.
It might be tempting to make the case that the success of FCK Women is, at least in part, due to privilege and circumstance. Don’t they have endless funding? Didn’t they just put together a roster of players that are way too good for the third tier?
The answers to those questions are: yes, but no. In actuality, only a few of the FCK Women players have played league football prior to joining FCK Women, and only a few are on contract. In terms of funding, yes, FCK Women has attracted huge sponsors that might be difficult to lock in if you only had the ‘women’ and not the F, C and K in your name. Besides adidas, Danish global beer brand Carlsberg, FCKs long-term sponsor, came on board for the launch of the team, while long-term FCK partner Audi as well as energy company Andel Energi have since joined, serving as shorts and front-of-shirt sponsor, respectively, for the women’s team. Andel Energi also vouches to provide Parken, the men’s home ground, with renewable energy from solar power plants. FCK Women are now backed by investments worth 10 million DKK (€1,34 million), which is the single largest investment in Danish women’s football ever. However, FCK Women has been founded as an independent subsidiary company (in a quaint coincidence, you call that a ‘daughter company’ in Danish) to FCK. This means that FCK Women work independently of FCK in terms of management, operations, finances and legal structure. And for the UEFA demands? FCK already met the so far porously worded demands through their partnering clubs and the children and youth activities offered to girls in KB.

In other words, while some of these objections might be valid, they are not necessarily true. Without dismissing the level of attention that a launch of an FCK women’s team will always receive, I can’t help but at least briefly, but maybe misguided, consider whether the age-old semantic strategy summed up in the title of the Danish book Argumenter imod kvinder (Arguments Against Women, ed.) by Birgitte Possing is also at play. The book dissects how any push towards gender equality has historically been met with more or less compelling arguments against women advancing anywhere. The story of women’s football is ripe with examples. In England in 1921, women were barred from playing football because doctors deemed the sport to be damaging to the fertility. The ban lasted a solid 50 years.
In actuality, we all know from men’s football that deep pockets don’t equal success on the pitch. Also, women’s football may still be considered a risky or unappealing investment for many sponsors and partners. Then there’s the club’s approach itself. Would FCK make the women’s team a priority in earnest? And finally, there’s the pressure on the players to perform well for a huge club and brand, even though most of them had never played in front of a crowd bigger than the combined number of their parents and friends, and met each other for the first time briefly before their first match.
“Slap UNIBET on the jersey and call it a day”
In this intricate web of myths and truths, advantages and challenges, you sometimes forget that the team behind FCK Women still had agency and made certain choices that shaped the way their story has played out so far, regardless of whether they are being given the credit or not. They could just as easily have decided to play it safe: not attach a gender equality agenda to the project, put the women’s team in the men’s kit, slap ‘UNIBET’, the men’s main sponsor, on the front of the jersey and call it at day. It certainly would be less work for everybody. Or, worse, these strategic choices could have failed miserably if not handled with care. But instead, they chose to see this launch as an opportunity to do their homework and pioneer the landscape of Danish football in the hopes that they might create an entirely new space for women footballers and fans to exist in:
“From day one, our mantra has been to take risks, be meticulous in everything we do and approach things differently than what we’ve seen other teams around Europe do. Whether it’s our kits or our partnerships”, says Rebecca Palmberg Steele, head of Women’s Football in FC Copenhagen. Steele has agreed to sit down with Arena71 to talk about these first whirlwind months of spearheading FCK Women. We are sitting in a conference room in Parken, with a view of the lush park Fælledparken on one side and a view of the equally lush pitch on the other. “I was a bit worried that I would start taking this view for granted at some point”, Steele says while we are facing the pitch before the interview, “but then I noticed that there’s always someone tending to the pitch one way or another. It’s a full-time occupation”. On my end, there’s a certain beauty to the fact that it was the launch of the FCK Women’s team that led me to the FCK headquarters, after years of me (happily) supporting the men’s team from those loyal, worn-out red plastic chairs engulfing the pitch.
We decided to look at data and surveys to really understand who our target audience is. Who watches women’s football, and who are we, a women’s club in the Danish capital, trying to reach? It was pivotal to us to not become a poor imitation of a men’s team.
