Burn It All Down special for Football Pride

Join Brenda, Lindsay and Shireen for a special episode in collaboration with Football v Homophobia’s Pride Day festival! Listen here: https://www.footballvhomophobia.com/burn-it-all-down-podcast-special-edition/

Transcript

Shireen: Hello, flamethrowers! So happy to be here. This is Shireen Ahmed, and I am actually joined by two of my amazing co-hosts: Brenda Elsey and Lindsay Gibbs. We are bringing you a special episode for Football v Homophobia, this amazing organization. We’re so proud to participate in this event. Football v Homophobia, FvH, exists to challenge discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression at all levels in football. As an international initiative, FvH engages in campaigning, education, advice and guidance, research policy consultation and capacity building. In 2020 at a time when many LGBTIQ+ football lovers are feeling isolated not only from each other but also from their year-round passion, FvH has launched the Football Pride festival, an online event aiming to bring together LGBTIQ+ and ally football family from around the world for an online day of inclusive football culture. We are so happy to be here. Brenda, Lindsay, how are you feeling about football right now? [laughter]

Lindsay: That’s a loaded question, Shireen. [laughs] I feel, y’know, it’s happening now, and I’m excited, I’m enjoying it. There’s a lot of problems, though [Shireen laughs] that I think we will…This is a spoiler alert for our conversation. [laughs]

Shireen: What are you watching right now, Linz?

Lindsay: Well, I’ve been loving watching the NWSL tournament. I’ll be frank that that’s kind of been all the soccer I’ve been watching this summer, but it’s been phenomenal to see. There’s so much NWSL news on the horizon. I’m excited, it looks like a lot of players are gonna sign to play for European clubs so they can go over where the pandemic is not quite as raging and still make money and give me a good excuse to get into those games as well.

Shireen: Brenda?

Brenda: Um, I’m watching La Liga, you know [Shireen laughs] very out of character for me. Sometimes the Premier League stuff. I was really excited about Leeds being promoted; Marcelo Bielsa forever, forever. Just how exciting it was for people in that community. But yeah, also with Linz, there’s so many things to be concerned about so, for example, right now the Brazilian league, the federation has pushed the players to go back and kind of basically force them and there’s been some protests about that because Brazil is a hotspot for COVID, so, there’s a lot to be skeptical about.

Shireen: Yeah. On my part I’ve been watching obviously the Premier League, I’ve been watching Arsenal lose, but I still have hope in Arteta and it’s fine. Congratulations to all the Liverpudlians and the LFC family for their league win, congratulations. We’ve been hearing about it incessantly, and congratulations to you. Also been catching some Bundesliga where I can, and Frauen Bundesliga when I can, and of course the NWSL, which we shall get into because it’s very exciting. To start off, I was thinking I could do a quick rapid-fire question round for my friends – not necessarily only on soccer, but about sport and particularly women in soccer as well. Now, are you both ready for this?

Brenda: Yes.

Lindsay: Not at all, but like… [laughter] I’m so scared of Shireen’s rapid-fire, probably of anyone that’s about to give me rapid-fire Shireen gives me the most anxiety.

Brenda: Okay. [laughs]

Shireen: I’ll try to make it as pleasant as possible. So, Brenda, I’ll start with you for an answer, then I’ll do me and then I’ll do Lindsay and that should ease some of the burden, Linz. Okay, so first question: favorite queer player? Brenda.

Brenda: Nadine Angerer, because now she’s back on the NWSL. [laughter] So that’s my favorite active queer player. I saw her in the 2015 World Cup on when Germany played the US and I’ve never seen a goalkeeper control a game like that, like, how powerful and masterful she was, and yeah…I just absolutely worship her play.

Shireen: Okay, well next time I’m gonna go first because you completely stole mine! [laughter] You know I’m obsessed with Nadine Angerer! This section of Burn It All Down is quite truthfully…It moonlights as a Nadine Angerer fan club. Also, me being a Portland Thorns fan and supporter, I just love her. I think what Nadine has done with the goalkeeping there…We saw Bella Bixby perform incredibly, and then Britt Eckerstrom perform amazingly, and the thing is: all paths lead back to Nadine Angerer in goalkeeping.

