Football. The biggest, most popular, and most lucrative sport on the planet. It is an absolute behemoth. We have covered the women's game before, but nothing quite like today, and for that we need to talk disparity. This may get complicated.
Yes, compared to the men's game there is a great disparity, and whether you agree with it or not, there are many valid reasons for this being so, but what about the disparity in the women's game? Surely the women's game is the women's game? Unfortunately not.
For instance the first full women's professional league occured in the USA, and that happened only in 2001. Many other leagues have followed suit since then: England, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, for example, but not everywhere, and in fact gets more complicated than 'you either are or you're not'.
This is where the Welsh Adran League comes in (there are others). This is the very top flight in Wales consisting of eight teams, but it is a hybrid of semi-professional and amateur, and further complicated because of Europe and the men's game.
Firstly though, the difference. If professional, the players are on solid contracts, whereby the football is the only focus. If semi-professional, players may possibly have a part or full time job to supplement their income, meaning that football can become secondary, despite still having a football contract, and then of course there are amateurs.
The four semi-professional sides in the women's Welsh top flight are Wrexham, Cardiff City, Swansea City, and Newport County. This is very important and goes to the heart of the problem.
These four clubs, apart from being semi-professional, have their men's teams in the English football pyramid, meaning the club as an entity has far more money than the other four. The reason they are not in the Welsh system is because the men's teams were created before the Welsh system was put into place.
The winners of the Adran League go through to the UEFA Champions League, but this is where it gets harder, because whilst these four clubs are the lions in their league (Cardiff City and Swansea City in particular, but Wrexham are building impetus, due to the giant growth of the men's side with the arrival of Rob McElhenny and Ryan Reynolds), they are minnows when it comes to the giants of Europe, where they will face the likes of Arsenal, Barcelona, Manchester City, Lyon, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Juventus, and the like.
In effect the disparity within their own league which works in their favour, is suddenly against them when they step out of it and into the European competition.
To put this into further perspective, UEFA lists Wales (as a whole, a sum of all Welsh women's clubs) in joint 48th. Out of 50. Swansea City ranks 90th and Cardiff City 102nd in the club rankings.
This is the real disparity and the effect it has upon the women's game in Wales. Because the other four (men's) teams, Barry Town FC, Britton Ferry FC, The New Saints FC, and Aberystwyth FC, all play in the Welsh football pyramid, so therefore financially they are just as far behind the other four clubs as they in turn are behind the European giants.
A fully semi-professional (or indeed professional) league would help somewhat, but that probably would not be enough to make up ground with those sides whose men's teams are all in the very top leagues of their countries.
Wales is by no means the only one with this problem, they are only being used as an example due to having some particularly well known clubs, especially in the men's game. Is there an easy answer to this? No. Is there any sort of answer? If there is, it would have to be huge and start with the Welsh FA and then on into UEFA and possibly FIFA.
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