EQUAL PLAYING FIELD ADVOCATE FOR GENDER ISSUES AROUND WORLD CUP

June 28, 2019

Between June 27th and July 1st, with the Women’s World Cup in Lyon heading towards its climax, Gender Equality group, Equal Playing Field,will attempt to break the world record for the biggest football match.

The match, which will act as a launching pad for the group to advance gender issues - will see 3,000 people play and estimates it will take five days, playing non-stop day and night, with no half-time and with roll-on, roll-off substitutions for the duration. 

“When you actually start to break down 3,000-plus players, we’re looking at around 270 individual 30-minute time slots,” says Equal Playing Field’s Maggie Murphy. “When you think about the substitutions, never before has a fourth official worked as hard as they will do during our game. Because literally every half an hour there will be upwards of 15 to 20 substitutions.”

This will be the organizations third attempt at a world record. The campaigning collective holds the record for the highest altitude football match, on Kilimanjaro, and the lowest, by the Dead Sea in Jordan.

“It’s a completely different challenge, in a way,” says Murphy. “At the top of Kilimanjaro, it was literally difficult to breathe. But in some ways, it was down to our training and our sheer will and teamwork.

Lyon, the biggest-spending women’s football club, and pioneers and hosts of the World Cup semi-finals and final, have handed over their training ground to the event and Twitter and Adidas are on board as sponsors.

“Maybe one of the challenges that we face is we’re not a big glossy charity event, we’re not a corporation,” Murphy says. “This isn’t a PR exercise. We’re literally asking for people who believe in the project to come join us.”

Countries where Equal Playing Field have run football camps – including Palestine, Jordan, Lesotho, Costa Rica, Vietnam and Greece – are seeking sponsorship or fundraising to be part of the attempt. Alongside it, they have access to workshops, skills and coaching sessions.

Adidas are funding the participation of five teams from five continents and the Association Football Development Programme is supporting the Costa Rican and Jordanian teams taking part.

Equal Playing Field, in conjunction with FIFA, is running a five-day training programme for referees wanting to break into international officiating.

These will run alongside the world record attempt, as will a series of workshops which will culminate in a summit on July 5th to look at the risks and benefits of the commercialisation and professionalism of women’s football, women in governance, women in coaching and many other aspects, drawing on the lessons of the week.

“We’re not trying to break a Guinness world record for the sake of breaking the Guinness world record – we’re trying to inspire,” says Murphy. “But also equip those players, coaches and referees with some practical skills so that when they go back home they also feel a little bit more empowered to take action to level the playing field themselves.”