Brenda: [laughs] Yes.

Shireen: Great paths. We see this. When I saw her on the roster women’s soccer Twitter was completely excited during the quarter finals, it was very exciting, she was literally on the roster. I adore her, and I think that her mark in football is still underrated, and she’s very humble, she’s an incredibly humble person. One of my greatest moments on Twitter is when she liked a tweet of mine, like, okay, literally I’m done now.

Lindsay: Have you put it in your bio, you know, how some people put it in their bio – “tweet liked by this celebrity on this date.”

Shireen: I have not, but I will. Yeah, I think I will, Linz. Thank you. 

Lindsay: Oh god, now I gave her an idea. [laughter] I meant to be mocking her, and then I have her an idea. 

Shireen: Okay, so Linz, your favorite queer player?

Lindsay: I mean, I just feel like I’m going to be very obvious, but I have always been obsessed with Ashlyn Harris’s cheekbones, and so…[laughing]

Shireen: Oh my god.

Brenda: Yes.

Lindsay: They’re one of the wonders of the world, I’m just gonna be honest. I just love everything about her. I love her style, I love how open she is about her journey to becoming an advocate, her and her partner, and I just think she’s wonderful. I’ve also decided I have a thing for goalies, so, that’s something I’m really coming to terms with these days. I’ve tried to avoid it, but it really does make sense for me. It’s very on-brand, you know, the kind of weird loner types…Moody, you know? That’s all me. [laughter] So, that’s definitely my type. The cool thing is right now in women’s soccer that there are so many queer players to look up to and that are visible. I think that’s always been the case, but the visibility part and the vocal part hasn’t always been there. It’s a joy to feel like I have too many to choose from to really choose just one.

Shireen: Well that’s an excellent part of it, particularly because in the men’s game it’s so different. I think that’s the power of the women’s game, that how people always say sports is not political, or wrong, inherently, particularly about stuff like combatting homophobia and discrimination of any kind. So, this isn’t really as rapid, as fiery…It’s fiery, but not rapid. But that’s okay, we can have sort of like a jaunt. Moving forward. But okay, next question: Brenda, which country gives you the most hope in terms of what they’re doing in terms of their anti-racism work? Like, football country.

Brenda: I think up until March it was Brazil.

Shireen: Okay.

Brenda: Simply because the relative degree of effort and improvement that I’ve seen in the culture. I was at a Corinthians vs São Paolo match in February and there were still tons of homophobic chants, but there were interventions on the part of the officials, on the big screen in the stadium. There was a kind of pushback against that. And also traditionally the #24 in Brazil is associated with being gay. So, it’s part of an animal game and 24 represented the deer, historically, like, since the beginning of the 20th century. So basically in Brazil no one would take the #24. Then beginning in March there were all these kind of high-profile players who were like, I want the #24. It did have to do with Kobe Bryant, so there’s a lot of weird contradictions to all of this. But really there’s been a lot of progress. Also, trans football clubs have taken off in Rio and São Paolo, a lot of grassroots work, so I’m very hopeful about Brazil.

Shireen: That’s amazing. I’m gonna go next, and I will just say that this has been a long time in the process but I’m actually gonna say Canada, and the reason why is I think that we’re used to seeing the United States be so unabashedly bold, and I love that. There’s been a lot of work in Canada, and getting back to the discussion on goalkeepers, Erin McLeod, Canada’s former starter, had worked with policy, she had worked with a lot of different things, and that ties into working on anti-racism pieces. I know that the team generally were the first team, the Canadian women’s team, had put out and committed to Common Goal – they were the first full squad to do this, before the Women’s World Cup last year, and they’re very committed to anti-oppression work at every level.

Also, Erin McLeod and her former partner Ella Masar were the first professional same-sex couple to ever be married. They’re not together anymore, but at that moment they were both with Houston and that was a really big deal. But also in that, the work that these women do constantly…We’ve seen Christine Sinclair walk around Portland with t-shirts supporting pro-refugee rights, and it’s just been very important to see that, particularly when Canada comes across as being this super open country when in fact there’s a lot of systems of police brutality and legacies of brutal colonialism that do reside here, that have existed here. So I think that’s really important for people to understand, that there’s still a lot of work to do, and can it happen through soccer? Definitely. I interviewed Diana Matheson just a couple of weeks ago about their involvement in Conquer COVID, which is an organization in Canada seeking to amplify and provide PPE to frontline workers that didn’t have it. We have nurses, we have doctors and physicians that just simply don’t have adequate PPE and they were involved with that.

