Murray, your wrong by the very design of your argument. While it is very true to say that yes, women are not faster or stronger than the fastest or strongest man (though according to Loughbrough University, in the next 60 years women will be running faster, but I doubt it), it is inaccurate to assume that women can't play football based on this fact. Strength and pace are not possessed by all footballers, even at the highest level. Lionel Messi is short and fairly weak and his pace is more to do with dribbling technique than a great sprinters burst, yet he is considered the greatest of the current generation. Skill with a ball is not limited to male footballers, like all skills it may be perfected with practice. So if we tie this in with the ability of female athletes to run as quick as Messi, surely it is factually possible for women to compete with men. Indeed, your argument is useless when one considers the game itself anyway, many styles of play, minimal contact sending players sprawling... Women's football is perhaps even more rough than the men's, if you've ever watched a game. Strength and pace is a quality of some players not all, and there is a great variety within the game where skill is predominant, where flair is predominant, where determination is predominant, as well as where pace and strength are given importance. Paul Scholes, not the strongest or the quickest, is he then suited to women's football? No, his technique and passing is what makes him useful. That's where I could see a woman fitting in best. No, she may never be able to kick it as hard as the hardest kick in the game, or break someone's leg with a horror tackle, or have the pace to outzip a fullback, but passing and dribbling ability are skills worthy of the highest level, and which are evident in male players already there, so why can't a woman do it?
A bit like no white or Asian males being able to compete in the 100m sprints. Should the blacks have their own event, and the rest of the world have theirs? No, that would be racist. Just as not allowing women to play football with men is sexist.
I'm afraid you ruined it by saying "factually". There's no facts in what you've said, just speculation which is rather based in idealism, no offence. It's idealistic to say that you don't need the strength and pace of a man to be a skilled footballer, but it completely ignores the heavy focus on physicality which exists in the modern game. At the top-level, women footballers would be outmuscled and outpaced at every turn. And I don't think Messi is outmuscled and outpaced at every turn. Women could easily be better than Messi, Ronaldo, or any man when it comes to passing and dribbling ... but then if those were the only qualities which mattered and your strength and pace were immaterial, then why do we not see players in their 40s playing in the Premier League? They've still got the same skills, what should it matter if their pace and strength has gone down a bit?
There's no inherent reason a white or Asian male couldn't win the 100m. There's an inherent reason why women aren't as strong or fast as men.
Women in general, yes. But I'm sure it's possible for one or two female freaks of nature to be strong enough to compete with the average male pro. I'm not talking amazing physical specimens like Drogba or C. Ronaldo, just your average professional footballer, someone in League 1 for example. In fact, I would say it was more likely than a Chinese man competing in the 100m.
They would be if there was a lion running around the other end of the field. A bit like the electric hare in greyhound racing.
Even if your speculation which we can't test is true, you'd have to be a freak of nature just to compete in League 1. What's the point in women playing the sport if they could never reach the top level? This isn't like Formula 1 or snooker, where women are perfectly capable (and are able to) compete with men at whatever level they like on equal footing. If you're a woman, you're always going to be at an inherent severe disadvantage.
Teddy Sherringham was 41, Paul Scholes is like 38, Brad Friedal is 41 etc etc... Are you being intentionally thick? Factually was a perfectly appropriate word, because based on a construction of facts my "speculation" is perfectly plausible, and that was the context. Is Messi outmuscled or outpaced? Not really, but doesn't that just prove that the game can support weaker players? Yes. The "modern" game is indeed a professional game, but look through any squad and you'll see slower, lighter, skillful, players as well as any freakish fast and strong ones. So does that mean you either have to be fast and strong, or else strong or fast, to compete? Well if one can exist without the other... If pace can be employed to the detriment of strength (Lennon, Ben Arfa, Ashley Young, Theo Walcott, Jonas Gutierrez, Wayne Routledge etc etc etc), surely the modern game is not as "strength-orientated" as you would think? And if the likes of Terry, Coloccini, Grant Holt, Andy Carroll, pretty much the entire Stoke and Swansea squad aren't necessarily that quick, then perhaps the modern game is not quite as "fast" as you think. Swansea provide a decent study in themselves, being quite lightweight and skillful, only Routledge and Dyer are at all pacey really, yet their passing ability allows them to compete with the "physical and fast" premier league... In short, it's stupid to think that women, who can run 1.5 seconds off the time of the fastest man ever(which most premier league footballers would struggle to come remotely close to), and who can lift at the lower weights more than most men could dream of (see Olympic records), aren't "strong or fast enough" to play football with men. Easily doable, if they were given the right training, but I don't think they ever will be allowed, unfortunately.
