A TikTok livestream disguising itself as a League Cup draw has raised questions around whether or not the powers at be truly value the growth of the women’s game.
Let’s rewind back to the halcyon days of July 2025. The Euros have come to an end, and just like in 2022, there’s plenty of hope and optimism about the future of women’s football.
It’s been four months since England lifted their second consecutive European Championship, but four months has felt like an eternity at times this season.
Since that night in Basel, 12pm kick-offs in the Women’s Super League (WSL) have been a major factor in a dip in viewership, the cost of watching women’s football across a variety of different networks has risen exponentially, and Sky Sports Halo faded away as quickly as it was introduced.
Then there’s the Subway Women’s League Cup. It’s a competition that is already facing a number of questions over its future. Therefore, the last thing the cup needs is anything controversial to harm its reputation further. Fast forward to this past Tuesday- what on paper should have been a straightforward and simple quarter-final draw turned into anything but.
In a draw streamed live only on the Barclays WSL TikTok channel, Portsmouth midfielder Ella Rutherford and social media influencer GK Barry conducted the draw, and what followed needed to be seen to be believed. A string of innuendos, balls being placed back into the bag after being drawn, the chanting of an anti-Tottenham song, and the WSL itself being asked for footage to be reviewed to determine whether the draw needed to be redone. A ten-minute saga suddenly brings with it hours of questioning and head scratching.
Let’s focus on the cup itself first of all. Currently, England is the only top five nation to have a secondary cup competition that takes place during the season. Spain, Germany and France do not have one, while Italy do have a second cup competition that takes place between Serie A teams before the league season itself begins.
In a time where every corner of the footballing globe is calling for less games in order to prevent more long-term injuries, the Subway Cup finds itself in the dock. The international football calendar won’t change, and neither will the European club schedule. Therefore, attention must turn to domestic football.
The WSL and WSL2 are expanding next season leading to more games in the league season. Add the FA Cup on top of this, along with European games for some teams, and the calendar doesn’t have much room for anything else. An abandoning of a second cup competition would create more space and allow players to have more rest.
On top of all this, the Subway Cup already favours big teams. Sides in Europe do not have to go through the group stages, meaning clubs joining at the last eight stage only have to win three games to lift the trophy, while clubs who start in the group stage have to win a minimum of six games to have a chance of becoming champions. Since 2011 when the cup was introduced, only Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City have ever won it; the clearest evidence yet that the cup is far more favourable towards the biggest sides in the country.
As well as this, teams in the WSL2 and those lower down the WSL, often face periods later on in the season where they will go up to a month without playing club football, down to the culmination of international windows and League Cup draws.
Reported by Telegraph Sport on Wednesday afternoon, WSL Football is said to be considering a restructure the League Cup.
“This includes abandoning the group stage of the competition and replacing it with a Swiss model, which is currently used in the Champions League, as well as excluding clubs in Europe,” Telegraph Sport exclusively reports. The removal of clubs competing in Europe’s biggest competition will ensure that those teams are not overburdened by the schedule but still begs the question – is there a point at all in the League Cup if not all teams from England’s top two flights are competing?
When it comes to matters purely on the pitch, there are plenty of quandaries. But off it the enquiries continue. In the quarter-final draw GK Barry openly admitted she did not know anything about the teams involved, including what colours Chelsea and Liverpool wore. When it comes to TV coverage, there hasn’t been any. If you’re lucky you would have one game per matchday broadcasted on YouTube and that, is it. The venue for the final hasn’t been announced yet. It’s as if no one really cares.
That point was rubber stamped during last season’s final. Both Chelsea and Manchester City played out a good game, but the pitch at Derby’s Pride Park was anything but fitting for a final. Everything around the showpiece event screamed second class, including the 12:15 kick-off time.
All of this plays into the bigger narrative around women’s football, and that is, are fans being treated fairly? The honest answer is no. You can’t help but hark back to one of Nikki Doucet’s early interviews where she compared fans of women’s football to “Swifties”. That quote is over a year old, but it still rings alarmingly loud in today’s current affairs.
There is a deeper question to all this too, and that is, who is the target audience for all of this? Take Sky Sports Halo as an example. No true football fan wants to see an Erling Haaland goal compared to ‘hot girl matcha walks’. No one wants to hear about the personal lives of Formula One drivers and who should get married next.
Everything, currently, feels dumbed down for women’s football fans. A sense of, “don’t you worry your little heads, we know it’s difficult for you to understand so we will simplify it as best as we can for you”. To involve GK Barry in a cup draw too further pushes the narrative that the powers at be believe women’s football fans are simply just crazed teenagers.
The summers of 2022 and 2025 were meant to be turning points for women’s football. They were meant to usher in new eras, but it feels like it’s been one missed opportunity after another. There is a yearning for deeper analysis, for better quality of broadcasting, for better all-round coverage. Instead, WSL matchdays are dominated by “social media corners” and Soccer AM teammate banter segments rather than a deeper understanding of why certain teams adopt certain tactics and mindsets.
Like most things, it isn’t too late to turn everything around, and the same goes for the Subway Cup. There is a general consensus that, if the cup isn’t going to go away, it needs reshaping in some way. That could mean no European teams can enter the competition. Or they could go down another route in an attempt to utilise club academies and more homegrown talent. Whether that be a minimum number of players on the pitch at one time who are homegrown at club, or a minimum number of players who are aged 23 or younger. The cup can certainly become a reputable and competitive tournament.
But do we trust those in charge to make those changes? The current form book would suggest otherwise. There have been too many stumbles in a short space of time for the football community to believe that those who run our game will change it for the better.
We’re not asking for women’s football to mirror the men’s game. There are plenty of unique things that make women’s football so appealing. However, what we do want is to be treated like adults. To be treated like any other fan of any other sport. This ten-minute draw once again exposed problems that women’s football has across the board. 2022 and 2025 were meant to bring women’s football into the mainstream. Everyone was handed a golden ticket to go and propel the sport we love to the next level, but women’s football is still stuck in deciding what it really wants to be.