I also interviewed Janine Beckie, who had said that they were just very committed to that process and they felt like it was a responsibility. I’m happy about that. They took the lead from Hayley Wickenheiser, who we’ve spoken about on the show, a Hockey Hall of Fame-er, and she was one of the faces of that campaign. I don’t wanna say that I’m proud of it, I don’t wanna let Canada off the hook because there's a lot of work to do, but in terms of talking about issues of racialized inequalities, to talk about class inequalities and lack of access to things like healthcare – even though we have universal healthcare in Canada, there are huge gaps. So I think that this team does a pretty good job of talking about that. Linz?

Lindsay: Yeah, I’m obviously not as up on what’s happening in global soccer as I should be, but I am gonna highlight what we’ve seen happening in the United States in the past couple of months – once again not letting anyone off the hook, not saying that anything is perfect or that symbol are everything. I think that a lot of the times symbols and t-shirts and things like that can be used as shields to cover up a lot of racism and a lot of homophobia and a lot of sexism behind the scenes, as we’ve seen many times. But they can also be symbols of progress and they can also be beacons of hope and measures of accountability as well, and I think, you know, if you had asked me in January of this year if we would’ve seen the displays of solidarity for the Black Lives Matter movement within both Major League Soccer and the NWSL…I would’ve had a lot of questions, for sure, and I would’ve been very skeptical about it.

But, you know, these teams on the MLS side and the NWSL side, they have been…I talked to a lot of players, and they are emotionally spent because they’ve been having conversations and doing the work internally within the teams to address racism. A lot of the white players are, for the first time, which is way overdue, and as Shireen always says, no cookies. But they are learning, they are engaging – not uniformly, of course, but there are a lot more steps forward. We’ve seen coaches like Mark Parsons who kept his Black Lives Matter shirt as his uniform throughout the tournament, the Challenge Cup. And the players, especially the Black players, they really fought to make sure that the anthem continued to be played before the games which…Whether that should happen is a different conversation, but the reason they did that is because they wanted the chance to take a knee, they wanted to be put on the spot and they wanted a chance to send that message.

So I’ve gotta say, what I’ve seen coming from the players within the NWSL and MLS and leagues finally not fighting against this as heavily as they have been in the past has been a promising sign. Our friend Erica Ayala wrote a good piece being like, you know, hopefully this is just the start, like this has to be just the reckoning. It can’t be the end. But I think there have been some important steps this summer.

Shireen: I would be remiss if I didn’t actually mention the English Premier League and what it was, because that league started before the Challenge Cup began over here. Just to see all these players kneeling, it was something that in my life I never thought I would see. I remember watching the Man City squad, and Raheem Sterling…I think football’s a really interesting place, and Brenda, you can speak to this, how previously any political messaging would be met with a fine. I still remember, many years ago, Frédéric Kanouté, when he was playing for Sevilla, took off his kit when he scored to show a ‘Free Palestine’ shirt, and he was fined. I remember that so vividly because I remember thinking there’s no place for any type of justice within the bureaucracy of football. But look what we see now. How do you, being a historian and knowing this game and knowing the ins and outs, how do you feel about this, particularly in England? UEFA is not exactly this lighthouse beacon of light and justice. How do you feel about that?

Brenda: Well, I mean…I guess the easiest example of what sort of struggles have been going on around that is MLS and the Iron Front flag – which is to debate what is a “political” message and what is a message about human rights and discrimination. So Fare, for many years long before I got there, has been working on discrimination intersectionally, but probably with our most significant amount of work around race and homophobia…It’s really interesting, because MLS was struggling with it. Is an anti-fascist flag a political message? Or can you say that by saying it’s political you’re legitimizing fascism as a political option? Does that make sense? And you get into that with messages like ‘Free Palestine,’ right? Is it a human rights issue? See, I would say, if it’s not a political party or a candidate that you’re pushing and there’s evidence of oppression, you can make a really strong argument that that’s a human rights argument. That’s the same thing that we’ve been saying about race and about homophobia, but it is really complicated. You can’t anticipate, you know, how even people might use certain rules and regulations to be racist or homophobic anyway.

