The world’s soccer body just held its presidential elections, but it’s a distant pipe dream that a new president will do much to fix what has bent the “beautiful game” so badly out of shape.
Playing soccer is hard. Playing soccer when you are a girl living in a poor Chicago neighborhood is even harder. Documentary filmmaker Maria Finitzo focuses on the life skills of three players who have a lot going on off the field in “In the Game.”
FIFA’s final approval on head coverings for players in international competition is energizing Arab female football (soccer in U.S.) players. In Egypt, many more players can now set sights on the World Cup for under-17 players in Jordan in 2016.
Women win their first gold medals in boxing at the Olympics, the second Saudi Arabian woman debuts and eyes are on Caster Semenya as she prepares to compete in the 800-meter final.
The Women’s World Cup riveted fans and garnered major coverage in newspapers and Web sites. Make no mistake. This media attention to women’s sports is not the norm. Female athletes still only make up 8 percent of the sports pages.
ESPN is broadcasting today’s Women’s World Cup match between the U.S. and France and using the tournament to promote espnW, a Web site that fills out the coverage of women’s sports often missing from the headlines of ESPN.com.
Now that World Cup tickets have gone on sale, much of the soccer world is looking forward to the June games. But for female soccer players in South Africa the big month is October, when their country hosts the African Women’s Championship.
Professional women’s soccer teams in Boston and New York have just joined a list of eight franchises needed to resurrect a league that fell apart in 2004. A cost-conscious business plan aimed at longevity projects a kickoff next spring.
After Nike’s refusal to exclusively sponsor the Women’s United Soccer Association, a “recovering soccer mom” is bitter about the money she’s spent on “swoosh” products.
(WOMENSENEWS)–The United States Marines has indefinitely postponed the swearing in of Nidal Nasser Hussein, the first female judge ever appointed in Najaf, Iraq, according to press accounts.The Marines are supervising the reconstruction of Najaf’s city government. The appointment was approved by Rachel Roe, a lawyer from Wisconsin who is currently serving as the Najaf court system adviser. The postponement was based mainly upon objections from local lawyers, Islamic clerics and other judges.Male and female lawyers protested outside of Najaf’s government chambers while chanting “No No Women.” Protestors claimed that the appointment of a female judge contradicts Islamic law and that women cannot be judges because they are ruled by their emotions.The Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, ruled last month that judges had to be mature, sane and masculine, but did not rule that they had to be male. Hussein would not have been the first female judge in Iraq.