FIFA accused of 'misogyny' over all-male commentary team

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• By Avi Yemini

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Football fans have slammed FIFA for not including a single woman in their commentary team for the Women’s World Cup.

As the world’s premier women’s competition was kicking off in Australia, fans around the world were taking to social media to accuse the game’s hierarchy of misogyny.

Female commentators are featuring in local and international broadcast media but the soccer federation chose not to include even one in their world feed.

UK journalist Sally Freedman accued FIFA of being stuck in the 1950s.

“Are we in 2023 or 1950? It’s the women’s World Cup, yet … here is our all singing, all dancing all male commentary team!” she wrote.

FIFA released a list of nine commentatorys - all male - in a bid to hype up the world feed, but it had exactly the opposite effect.

Fans labelled the promotion a “disgrace”, “poor” “embarrassing” and “misogynistic”.

After 24 hours of non stop online abuse, FIFA belatedly named a “co-commentary” team” that included Izzy Christiansen, Laura Bassett, Rehanne Skinner, Amy Chapman and Melissa Barbieri.

But it was too little too late.

Fans demanded to know why the female commentators were not promoted in the first instance while questioning what a “co-commentary team” even was.