So, one story – it’s about race, but the same thing would apply to homophobia – is when the rules were put in in 2019 about the three step process, those rules were actually there before, but when FIFA came out, and Fare had consulted on this where you stop the game and then there’s the loudspeaker, etc, etc; basically, fans in Italy, supporters groups, tried to get free tickets from the club administrators threatening to do racist and homophobic stuff if they didn’t get it. [laughs] Can you imagine? Like, who could’ve even just thought about how terrible someone would try to permutate that…So, I mean, that’s been really interesting. I think that’s always the struggle. The example you brought up I think just really shines a light on that, is it’s always gonna be a fight against people who are bigots.

Shireen: Yeah, I think that’s one of the things that we see in football and how the supporter family and communities rally around. We’ve seen in the last decade, we’ve seen uprisings in Eastern Europe with this type of thing, we’ve seen since this huge crisis of migration, refugee crisis, since the war on Syria began we’ve seen uprisings of fascism in ways that I have never seen in my life. It also kind of emerges coming from football, which scares me. It really does. But we also see places like Fare – and just with all transparency, Brenda does work for them and is associated heavily with them, and I was on their advisory board for the INSPIRE project which was specifically about refugee women using football as an integration piece and a model for that. I really believe that football can be a connector of many things and many people, and can it be used as a tool to empower? Yes. Can it be used as a tool to possibly combat bigotry? I hope so. I’m still very hopeful about this.

I don’t know what happened to the rapid-fire concept, but I’m still happy. I love this discussion. We’re gonna switch it up again. Lindsay, can you tell me something within football that makes you feel happy, and it makes you sort of sense that connector? Like, conversations that you wouldn’t have thought would happen. Can you give me an example of something like that?

Lindsay: Yeah, well, I think I’ve just touched on it a little with what we’ve seen in the NWSL and MLS with their show of solidarity for Black Lives Matter and very specific fights against police brutality. I have to say that the…I’m sorry, I’m staying so on-brand here, but the new ownership group for the Los Angeles NWSL team and the announcement of that is something that makes me very excited to have an ownership group made up primarily of women. There are queer women in there, there are women of color, and that’s a big deal, you know? That’s something we don’t see. If you look around the league it’s mainly white cis men with money owning these teams who, a lot of them, care more about the money they can make from their development academies than they do about really developing their women’s soccer teams and growing their women’s soccer teams, so for me I hope this is a shift more towards fans and people who really really care, kind of seizing control of this league and having more people really get what the league is about. Of course there are a lot of doubts, a lot of question marks. I’m not pretending like there aren’t, but I will say is that having an ownership group primarily made up of women, queer women, does make me excited.

Shireen: Definitely. Brenda, what about you? What’s making you hopeful and excited in football?

Brenda: On August 8th, Champions League, Napoli vs Barcelona. [laughter] It is not off the topic of Pride because…I’m not going to go into it here, but for anyone with Football v Homophobia listening, I have an entirely queer and feminist reading of Leo Messi. [laughter] So…I think I’m developing it. It may be in essay form, it might be a video essay, it might be a photography essay – I’m really not sure yet. But I’m working on it, so don’t worry. It’s not as traditional as it sounds, but I cannot wait to see that match, it’s insane.

Shireen: Yeah, we’ve missed…I’m actually really looking forward to the women’s Champs League which will return in August, so I’m excited about that. The Champs League is probably my favorite after AFCON, which is a tournament rather, but this is something I’ve greatly missed because you get to see teams from all over the place and styles of play, I really enjoy it. For those of you that don’t know, I didn’t actually say their bios but I have anointed Brenda as the president of the Feminists For Leo Messi Fan Club. Which she is, in addition to being the co-president of the Nadine Angerer Fan Club – and I would be the other co-president. Lindsay’s up there in vice president given her recent admission of her affinity for goalkeepers, so she’s in there as well.