Steele continues: “In clubs around Europe the approach has largely been, ‘okay, we’ve launched this women’s team, let’s put them in the men’s kits, and then let’s hope for the best when it comes to reaching audiences.’ Instead, we decided to look at data and surveys to really understand who our target audience is. Who watches women’s football, and who are we, a women’s club in the Danish capital, trying to reach? It was pivotal to us to not become a poor imitation of a men’s team.”

What did the data show?
“The common thread was that women are looking for a game experience based in a sense of community. They want to feel that they are part of something, a movement, whereas with fans of men’s football, they tend to focus more exclusively on the game itself. It’s a line I’m a bit careful with, though. I always make sure to communicate that we are aware of that line, because, football comes first, but we’re also committed to cultivating everything around the matches: the community, the city, the movement around advancing women’s football and women”.
I walked that same line when preparing for this interview. FCK Women were playing their cup quarter-final on March 8, International Women’s Day, where they would also debut their front-of-shirt sponsor Andel Energi who champions green energy. What a happy coincidence, I thought, while I excitedly kept circling ’value-based’ in my notes; it was a narrative that fit like a goalkeeper’s glove with one of the biggest transformations that the growth in women’s football has brought with it: women’s teams partnering with (typically women-owned) businesses with an activist edge and ‘a conscience’, whose long-term strategy is in the realm of promoting gender equality, inclusivity and social responsibility.
At the same time, my incessant circling could also double as a noose. It felt a bit like expecting the players to carry the weight of the world, like Atlas, while they already had plenty of things to tend to at the actual pitch as athletes trying to win a match. While there are few bad things to say about how women’s football seem to be bringing softer and kinder values to the world of football, it seemed like quite the balancing act to, in certain cases, avoid reinforcing the still prevalent societal discourse of women being expected to carry the responsibility for the actions of others.
Precisely in the case of celebrating International Women’s Day, a lot of people, understandably, came to me and said, ‘we should do something’. It seemed like such an obvious thing to do for us. But I ended up deciding that, no, just this Saturday, at 3pm, it’s about winning an important cup match.
“Precisely in the case of celebrating International Women’s Day, a lot of people, understandably, came to me and said, ‘we should do something’. It seemed like such an obvious thing to do for us. But I ended up deciding that, no, just this Saturday, at 3pm, it’s about winning an important cup match. I ultimately found the balance in deciding that, in this case, we nurture that wider conversation before and after the match. Because we are part of that conversation”.
And if bummed out that IWD was not overtly celebrated in Vanløse that day, just remember the words of journalist Suzy Wrack from her 2022 book A Woman’s Game: “The mere act of playing football [for women] is unequivocally a feminist one”.
“A startup in a privileged setting”
You were hired as part of the launch of FCK Women back in February 2023, which means that becoming part of FCK was new to you too. How was that?
“Initially I didn’t know what to expect. Would I be placed in a corner somewhere by myself, would women’s football be a priority in earnest here? But I was blown away by the support and interest from my colleagues. From day one, the CEO (Jacob Lauesen, ed.) has been heavily involved, and people have been so invested in and excited by the whole project.”
How would you then describe these first 8 months after launching FCK Women?
“It’s been a lot of things. It has been overwhelming when you look at it from the perspective of the immense interest the project received from day one. From a personal perspective it was overwhelming too; When I showed up for the first day of work, I had a blank page in front of me, and then I could just start filling that blank page. It is a different assignment to build something from the ground up than it is for clubs like Brøndby IF and Fortuna Hjørring who already have a solid foundation that they can then adjust. But that’s also a really privileged position to be in, especially when we’re also standing on the shoulders of the biggest club in Scandinavia. I like to describe FCK Women as a startup in a privileged setting”.
So being part of FCK has its advantages and challenges?
“Yes, balancing external expectations has been challenging. As soon as FCK is part of your name, people will have certain assumptions about you. But right now, we are a third-tier team to the bone. Which has kind of been a gift, even though I initially would have preferred starting out in the best league. But we want to build this team organically and in a sustainable fashion and not build castles in the sky the way we sometimes see in clubs around Europe where huge investments are pumped into teams, who are then at higher risk of collapsing early on. Starting out in the third tier provides us with that opportunity to lay the groundwork in our own time. The players are not full-time professionals at all, they have day jobs, and only a few of them are under contract. A lot of people expect us to have loads of funding that we just keep throwing into the project. We don’t. Managing those expectations from the outside versus the reality of how we run the team in-house is a challenge.”
