First Female In History Managing Men’s Game Today

By: chris | February 18th, 2009

After the Marta hullabaloo earlier in the week, it didn’t take long for someone to send that gender barrier crashing down. At least not before she puts it back up again the next day.

Donna Powell is a 27 year old teacher moonlighting as a turnstile operator at Fisher Athletic, a semi-pro Blue Square South (6th tier) side located in London, and, as a reward for raising £500 for the less-than-wealthy club, will become the first ever woman, supposedly, to manage a professional men’s team today. Semi.

And though she’s going to be the first woman in history to take charge of a professional men’s game (finding this incredibly hard to believe that nowhere, absolutely nowhere, has this happened before – particularly at the semi-pro level), she’s got a brazenness to tickle Mourinho’s heart.

“I am confident I can do well – I already run a boys’ football team. I am no shrinking violet and do not suffer fools lightly.”

“Sure, I’ll be nervous – I realise there’s a difference between kids’ football and the Conference South but I see it as football is football no matter how old they are – and I know my stuff.”

She certainly is not and does not. Even though Blue Square South may not be knocking on the Prem’s door anytime soon, I’d say that’s equivalent to boasting “I already run a high end showgirl act” before slapping on the manager’s tag from a strip joint dubbed “The D-Minus Squad”.

And this blooming flower isn’t shy about her desired tactics, either:

“I’ll be picking the team and they’ll be playing my way, none of this long ball nonsense – we’ll be passing the ball on the floor, playing the game the right way.”

A for effort and enthusiasm, but I can count on one hand the number of Prem teams which can competently put the ball on the floor, much less those languishing in Blue Square relegation zones. (Though maybe she’s the one to turn around Chelsea?)

She’s also going to be swapping the 3-5-2 for a standardized 4-4-2. She really does not screw around.

Even better than her declarations of grandeur, however, is that she’s got a wiki page already, and raising some cash has won her a new title:

Donna Powell (born 1971 or 1972) is a female English football manager.

So if I win a raffle to hang out with Cardiff City for a day of training with an honorary shirt, does that make me a professional athlete?

A nice “milestone”, I guess, but you’d hope the first woman would be deserving of a seat on the bench rather than having raised a very modest sum of money. At least Marta can claim to have proven her skills worthy of such a test. For only 500 quid anyone here could be managing a semi-pro side. And really…think that just about sums it up right there.