How Women's Football Changed the Way We Watch Football

Being part of Gals FC makes you feel like women's football is the default. Here's what happens when that lens turns to the men's game.

Being part of Gals FC makes you feel like women’s football is the default. I remember during my first Gals session, the ice breaker was ‘What’s your favourite football team?’ It was the first time I was in a space where favoring the women’s team didn’t require an explanation. I said Team England and Arsenal due to an inside joke with a former colleague but I didn’t even care about Arsenal. Meanwhile, the rest of the Gals all said they were fans of the Arsenal women’s team as if that was the norm.

Our survey showed that many many women and non-binary football fans were directly influenced by their love of women’s football to watch the Men’s World Cup this year. One of the respondents said:

Women's football hasn't just brought more women into football; it's changing the lens through which many women watch the men's game, and what they value when they do.

For some women, women's football feels more relatable. I understood that relatability immediately at Gals FC: nobody made me feel as though I had to prove how much football I knew before I was allowed to enjoy it. And the other Gals felt that too. Seventy-four per cent said football is more enjoyable when surrounded by people like them. One respondent explained:

To me, that sense of safety and recognition matters because it removes the feeling that women must first prove they are legitimate football fans before they’re allowed to enjoy it.

This new perspective influences the way they engage with the Men’s World Cup. If you ask someone what their favourite part of the World Cup has been, you might expect answers such as tactics, goals, or title favourites. However, in our survey, we got very different answers:

What struck me most was how often respondents remembered jokes, friendships and community rather than the football itself, or even the results. It suggests that for many fans, the match is only one part of the experience; the meaning comes from everything built around it. That matched my own experience of the tournament. Even when England lost in the semi-final, what I will remember most is bringing my lucky England toy dog to the pub and my friends repeatedly asking him to get it together, not the disappointment of the result. The loss mattered, but it did not define the experience; the ritual and the people around me did.

This different way of watching football also comes through in the players respondents connected with most. Many respondents mentioned specific players, with Norway’s Erling Haaland appearing repeatedly in the stories that excited them. There’s an appetite for seeing these personalities with 51% saying that we don’t see enough of male footballers’ personalities. Haaland is a brilliant footballer but many of the respondents flagged specifically his humour and friendships as reasons they liked him. It seems to me that performance wasn’t separate from personality. Giving fans a reason to like him off the pitch just made watching his performance all that more enjoyable.

The same shift appears in the stories respondents remembered most. Underdog stories also featured prominently. Cabo Verde was repeatedly mentioned as one of respondents' favourite storylines. The entirety of women’s football could be framed as an underdog story. Perhaps that is why these stories feel so familiar to fans who entered football through the women’s game.

Fans of the women’s game have watched it fight for attention, expand rapidly and repeatedly prove people wrong. That experience may make the pleasure of supporting an outsider feel especially recognisable.

Women’s football has not simply encouraged more people to watch another tournament. It has shown them that there is no single correct way to be a football fan.

Perhaps women’s football’s greatest influence is not simply that it creates more football fans, but that it expands what those fans notice, remember and value. You can care about tactics and goals while also caring about friendship, humour, personality and joy.

Football becomes more enjoyable when more people feel that they belong within it and when they are free to love it in their own way.

This piece is part of Gals on the Ground, opinions from our community, not the newsroom.

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To read more of Angelica's writing about sport visit her Subtack: Send it Like Sinner