I was not going to run a team where we had to figuratively ‘go ask dad for money’. We want to make our own money. But we made the announcement with a trembling voice, as there were no profitable women’s teams in Europe we could use as a blueprint at the time.
Can you elaborate on the financial side of FCK Women?
“Most Danish teams exist under the header of ‘one club’. This model has clear benefits, for sure. But I was adamant that we built the women’s team as a business that wasn’t dependent on moving money from the men’s team to us all the time. So the women’s team work as an independent subsidiary company to FC Copenhagen L/P. It’s basically another way of saying that, in a broader perspective, we want to help women become financially independent. I was not going to run a team where we had to figuratively ‘go ask dad for money’. We want to make our own money. But we made the announcement with a trembling voice, as there were no profitable women’s teams in Europe we could use as a blueprint at the time. FC Barcelona’s women’ team are starting to make a profit now, and I do think that in 5-10 years’ time, we and other teams will get there. But that is dependent on us daring to take those risks and venture into the unknown”.
Bespoke women’s kits – a historical first
Your decision to create a bespoke home and away kit for FCK Women is one example of how you rewrote the script of what is ‘the norm’ with women’s teams affiliated with a men’s club. What were your thoughts on this decision?
“A young woman needs to be able to see herself in the identity of the brand. That gets a whole lot easier if there’s an actual kit and a visual identity that’s made for her. Our solution was to keep the FCK logo and the name, and the white and blue color of the men’s kits, and then add an extra color (purple for the away kit, ed.). In this way, we uphold a ‘one-club mentality’ philosophy while creating an identity around a women’s team that exists independently from the men’s team. One that progressive Copenhageners is able to identify with.”


In an interview a while back, FCKs commercial director, Mikkel Grove Lindsted, said that FCK Women were advised not to make these bespoke kits. Why was that?
“Well, it was a long process, and we discussed it for a long time, but we ended up again making the ‘bolder’ choice. Most of the people we spoke to wanted to put the women’s team in the same kit as the men. ‘You’re one club, you need the same identity’. And there’s a lot of merit to that viewpoint, but in the end, we felt that bespoke kits were crucial if we wanted to create a strong brand around the women’s team and commercialize it in a new way. We like to use the Coca-Cola – Cola Zero analogy to explain our approach: The men’s and the women’s teams are ‘from the same cloth’, everyone knows that, but they’re also different.”
Rebecca Steele adds: “Funnily enough, we had people in-house saying that we weren’t being bold enough. They wanted to take it much further with the design. It just goes to show what a balancing act every decision has been”.
We learned that these young, progressive Copenhageners are really in tune with and drawn to ‘the bigger picture’. They know it’s about football, but they also know that it’s about more than football.
Looking back, are you happy you made that decision?
“Yes! I feel like we achieved exactly what we hoped for. Our target audience has really embraced the kits. We learned that these young, progressive Copenhageners are really in tune with and drawn to ‘the bigger picture’. They know it’s about football, but they also know that it’s about more than football. Also, we came on the scene at a time where football jerseys have become fashion; you see them everywhere in Copenhagen these days, so people were ready for it in this urban context”.

An FC Copenhagen cool girl collab
Planet NUSA just dropped its second FCK Women lifestyle collection this March. Is the assumption that this has been a successful partnership, correct?
“Yes, those collections are selling like hotcakes. We have long lines in front of the FCK fan shop every time a drop has launched. And it is in large part due to Planet NUSA already having an established relationship with the young, community-centered Copenhagen crowd that we wanted to reach as well. It really was a match made in heaven, but not an easy deal to secure, because there’s an overlap in terms of rights between adidas, our kit partner, and Planet NUSA who, at the end of the day, is also a sports brand.”

Yes, it’s not often that teams sponsored by adidas are simultaneously able to partner with other sports or leisurewear brands. How did you manage to land that deal anyway?
“True, this is the first time adidas has agreed to anything like this. But when we shared our reasoning for why we thought this partnership with Planet NUSA would be a good idea, they wanted to play along, challenge the way things had been done in the past and be part of a bigger agenda. And it has worked out great. The agreement is very clear: The players wear adidas on the pitch and during the games, and then we offer the Planet NUSA collections for off the pitch.”