I think for me what’s bringing me positivity is just the conversations around football. I have a lot of frustrations with clubs around the world that are more institutions and corporations, as a matter of just basic understanding, and what Lindsay just touched on about the NWSL’s We Are Angel City, the Los Angeles team, what that makes me think about is rebuilding and what needs to start from scratch and the idea of those owners being very in touch with communities, being in touch with and representing what more of the population looks like, and I say this because of an understanding in Europe of the women’s sides, and how Barcelona is one of the wealthiest clubs in the world but their women’s side doesn’t have the same access to resources; and Liverpool, who are at the top of the board, top of the table, but their women’s side is really really struggling. There was a piece recently in the last four months about how badly they’re struggling and what that looked like, whether it was access to arenas or access to training or just access to anything on basic levels that are required by professional footballers and it was staggering, the difference.

So I am hopeful, definitely, and I’m gonna sort of piggyback off what Lindsay said about the idea of clubs finally paying attention to what people want, because you can’t have football without the people. Football truly is the people’s game. I think that this is why Football v Homophobia is such an important organization because it speaks to the people and what people want. As much as we can watch matches right now because of COVID-19 that are in empty stadiums, after Liverpool hoisted the trophy, the first thing they said was this is for the people, this is for the supporters, this is for the fans. So even in those stadiums, even as the games continue, the matches go on, the leagues begin again, there’s a cognizance that it is for the people and that makes me hopeful. So, next question to you both: if you could have coffee with one footballer – alive – who would it be?

Lindsay: Ugh. This is so hard! [laughs] 

Brenda: IknowIknowIknowIknow. I got it.

Shireen: Okay Brenda, go.

Lindsay: I think I know who Brenda’s gonna pick!

Shireen: Brenda, if you say Zidane, because you did this last time when we did a hot take with Stephanie Yang, you did Zidane.

Brenda: Well, darn it. Okay. [laughter] It’s kind of a tie because for sure Marcelo Bielsa would be amazing. But actually my love for Leo Messi does not actually extend to the fact that I think he’d be a good coffee-chatter. [Shireen laughing] I really don’t. I think there’d be a ball in the corner and he’d, like, leave, and not even talk to me. But I would love to have coffee with Formiga, from Brazil. 

Lindsay: Yeah!

Shireen: Ohh.

Brenda: Who’s also queer and Afro-Brazilian and has played 22(?) seasons with the national team and for PSG. She has to have, like, just a personal individual archive in her head. She’s so reserved that it’s hard to get at it in the media, and plus people ignore her and neglect her, which they shouldn’t, they should put her on every cover of everything. But yeah, I would love that.

Shireen: Linz, what about you?

Lindsay: Can you go first? I’m still deciding.

Shireen: Yes. Okay, so first of all I am gonna change the rule of the question for my own answer [Lindsay laughing] because of course I am. This would not be a coffee date, it’ll be like a potluck or whatever. I would definitely have Nadia Nadim there – you all know how obsessed I am with her, I think she’s incredibly…She is just effervescent. She’s a fantastic person. Fare had her on a call with Grace Veys of the organization, and I loved it. She’s so articulate, she’s so passionate, her story forever moves me. She’s a former refugee from Afghanistan, plays for Denmark, has been very open in criticizing her own federation about equal pay and equity within football. I think she's one of the bright lights out there and I would love love to have her. I think we would have a lot of fun. She’s also super into Bollywood music, so we could sing in the car. And she speaks, like, seven languages, which is wild to me and amazing to me. She’s at Paris Saint Germain right now and just gifs of her and Ashley Lawrence of Canada…They play together at PSG and it’s just so much fun. I would definitely do that.

I think I would love…I mean, there’s a long list of people I would love to talk to – Zidane obviously being there. But I might just stare at him the whole time because he’s mesmerizing. You might not like this Brenda, but I might invite David Beckham, but just ask him to observe, because he’s very good at just observing, but I think there’s something about him that I just find endearing. One person I’ve recently discovered that I do want to speak to is Marcus Rashford of Manchester United, and the reason is, for those that don’t know, Marcus Rashford went public very recently when the UK government, the British government, wanted to shut down feeding youth in meal programs. He actually came out and said I heavily relied on those programs as the son of a single mother, a Black single woman, I relied heavily on those and we shouldn’t stop them. And they ended up staying. He’s literally changed so much in public policy and social programs in England, and I think that’s very important. He’s an incredible human and he’s still quite young so to watch him get involved at this level is great and I think he deserves to have coffee with me. [laughs] Lindsay, what about you?

