A Woman's Game

The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Women's Soccer

By: Suzanne Wrack

Narrated by: Jennifer Ness

A comprehensive history charting the rise, fall, and rise again of women's soccer

Women's soccer is a game that has often been relegated to the margins in a world fixated on gender differences above passion and talent. It is a game that could attract 50,000 fans to a stadium in the 1920s, was later banned by England's Football Association grounds for being "unsuitable for females," and has emerged as a global force in the modern era with the US Women's National Team leading the charge.

A Woman's Game traces this arc of changing attitudes, increasing professionalism, and international growth. Veteran journalist Suzanne Wrack has crafted a thoroughly reported history which pushes back at centuries of boundaries while celebrating the many wonders that women's soccer has to offer.

With the enormous success of the World Cup, eighty-two million US viewers for the USWNT against Netherlands in the 2019 World Cup Final, enlightened and outspoken players like Megan Rapinoe helping raise the profile of the game across the world, and a fully professional top-tier league going from strength to strength in both the US and the UK, the time cannot be better for this in-depth look at the beautiful game.

©2022 Suzanne Wrack (P)2022 Tantor

A good early history of English soccer but lacks everywhere else

First I really like the first two chapters of the book. They chronicle the early history of women playing in organized soccer (or football if you are European) matches in England. It is well researched setting the time of the place and the press reaction, all research I imagine was not easy to find and analyze.

But after that the book loses its path not sure if it wants to be a history of women’s football, history of the English women’s soccer, or the conditions surrounding the women’s game. There is a good chapter on Scandinavian women’s teams and title 9 regarding the U.S. but other than that it just focuses on the national English women’s team and the various female equivalent league teams. Latin America, Asia, and Africa women teams are skipped over expect for mentions of their participation in tournaments. U.S. soccer has such a minor role in this book despite being the nation that has had the most advancement and success in the world.

And oh boy does the author in the middle book just has to remind you that she went to the Paris World Cup. She writes about it personally and detailing it into a blog or sorts. We don’t need specific game details, the environment the author saw is enough to connect it to the book’s analysis. And you can tell this book was written in 2022, as mentions of the Covid pandemic and recent English scandals are largely discussed.

So the book is mixed, starting as history but ending in social sport analysis of the game’s growth. It is a nice read in the beginning and you can stick with it I say. But the narrator for this book is terrible! A British voice lady who speaks softly in a single tone the whole book. This is so bad when she reads long quotes from the book, making it impossible to tell if the author wrote what the narrator says or if she is quoting a player. It doesn’t help that the author inserts herself in the book writing in the first person, but the narrator’s job is to able to differentiate the two for the listener. Terrible narrator.

Great Book

not what I excepted and was greatly satisfied. it was a history lesson in soccer.