The women’s football boom heard around the world
FCK Women launched smack in the middle of a historic commercial, financial and popularity boom in women’s football globally; the record-shattering Women’s World Cup in 2023 drew an average crowd of 30,000 per game. This March, 57,000 spectators gathered to watch Hamburger SV Women lose out in extra time to Bremen Women in the German cup semi-final. Last year, American Angel City was valued at $250 million, making the L.A.-based team the highest valued women’s football team in the world. According to Deloitte, women’s football in Europe alone is expected to experience a sixfold increase in commercial value over the next decade, reaching an annual value of €686 million by 2033. England is moving particularly fast on the commercial side: We now see England captain Leah Williamson fronting campaigns next to Arsenal superstar and England national Declan Rice for New York cult fashion brand Aimé Leon Dore.
Even in Denmark, where the conditions for women’s club football have been known to be sub-par – whether in terms of pay, investments, media coverage, drawing a crowd, being a priority – times are finally changing: A groundbreaking standard contract securing a minimum wage for female footballers in Denmark became effective starting 2025, while Brøndby IF made history a couple of months ago by becoming the first Danish club to introduce a full-time professional setup for their women’s team. And just this March, national broadcaster and streaming service TV 2 announced they had secured the rights to Gjensidige Kvindeliga, the best women’s league in Denmark, up until 2031. That level of media exposure is historic. As of now, you can only dig up Kvindeliga matches by streaming them from the league’s own website.
I know it might sound arrogant, because we clocked in so late in the game, and people from clubs all around Denmark have put so much effort and love into growing the women’s game for years. But we can contribute with having a brand, knowhow and resources that might help push Danish women’s football forward.
FCK Women were launched right in the middle of a global boom in women’s football, and Denmark is starting to make moves too. Where is FCK Women hoping to fit in that context nationally and internationally?
“Women’s football is like a train that has slowly and steadily been charging ahead for some years, and then suddenly, it all exploded and we are seeing the whole eco-system just kicking into gear. We especially see it in the big leagues, England, Spain, Germany, Italy. Arsenal Women will have 35,000 spectators show up to their home games, the NWSL in the US is charging the course in many aspects. Danish women’s football has been too slow to get on that train, but we’re hoping that FCK Women can help push the development in Danish football forward. I know it might sound arrogant, because we clocked in so late in the game, and people from clubs all around Denmark have put so much effort and love into growing the women’s game for years. But we can contribute with having a brand, knowhow and resources that might help push Danish women’s football forward. To be clear, a team like FC Nordsjælland (Danish double winners of the 23/24 season) is doing an amazing job on all levels. Performance-wise alone they are probably 5 years ahead of us. But with a little bit of time, we would like to be part of pushing things forward too.”
The Swedish assist
FCK Women are already taking innovative steps to strengthen Danish women’s football by making it a Scandinavian matter: They have entered into a unique cross-border partnership with Swedish FC Rosengård from Malmø a short car ride from Copenhagen. The partnership aims at strengthening women’s football and talent development in the region of Oresund.
When we started out with FCK women, not a whole lot of people in-house knew much about building a women’s team that could perform at top level. We wanted to draw inspiration from the best, which FC Rosengård truly is in a Scandinavian context.

FC Rosengård is a stable in Swedish women’s football, having won no less than 14 national championships and reached multiple Champions League quarterfinals and one semi-final. What can you tell me about this partnership?
“When we started out with FCK women, not a whole lot of people in-house knew much about building a women’s team that could perform at top level. We wanted to draw inspiration from the best, which FC Rosengård truly is in a Scandinavian context. They are miles ahead of us, not only when it comes to their results on the pitch, but also when it comes to building a social profile. They do so much for their surrounding community (the club has secured employment for over 3,000 young people from Malmø, ed.). Also, it’s so close by. It literally takes me less time to get to Malmø from where I live (Amager where the bridge from Denmark to Sweden connects) than to Parken.”