Lindsay: Well, I was gonna say Marta because she could play the ukulele and I just feel like she’d be so interesting.

Shireen: Marta plays the ukulele?!

Brenda: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Shireen: I didn’t know this. 

Lindsay: It’s really developed my love for her a lot, because just what an interesting skill for her to have. I just love it. She’s in a lot of Insta stories doing it, like, her teammates will show them a lot. Ultimately if Shireen’s gonna switch her own rules then I’m gonna switch those rules and I’m gonna switch them to a happy hour and I’m gonna be basic and just have Rapinoe there and hope that she brings Sue Bird and I think I would finish with knowing literally every single story that exists in the women’s soccer/women’s basketball world. Sue and I would definitely out-drink Megan, that’s a definite given, because we’ve seen how Megan handles on their talk show – she passes out early and then Sue can just tell me everything. So, that’s mine.

Shireen: Okay. Favorite couple in sports? Favorite sports couple. This is a tough one. [silence] [Shireen giggling]

Brenda: Okay, so I don’t have one – for a reason though.

Shireen: Okay.

Brenda: It’s that for people I think who grew up…Let’s just say the 80s, generously, like me, and watched football in particular, there was the whole WAG phenomenon of Wives And Girlfriends and I felt like it was so destructive to women players, it was so heteronormative. I know Megan and Sue are totally different, I know there’s Ashlyn and all of that and that’s wonderful and I’m really happy for them, but I feel like I kind of have this deep-seated resistance to getting on board with athletic couples. It’s like an old sort of feeling. Even when they’re both athletes, for some reason there’s just this cycle that makes me feel weird like I know too much or not enough about them to get attached to their relationship…? [laughs] So anyway I think that’s why I don’t have one is that whole ‘wives and girlfriends’ WAG phenomenon which football was so nasty about in the 80s in terms of women won’t really be an audience for football unless it’s in this particular way that they’re interested in these celebrity couple things.

Shireen: Yeah, that’s a really good point actually. Just sort of tokenizing women or sort of putting them as accessories so to speak. Definitely.

Brenda: Yeah.

Shireen: Linz, what’s your thoughts?

Lindsay: Well I’m the opposite of Brenda, I’m obsessed with athlete + athlete couples of all kinds – cross sports, gender doesn’t matter. I love when athletes are together. I’m fascinated by it and a little obsessed with it. I talked enough about a few people here that I could always choose, but I’m gonna go with Dom and Syd who have the cutest and sweetest family. I love how open they are, how open Syd is about being a mom and being an athlete and what goes into that and the struggles she’s opened up with about the fact that her husband has not had to take the same pauses in his career as she has in hers, but their family is so cute, they clearly love each other a lot. They’re very attractive which always helps, I’m not gonna lie. I dunno, I love following them and I root for both of them. I hope that there’s a way for Syd to play soccer soon because I know that she worked so hard to get back on the field with the Orlando Pride, and then when they pulled out of the tournament that was really hard for her.

Shireen: I have, I mean, I’m surprised nobody’s said Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe.

Lindsay: Well I already talked about them so I felt like I needed to shift it a little bit. 

Shireen: Oh, okay. I enjoy them tremendously, I think they’re great. I also very recently saw a clip of an interview that Sue Bird did and she says to Megan Rapinoe, “Your one cute world medal is nice” or something to that effect, and I was laughing like, oh my goodness. Can you imagine the medals? One of my favorite couples is Caroline Ouellette and Julie Chu. I know I talk about them a lot, we’ve spoken about them on the show; Julie Chu being the captain of the US women’s national ice hockey team and Caroline Ouellette is the Canadian, so I had no idea that they were together. The thing is that in women’s ice hockey there’s a lot of couples but they’re kind of on the down low. So Caro and Julie, they have two daughters, beautiful beautiful family, and they’re in Montreal. I love them. I think they’re probably one of my favorite favorite favorite couples, just because of the work they do around women’s hockey is really important as well. And they’re just really the story of how we can be friends with our biggest rivals. I mean, we can, it’s possible. There’s love in there. [laughs] So that's hopeful as well. I mean there’s many other formidable couples in the world of sports, absolutely, but that’s one that just stands out for me.

