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Well - all women's football in this country used to be entirely amateur. Since 2009, there have been contracts for the main squad - giving salaries of £16k p/a. Some of the squad also have part-time jobs or their own businesses - in order to receive the salary they are not alowed to work more than part-time hours outside of the team.
Claire Rafferty is an analyst with Deutsche Bank in the City
Jo Potter is an FA skills coach
Jade Moore owns her own Sports Therapy business
Eniola Aluko recently qualified as a sports and entertainment lawyer (she's waiting til she retires from the team to work in that field).
Bruce is absolutely right abotu the purpose of that press release. It was about them returning to 'normal' life - and it clearly wasn't intended as anything negative - but damn was it clumsy. Particularly given the issues around acceptance of women in sport, and in particular football - women's sports get a fraction of the attention that men's sports do (in this country anyway), female athletes get paid a fraction of what male athletes get paid - and the prizes and accolades are similarly tiny in comparison to those showered on the men.
Basically, there has been, for a very long time, a cultural attitude towards women's sports that suggests they are a novelty and somewhat frivolous and unnecesary - unlike the serious and hero-making business of men's sports.
The ban on women playing on FA grounds was lifted the year I was born - 42 years later and women's football is only just starting to get anything like the recognition it deserves - can you imagine offering a male footballer a salary of 16k a year?
42 years and the FA are still putting their collective foot in it when it comes to women's football.
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