Progress for women’s soccer and transgender players in the sport

October is here, fall is here, cooler weather is here and football is in full swing with all the drama!

As always this sport is extremely entertaining, creating a weekly soap opera, to say the least. 

The Messi saga has come to a close for the time being. One of the biggest names in the football universe is not leaving Spain for now, but will be making his exit sometime over the next few months or by the end of the year so that Baca will make some proper Euros on him in a sale. We are seeing the start of the rebuilding of this team as we speak.

Progress in the women’s game:

The United States Women’s National Team (USWNT)’s Alex Morgan has joined Tottenham Hotspurs in England. She leaves her team this month for the big stage in Europe.

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2020 is the year of the unexpected, but next up — the first stamp on Charlie's passport. #COYS

A post shared by Alex Morgan (@alexmorgan13) on Sep 12, 2020 at 7:01am PDT

WSL (Women’s Super League) is the highest league of women’s football in England. It was established in 2010 and is run by the Football Association (FA). It currently has 12 professional teams and only 3 of those 12 clubs are not connected to their men’s club counterparts in the EPL.

U.S. international player Zack Steffen got his first start in a Manchester City shirt in the Carabao Cup against Bournemouth. This is one more step towards growing the strength of the game and the culture for young and up-and-coming players out of North America. Steffen used to play in the MLS for Columbus.

In the last week of September:

A Team Canada player came out publicly as transgender. 

Quinn listed steps that cisgender people (people whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth) can follow to become better allies to people who identify as trans, queer and non-binary.

Quinn has made 59 appearances for Team Canada, including 32 starts and has five goals and three assists. Quinn was also a member of the 2016 bronze-medal-winning Olympic team in Rio.

Every step that professionals in sport take to make others feel they are not alone and that others are going though the same type of emotional roller-coaster is a step in the right direction.

Bravo Quinn! As you said, “Coming out is hard — and kinda BS,” but by you doing this you are opening the door for all to feel more comfortable and to normalize perceptions on the subject.

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Coming out is HARD ( and kinda bs). I know for me it’s something I’ll be doing over again for the rest of my life. As I’ve lived as an openly trans person with the people I love most for many years, I did always wonder when I’d come out publicly. Instagram is a weird space. I wanted to encapsulate the feelings I had towards my trans identity in one post but that’s really not why anyone is on here, including myself. So INSTEAD I want to be visible to queer folx who don’t see people like them on their feed. I know it saved my life years ago. I want to challenge cis folks ( if you don’t know what cis means, that’s probably you!!!) to be better allies. It’s a process, and i know it won’t be perfect, but if I can encourage you to start then it’s something. 1) put your pronouns in your bio 2) follow/ listen to other trans/nb voices ( @janetmock , @ashleemariepreston , @alokvmenon to name a few :)) 3) practice using gender neutral pronouns with friends/ in a mirror 4) vote 5) start to catch yourself making assumptions about people in public/ bathrooms/ any space

A post shared by Quinn (@thequinny5) on Sep 8, 2020 at 1:03pm PDT

Montreal Impact is having a special time to say the least. After not having a great showing in the Canadian Championship in September, the team is now kicking off the rest of the regular season, which will end officially on Nov. 8 against D.C. United in the U.S., where they will play all of this year’s remaining games.

The Premier League in England has started up again, promising an exciting season as always. It’s fun news for the game in England as Welsh National player, captain and superhero Gareth Frank Bale returned to his old club SPURS on loan from Real Madrid. England now has some more wicked hairstyles running wild on its pitches.

Streaming sites have some fun things to help you acclimatize to the game with a doc worth watching on Amazon Prime called This Is Football, a six-part series (made in 2019) about the game all over the globe.

For a behind the scenes view, reality TV junkies have to check out All or Nothing, an inside look at the 2019/20 season of Tottenham Hotspurs. No matter who you support, it’s always fun to see what the inner workings of the game are like and where the millionaire players’ maturity levels rest.

And by the way, it now has to be said, the best footballer of all time from Canada — Sir “Canuck himself” Alphonso Davies — added more silverware to the cabinet when he and his teammates from Germany won the Super Cup in the last week of September. Next on his list will have to be a World Cup title for the great Maple Leaf!

“Football is the ballet of the masses.”

—Dmitri Shostakovich

This column was originally published in the October issue of Cult MTL. Check out The 1st Half podcast about soccer and football culture in Montreal and beyond here.

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