IN front of me is a newspaper picture of women spectators at a match in Saudi Arabia.
That’s a statement I couldn’t have made in December as only now have women been allowed to be spectators inside a stadium.
Now it may be that football is hugely popular inside Saudi palaces, as in my imagination there would be little for women to do and comparing men’s knees on TV could be an exciting diversion in the chatter among the desert princes’ competing wives.
Anyway, this picture shows six and a tiny bit of a seventh woman (she’s hidden by what I take to be a chaperone although he hasn’t got a prod to make sure they don’t stand and cheer), all but one of them wearing face coverings.
She, bold as brass, is lolling in her seat, a Jeddah club’s green and white scarf slung around her neck, sporting a thick black plait, displaying her full profile. I can only assume she is a sultan’s favourite and, furthermore, is soon to be allowed to drive on Saudi roads.
Remarkable (in Saudi) as her appearance is, it is the ladies peeping out of their full black head-dress who fascinate me.
One of them is pulling the material from her eyes, revealing mascara beneath them as well as false eyelashes. From such weak evidence, I can’t help being reminded of Sophia Loren.
It may not be too long before those niqabs are green and white, too.
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Whether it will be necessary to appoint chaperones or even stewards in the seats that are to be in an exclusive stand for women in three of the country’s stadiums, we will find out next season. B
ut all sorts of passions can be aroused by a goal and, after hundreds of years of male domination, hugging the nearest chap could be a quick way to the axe!
As the start of introducing his country to the 19th Century, King Salman is cautiously relaxing all manner of controls on women.
They may be banned from playing football but even recent permission to be Uber drivers is a breakthrough. I am very proud of the rapidly increasing role of my sex in the sport.
Just after the First World War, 53,000 people watched a women’s match at Goodison Park but the FA soon put a stop to it, banning women from their pitches in 1921 — so they owe us for that.
The successors may regard the appointment of Phil Neville as next England women’s team manager as a way of showing they are really, really serious about our game. Here we go again, though — men first.
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There were a few hands smacked recently over high-level FA carelessness towards feelings assaulted by former coaches and it seems to me that they should move heaven and earth to find a female successor.
While the British may never have been as blind to women in football as the Saudis, we were slow to follow the example of the Americans and Chinese in realising the potential of what amounts to half the world population.
In Saudi, because the new young king believes there is more to women than hanging around in harems, they are beginning to see the light.
But the true measure of the power of King Salman and football itself is when he not only encourages women to watch the game but to play it, too.
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