In general, Sweden has excelled within women’s football for decades, whether on club or national level, and in the current boom, they are keeping up with top women’s football countries like England and Spain. Back in 2021, 18,500 spectators showed up to watch the Stockholm derby between Hammarby IF women and AIK Women. In the Champions League, Sweden maintains an impressive presence, usually with one or more team competing in the group stages, the home games attracting crowds of above 10,000. On a national level, Sweden drew an average home crowd of around 16,000 for their three EURO 2025 qualifying matches, while Denmark only had an average home crowd attendance of around 3,500. On the pitch, Sweden has secured World Cup bronze medals on four occasions, most recently in 2023, and won the Champions League title twice, a title never won by a Danish team.
“In general, both Sweden and Norway are way ahead of us when it comes to women’s football. Denmark has lost a lot of players to Swedish and Norwegian clubs because you could just travel across the waters and play in a full-time professional league. It has really drained Danish women’s football, and I think we’ll pay the price in the coming years when it comes to keeping and attracting talent. That’s why it’s so crucial that we jump on the train now if we want to be better equipped for the future.”
Buzz cuts and bros
FC Rosengård partnered with FCK to learn from their successful – boys’ – academy. Now, with FCK Women on the scene, an academy for girls is being built from the ground up. And in the vein of risk-taking FCK Women decided to go all in:
“Surveys from around Europe show that girls who play with boys becomes better. They receive training that matches their level better. So, in our academy, we have started a co-ed team. The girls who want to play with boys do so until they don’t feel like it’s physically possible anymore. And we’re not talking about two girls on a boys’ team. We’ve seen that a thousand times before, girls who ‘get to play’ with the boys. It is a joint team where we match players by level and physicality. For instance, we know that two 14-year-old boys can look vastly different. And when all the players get older, the girls will typically just move to a year group below and play with younger boys. Some of our younger players, 17-20 years old, train with boys a year group below them, it works perfectly” says Rebecca Steele and adds:
“If it was up to me, we shouldn’t let year groups and gender dictate who you play with. You should look at each player’s level and where they are matched best. I know the current football structures are not geared towards this concept, there are no real tournaments, but you can still use this approach in training”.
Funnily enough, a couple of weeks after this interview took place, Kvindedivisionsforeningen (the Danish Women’s League Association) launched a trial basis initiative. Benched and younger players from the best Danish women’s league would play in a “substitute league”, with between 2 to 4 boys aged 19 or below from each club’s youth teams being part of the lineup. The goal is to develop the skill level and pace of players, and push for cultural change where it becomes normalized for girls and boys to train and play matches together.

”Separating boys and girls is a structural and cultural invention. It’s like separating boys and girls in school. Of course we don’t do that anymore. There’s no reason to. We want to challenge that mindset through our academy work”, says Rebecca Steele, and adds, as our interview comes to an end:
“I was that girl who played as the only girl with the boys. There are some funny pictures of me dressed like a boy and with a buzz cut. I wanted to be a boy so bad, maybe because I wanted to fit in. Then you had me riding around on a boy’s bike”.
As someone who habitually is referred to as ‘bro’ in online football discussions, I heavily relate. I’ve been told multiple times that I ‘write like a man’. I don’t mind it, really. My surroundings have generally been more preoccupied with my gender as explanation for anything than I have. Sadly, I have never felt more like a woman than the times I’ve been expected to mend fences in situations that were not mine to mend.
“That’s the bias creeping in,” says Rebecca Steele. “I personally love being called out on my own. You’re not always aware that they exist within yourself”.
I feel like women’s football provides a space where you can push the boundaries and experiment. It also provides a space for ‘football romance’ to thrive. When we play at Vanløse Stadium, you can get selfies with the players and autographs, and still watch ‘your’ team.
If we turn it around; what do women, or women’s football, bring to the table then?
“That goes back to the start-up vibe. I feel like women’s football provides a space where you can push the boundaries and experiment. It also provides a space for ‘football romance’ to thrive. When we play at Vanløse Stadium, you can get selfies with the players and autographs, and still watch ‘your’ team, with the lion on the chest, play. I can tell how much people appreciate it. You get a different closeness to a club that you might have been rooting for since you were 5 years old. I know this all might change as the attention around women’s football continues to grows, but I hope that we’ll be able to hold on to that positive energy”.
That’s one of the advantages of women’s football, that pioneering spirit it brings with it. It’s like another way of saying that we don’t have to accept circumstances as they are.
”Yeah, and in order to change anything, you need to take risks.”
Lise Nielsen
Freelance journalist
Estadio Communale – Rewriting Football