Sarina Wiegman, the manager of England’s women’s football team, probably has a lot on her mind at the moment, what with preparing for Sunday’s World Cup Final against Spain and all that. But she was given one more thing to ponder when Mark Bullingham, Chief Executive of the FA, appeared to tout her as a possible replacement for Gareth Southgate when the current England men’s team manager leaves.
Bullingham said the Lionesses coach was ‘doing a brilliant job’. And when it came to the England men’s team coaching job, he expressed his displeasure with the term ‘best man for the job’ and commented that football is ‘behind other sports in terms of a lack of female coaches at the top level’. To sledgehammer the point home, he said Wiegman could ‘do any job in football’.
Could it happen? Could the, ahem, grass ceiling, be breached and a woman appointed to a managerial position (and the top one at that) in English football for the first time? Putting aside, for those with long memories, Cheri Longhi in Channel Four’s late 80s drama The Manageress, the nearest to a female boss you will get so far in British football is Hannah Dingley at Forest Green Rovers and, in an administrative role, Karren Brady as Managing Director of Birmingham City.
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