So, this question is the flip opposite of joy: what’s something that makes you real mad in football specifically, and around football rules – other than the obvious fascism and racism. Is there any specific issue in sport, because we talk about that a lot in our burn piles in our show. Brenda, is there one specific thing that you feel, that really angers you about one particular place or issue?

Brenda: Aw, man. We created a whole show around this. 

Shireen: We have, yeah. [laughing]

Lindsay: We created a whole podcast around this, what are you talking about?! [laughing]

Brenda: Burn it all down, ugh! I’ll just tell you the first thing that comes to mind, I’m gonna break the rules too and do two.

Shireen: What rules? What rules? Go ahead. 

Brenda: First, it makes me really mad that there are no women coaching in MLS. That makes me very mad. Women's tradition in football in the US is undeniably strong. Not at the assistant coach level, not at the head coach level, but most of the NWSL teams are coached by men. They’re British men and I’m sorry to British friends and listeners out there, no reason to think that they have some special secret football coaching formula deep inside them. Not true, sorry. [laughs] So yeah, that makes me really mad. I guess just the daily abuse – and I’m gonna say Brazil because that’s my area of research, but it could be anything – watching like 17 and 18 year old boys and men, particularly Afro-Brazilians because they export the most, being racially abused in Europe. There’s something about them being alone and young and in a foreign place and trying to go to work and watching them have to feel that, oh. That makes me really mad too.

Shireen: Lindsay?

Lindsay: Yeah, I was gonna talk about the whiteness and maleness of the coaching ranks too. But since Brenda touched on that I’m gonna say pay to play in the US system. It’s just broken from the bottom at the grassroots level. I’ve learned a lot about it actually from Brenda, and I think, let's burnt hat down.

Shireen: Yeah, for sure. We can do the requisite “buuuurn” too. Yeah.

Lindsay: Burn!

Shireen: Burn. For me, one of my biggest frustrations in the world of football, and I will forever feel that not enough people know about this, is that the Fédération Française de Football still does not permit women in hijab to play. I was in France last year on the one hand celebrating football and the Women’s World Cup and women in football, you know, this global sort of unification through sport – despite having very few teams from the global south, but still, with a clear exclusion of a specific demographic of people, and that really frustrated me. It frustrated me because it saddened me and I’m someone who has personally experienced the effects of a ban like this to this day. It’s still something I’m working on with women in France; I was invited by Fare Net last year to Diversity House to talk about this and was on a panel and those incredible women that are still on the ground, whether it’s Alliance Citoyenne, whether it’s different organizations, one called Les Hijabeuses, who talk about this and who are campaigning for this – and props to Haifa Tlili who also ran the symposium at Diversity House last year; she’s an academic and someone I consider a friend, who was continuously working on this piece in collaboration with other organizations.

It’s something that really hurt at a level…I hate the fact that people don’t know about this. I will be working on this and there will be ways to get involved with this and to let people know this is unacceptable, and that you again to Fare Net for stepping up on this and having a conversation about it. It was very bold last year to go to be in France and to talk about this which media doesn’t touch much on at all, quite frankly. There’s not a lot written about it ever, because France…The hypocrisy was staggering. You can’t seek to use women’s football as a shield and as a trophy, and then on the one hand exclude women when we know that the reasons behind it is gendered Islamophobia and it’s xenophobia and it’s not okay. That is something that enrages me like no other – well, like other things, definitely, but it’s something that I feel that many in the football community should know.

So just a quick recap: 2014, FIFA formally lifted a hijab ban that had been implemented since 2007, however Fédération Française de Football (FFF) denied that and said that in our own jurisdiction and in our own country we want it to be secular football. This is nothing to do with secularism, it has to do with preventing women from making their own choices about what they wanna wear, and it’s unacceptable. So, burn that. Burn!

