Former England and Chelsea winger Karen Carney has urged broadcasters to consider using more women as pundits for men’s football to break down barriers that still exist.
Carney retired from playing after helping England to the World Cup semi-finals in 2019 and has since joined the BBC as a writer and pundit on Radio 5 Live and on their television coverage of matches. She also works for BT Sport.
“I’ve gone now into the punditry role for male and women’s football,” she said. “For me, I just go and talk about football and I don’t look at it as a gender thing. I love the sport, I’ve done it since I was a little girl, I research until the cows come home, I do my due diligence, why can’t I go and speak about it? Why can’t I go and talk about my experiences and what I see? It’s got nothing to do with gender.”
Yet since appearing as a pundit, Carney, 33, has received horrendous abuse online and has admitted to finding it hard to deal with. Other former England stars including Alex Scott, Eni Aluko and Rachel Brown-Finnis have also spoken of the abuse they have been subjected to after appearing on major channels.
“It is difficult. You do have barriers. But barriers are there to be broken down,” Carney said.
“We’ve done it before, as a player where we weren’t really pushed to play and now we’re in that window where we’re probably not pushed to speak about it [football], but now the challenge is people supporting us and backing us to put us in the front of it. I’m happy to take a bit of flak and change those perceptions that have prevented us in the past.”
Carney out to ‘change people’s mindsets’
Barbara Slater, the BBC’s director of sport, echoed Carney’s stance, insisting that “all parts of the industry need to move forward if we’re going to make a difference”.
“Reflecting on Karen and her moving into the punditry role, I have to be honest I wish it wasn’t the case but we do get a lot of negativity and we’ve just got to overcome that and back people who are good, people who do their research, people who are experts, who know about the game,” Slater added, speaking alongside Carney at Web Summit this week, the world’s largest annual tech conference.
Slater pointed out that at the men’s World Cup in Russia, in 2018, only three countries included a female commentator in their team to cover the tournament. “That was the USA, Brazil and the UK, because we had Vicki Sparks as part of the team.
“That’s a steep hill to climb, but we have to climb it. We’re seeing a growing number of people who have achieved a real profile through their success on the pitch. Therefore there is an audience who are much more prepared to listen and acknowledge that our women pundits are real experts in what they’re talking about.”
As Carney continues to blaze a trail, she said that she has spent her whole life ignoring those who told her not to be involved with football and, after winning 144 caps for England, is not about to stop now.
“When I was younger, there were so many people being restrictive and having those stereotypes that we shouldn’t play football and we broke that down,” she said. “That was cemented by 12 million people watching the [World Cup] semi-final last year. For me it proves it can be done.
“I’m not afraid to change people’s mindsets again. We have to work extremely hard and make sure the product is good.”
Carney and Slater agree that the 2012 Olympics, when 80,000 people packed Wembley to watch the women’s Great Britain team play, and the intense interest in the 2019 World Cup were catalysts for the increased recognition of the women’s game.
“That 12m was the second-most watched program in the UK of any type [in 2019],” Slater added. “We found that 42 per cent had never watched a women’s football match before. That is really transformational.”
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