A huge gap that needs to be filled when discussing football culture is the topic of women’s football. No previous research about football fan culture touches on women’s football, thus the need to talk about it. Despite it not being as popular as men’s football, it has been growing slowly in England with the England women’s national team being ranked top 5 in the world for women’s teams. With the women being football powerhouses like the men, they deserve to be talked about as well.

Luckily, I was able to attend the Manchester City women vs. Arsenal women’s match at the Borehamwood FC stadium, just outside of London, to experience this side of football.

Overall, the experience of a women’s match seems to be a toned down version of a men’s match.

The stadium in Borehamwood was much smaller compared to the large stadiums of the Premier League. It can easily be concluded that these games are played at smaller stadiums because of the smaller audience that women’s football normally gets.

As I have been to football matches before, I felt more relaxed walking in. Unlike at a men’s game, fans could sit wherever they wanted to. There were not any assigned seats. So, I walked over to the section where I spotted the other City fans. I felt a little relieved when I saw them there. It shows that women’s football games still have a home and away support.

Despite the smaller crowd, there was still a pretty noticeable atmosphere that was created from the supporters that were at the match, especially since the stadium was almost completely filled as well. Every City fan was welcome to take folded up cardboard that were decorated to City. During the match, they were used to make more noise during the chants and songs that were sang during the match.

As there is singing at the men’s football games, there was singing during the women’s games. Like any football team, there the City women’s supporters. What was really interesting was the presence of a drum that was banged during some of the City chants. As this is something not normally seen at a big men’s team match, most likely because of rules and regulations at the larger stadiums, more additions to the chants could be something special added to the women’s team match atmosphere, especially when there was only a little bit of noise coming from the Arsenal women’s supporters.

Of course, the most noise came from when a last minute goal was scored by Arsenal. While it was sad to see a personal favorite team of mine lose, the match experienced was overall very enjoyable.

As an American, there is always a little bit of a different experience. From past experiences, if a football fan were to mention they were coming from America to watch, the English fan would get excited to meet someone coming from a country where football is not a big part of the sports culture.

Being an American, one interaction led me to being interviewed for a podcast for the Manchester City Women’s Supporters Social Media pages. As another fan, I was happy to share my experiences and thoughts.

Some may wonder why would someone talk about women’s football as a part of the football culture in England.

The answer would be that the women’s side of the sport is gaining popularity. As the men are, the women are ranked high in the world rankings and have a large shot to win the Women’s World Cup. If they were to win it in France this year, there could be a new sense of pride in England.