Brenda: Burn.

Lindsay: Burn.

Shireen: Okay. So, last thing: if you can get one kit from anywhere in the world if you don’t already have it, what kit would you want? Latest model, or old, like, archival, or OLD. We can go retro here.

Lindsay: This is so hard! [laughs] 

Brenda: You’re so much more up on fashion.

Lindsay: I know.

Brenda: I guess I still have this nostalgia for the 1970 World Cup, the Brazil team. They didn’t have a women's team at that point because women’s football was still legally prohibited in Brazil. So I would really like a v-neck from the CBF kit because I actually like a v-neck because I don’t like things around my neck very high. So I would like that tailor-made for me by the CBF, with knee socks as well please!

Shireen: Oh yeah, for sure. Linz?

Lindsay: I have no idea. Lately I want them all, there have been so many good NWSL kits, that’s just what I’ve been paying the most attention to lately. The Chicago one, the Casey Short jersey is the next one I’m gonna buy if ever I can sell a few more subscriptions to Power Plays. But yeah, so maybe I’ll go with that. Right now that’s just been on my mind, the Chicago Red Star kits which are wonderful. I also love the yellow Jamaican kits.

Shireen: Yeah.

Lindsay: I just think about that yellow and green, I just love their colors a lot.

Shireen: So I can be totally on-brand and predictable and you’ll hear groans from Brenda about this but I loved last year’s l’hexagone, the away kit for France with the little dots all over them, I loved it. The socks are adorable, they have stretched lace elastic in them, I was so cute in it, I was so cute in that kit. [laughs]

Brenda: Yeah.

Shireen: Also, if I could get my hands on a Zidane kit from ’98 or a Thierry Henry from ’98, Les Bleus, I would love to wear it. It’s retro enough for me. Anything before the year 2000 is I think what we consider retro now! But most importantly the Portland Thorns black kit is gorgeous and I have one and it is a stunning piece of art. By any other name BaoAn is on there. I love it. I love that team, I love what they stand for, and very much so the teams represent something political and I love it. Inherently we know football is political but those kits really come through. So yeah, I really went on-brand with this! Totally on-brand with saying Portland.

Brenda: Have you seen Inter Miami’s kit? Speaking of David Beckham.

Shireen: Not yet! Will I love it?

Brenda: I am feeling it. It’s black and pink. [Shireen laughing] I dunno if Posh Spice took care of that, you know, or whatever, but I think it’s pretty awesome.

Shireen: I haven’t seen it. I’m gonna Google it right now…Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, okay. I like the black one better, but yes.

Brenda: Right, right. Definitely the black one I like, but those colors for me are quite nice and there are flamingos on it, which feels cool to me somehow. [laughs]

Shireen: Definitely, definitely.

Brenda: The flamingos making a crest is so very MLS. [laughing]

Shireen: There’s one last kit that I would be remiss if I did not mention, the Burn It All Down soccer kit that Dr. Brenda Elsey specifically made for me with my number and my name, and we wore it at a conference together. I couldn’t play because my knee was a bit bummed – still recovering – but that was wonderful. We should get our own Burn It All Down kits, come to think of it.

Brenda: Yeah, we got that one years ago because we were supposed to play in a match, and yeah, we should definitely try the jersey route for Burn It All Down.

Shireen: Yeah, we should.

Brenda: Yup, yup, yup.

Shireen: Linz, are we gonna do orange?

Lindsay: I dunno. [laughs] I’m up for anything.

Shireen: Okay.

Lindsay: I think a Burn It All Down kit would be phenomenal and I would wear it proudly.

Shireen: [laughs] That’s awesome. So, we’re gonna wrap up and I just wanted to say, Football v Homophobia, congratulations on this day, we just wanna wish you all the best, thank you for the work you do. We’re so happy to be a part of this day and, again, I wanted to just mention that we know that in football and in life and in everything our struggles are connected, so we keep supporting and amplifying what you do, and thank you for all your support as well. On behalf of Dr. Brenda Elsey, Lindsay Gibbs; I’m Shireen Ahmed, thank you for having us today.