FA chief executive Martin Glenn pledges to double number of female footbalers
Sunday 23 October 2016 16:09, UK
The FA has pledged to double the number of women playing football within four years.
Chief Executive Martin Glenn is making the women's game the FA's "prime candidate" for investment and will spend £17.7m next year, an increase of 16 per cent.
The English game's governing body has been working on a range of initiatives for a number of months but the announcement was delayed by the fallout from Sam Allardyce's departure as men's national boss.
The FA has a seven-point 'strategic vision,' including the launch of Parklife on Wednesday, which aims to leave every child in England within a 15 minute drive of a 3G pitch.
"Only four in 10 girls play at primary school, so the job for the next four years is to capture more of the talent who are playing and develop them more quickly," Glenn told The Observer.
"It's expensive, but I maintain any pound spent on the women's game has a far higher rate of return than just about anything else I can spend.
Glenn highlighted the large attendances recorded at some recent England games and FA Cup finals at Wembley as evidence of this and cited the public interest generated by last year's third place finish at the Women's World Cup as a further key factor.
"Unusually for an England team, we overperformed at a tournament," added Glenn.
"The money and effort we put into team identity and psychological resilience for the women's team really paid off.
"But the pool [manager] Mark Sampson has to pick from is about half the size of his French or German counterparts and given the importance of the national team in driving awareness, we have to ensure the England team continues to punch above its weight."
