Soccer is no longer just a male domain

So, European soccer's first ever female manager of a professional team has been given the sack after only two league games? What else did you expect? Come on, soccer is a man's business in a man's world. What would women know about it!

When 35-year-old Carolina Morace resigned last week as coach of Italian Third Division side Viterbese, just three months after her much publicised appointment and just two weekends into the league season, fans worldwide probably nodded sagely to themselves and muttered thoughts of the `I-told-you-so' variety.

Intriguingly, Italian media reaction was much kinder, focussing on Viterbese's controversial owner Luciano Gaucci, who has sacked 12 coaches in six years and who apparently prompted Morace's resignation by threatening to sack her closest collaborators on the day after Viterbese lost 5-2 away. The story of Morace's three month rise and fall is significant both in itself and as an indicator of the changing times in modern soccer. Her appointment may have been a European first but it would be a brave pundit who predicts it will be a European last.

Soccer is indeed a predominantly male world but that is changing. No one who attended last year's World Cup finals could deny that many of the France 98 finalists brought with them their own colourful, joyous and enthusiastic male AND FEMALE supporters. Female Nigerian, Jamaican, Colombian, Brazilian and Argentine fans, all brought fun, glamour, and atmosphere to the World Cup show.

French TV advertising executives, who had opted to withdraw a whole range of women-only products from the World Cup prime-time schedules, found themselves eating their hands as surveys showed that the French TV audience for the World Cup was 40 per cent female. Anyone on the streets of Paris on the night of July 12th - the night France lifted the trophy by beating Brazil - would probably agree. That trend is confirmed in Italy where surveys regularly confirm that 40 to 45 per cent of women follow soccer closely and consider themselves fans. The soccer world,

too, has changed irrevocably in media terms with women soccer writers and TV presenters no longer being considered a novelty.

Furthermore, this summer's women's World Cup in America proved a huge success, with crowds of 80,000 plus attending games. Female fans and soccer journalists are one thing but, of course, a professional female soccer coach is another altogether, a far more significant breakthrough into territory that has heretofore been considered exclusively male. After Morace's short lived spell as coach, commentators may be tempted to conclude that this territory will long remain so. Perhaps.

It may be worth making a few points re Morace, however. She is in good company. Among those coaches who have recently parted company with Gaucci are Nevio Scala, Yugoslav Vujadin Boskov and Alberto Bigon. Scala was the man who guided Parma from division two to the Cup Winners' Cup and the UEFA Cup titles in the early 90s. Boskov won the Spanish and Italian league titles (Real Madrid in 1980, Sampdoria in 1991) and is currently in charge of Yugoslavia. Alberto Bigon, meanwhile, guided Diego Maradona's Napoli to the 1990 Italian title. Such coaches are hardly amateurs, yet even they failed to match up to Gaucci's requirements.

It is also worth noting that Morace had not arrived at her coaching appointment by accident. A professional player since she was 12, Morace won 150 Italian caps and 12 league titles in a highly successful playing career that earned her a role as a regular Sunday night pundit for nationwide TV channel Telemontecarlo (a role to which she has returned following her resignation).

Time magazine recently suggested that Morace was one Italian woman likely to change the face of things in the next millennium. Despite her setback last week, that prediction could yet hold true.