Is it a combination of emotional neediness and a (fully justified) sense of inferiority that accounts for women’s pathetic need to pretend that women can compete at the top level as men in competitions including sports, even in competitions (e.g. chess) where that decline to compete directly with men? Boys routinely beat national women’s soccer teams by embarrassing margins. Our thanks to Keith for this gem on the Just Women’s Sports website. He writes:

Being a football fan I’ve seen this pushed around social media a lot today. It didn’t smell right, so I did five minutes research. Now I’m fine with a powerful penalty, but how strange that the media don’t mention that the men’s figure quoted is only for goals from outside the penalty area. Inside the penalty area (including penalties) doesn’t count.

Chloe Kelly’s much-lauded penalty had a speed of 68mph. I did a little research of my own, and found this. An extract:

It’s hard to give an exact figure, but the average penalty kick in professional football ranges between 70 and 80 mph.

The bottom line? Chloe Kelly’s penalty was slower than the average penalty in professional football. And that’s including all the men’s penalties, including the slow but well-positioned ones.

---

If you’d like email notifications of our new blog pieces, please enter your email address in the box near the top of the right-hand column and click ‘Subscribe’. Our YouTube channel is here, our Facebook channel here, our Twitter channel here. If everyone who reads this gives us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. You can support our work by making a donation here.