y va marquer wrote:

And I was just kidding about, however as I sense the gravity of this discussion I would say that I think that the use of the chest to control the ball is not make or break in terms of the skills needed to be a good goalkeeper.

I've actually seen men with moobs bigger than Hope's chest.

Ah what heights we reach on here.

I know Y, despite the fact that some here want to turn this into a male Vs female thing..... I enjoyed some of the womens world cup games, its not the same as the mens game- I pointed out that technique and short passing were much important and effective in it- But it is most definitely football and they are most definitely women.

I only watched the England France game and part of the final.
I would have gotten into the final (big stadium atmosphere, big rivalry) but the Americans ruined it by going 4 goals up

For me that's mostly what the women's game lacks - atmosphere and bitter rivalry.
Once they get that going over time, as well as continuing to improve skill wise, the women's game will thrive.

Spot on, Y va. You can't undermine and underfund women's football for 100 years and then make fun of the lack of quality and competitiveness in the game. That's not how this works.

10-12 years ago Germany's men's team was down on its luck and Schweinsteiger and Ballack were the only decent talents they had managed to unearth this side of the 00s. Bundesliga was down the toilet basically. To turn it around they restructured the entire system and put Sammer in charge of creating an environment where young talented boys would thrive. The result a decade later is the World Cup trophy. Who has ever done anyting like that for women? Even the top-end talents lack the fundamental structures to become truly great, never mind the young hopeful teenage girls who love nothing more than to play football. We don't care about them because there isn't enough money in it, but of course there will never be enough money in it unless we start to care either.

Coming from a background in competitive swimming, which is possibly the most equal sport in the world, I've always been puzzled over the attitude towards female football players. Elite women don't swim as fast as elite men do, and that's not really the point either. I think our current incapacity as a society to measure greatness in more than one way is limiting us every bit as much as our incapacity to envision women as the equals of men without being identical to them.

Biggus wrote:

flobaba wrote:

Only situations where men are superior to women is when it comes to tasks requiring physicality.

In other aspects, I really don't see a difference. Social and cultural conditioning has a lot to do with the "wiring" which Biggus mentions, and that can be changed.

This is not really the place to discuss the differences between the male a female brain but there are obvious ones which have been well documented.
Your body is not like a suit that you can don and discard at will there are some very powerful hormones coursing around in there that effect the way you think a lot more than your mum dressing you in pink or blue.

http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/how-male-female-brains-differ

Biggus wrote:

This is not really the place to discuss the differences between the male a female brain but there are obvious ones which have been well documented.
Your body is not like a suit that you can don and discard at will there are some very powerful hormones coursing around in there that effect the way you think a lot more than your mum dressing you in pink or blue.

Bit circular, you've taken about four fifths of what you were supposed to be arguing for as a given or premise there Biggs.

I refuse to "argue" anything, for me the fact that male and females brains and hence behaviour are different must be as a given and a basis for any discussion.