“I guess the driving force behind doing this third Guinness world record is to show the incredible diversity of women’s football.”
Equal Playing Field has a simple message. It is in the name. How it promotes that message is the unique part. Between 27 June and 1 July, with the Women’s World Cup heading towards its climax, it will attempt in Lyon to break the world record for the biggest football match.
This will be its third attempt at a world record. The campaigning collective holds the record for the highest altitude football match, on Kilimanjaro, and the lowest, by the Dead Sea in Jordan. This though, is another level entirely.
“It’s a completely different challenge, in a way,” says Equal Playing Field’s Maggie Murphy. “At the top of Kilimanjaro, it was literally difficult to breathe. But in some ways, it was down to our training and our sheer will and teamwork.
“With this one, because we are trying to expand beyond a set of 30 interesting women and we’re trying to now embrace a city, a location, fans from around the world. We’re trying to complement the Women’s World Cup, we’re trying to engage media, we’re trying to work with coaches, referees – so many more moving parts.”
The task is massive. It needs 3,000 people to play and estimates it will take five days, playing non-stop day and night, with no half-time and with roll-on, roll-off substitutions for the duration. “When you actually start to break down 3,000-plus players, we’re looking at around 270 individual 30-minute time slots,” says Murphy. “When you think about the substitutions, never before has a fourth official worked as hard as they will do during our game. Because literally every half an hour there will be upwards of 15 to 20 substitutions.”
People are buying into the cause, with individuals and teams signing up. “We’re looking for both female and male players,” Murphy says. “We’re looking for men who are also supporters, male allies and champions of the game, and [people who] have completely different skill sets, backgrounds.
“We have some girls aged five that would like to come and play with their parents. And we have a couple of women in their 70s who have signed up as well. So all ages, all skill sets. We have pro players that are coming. We have complete beginners. And we have the UK parliamentarian women’s team that will be playing on Saturday.”
Lyon, the biggest-spending women’s football club, pioneers and hosts of the World Cup semi-finals and final, have handed over their training ground to the event and Twitter and Adidas are on board as sponsors.
“Maybe one of the challenges that we face is we’re not a big glossy charity event, we’re not a corporation,” Murphy says. “This isn’t a PR exercise. We’re literally asking for people who believe in the project to come join us.”
Countries where Equal Playing Field have run football camps – including Palestine, Jordan, Lesotho, Costa Rica, Vietnam and Greece – are seeking sponsorship or fundraising to be part of the attempt. Alongside it, they have access to workshops and skills and coaching sessions.
Adidas are funding the participation of five teams from five continents and the Association Football Development Programme is supporting the Costa Rican and Jordanian teams taking part.
Equal Playing Field, in conjunction with Fifa, is running a five-day training programme for referees wanting to break into international officiating.
These will run alongside the world record attempt, as will a series of workshops which will culminate in a summit on 5 July to look at the risks and benefits of the commercialisation and professionalism of women’s football, women in governance, women in coaching and many other aspects, drawing on the lessons of the week.
“We’re not trying to break a Guinness world record for the sake of breaking the Guinness world record – we’re trying to inspire,” says Murphy. “But also equip those players, coaches and referees with some practical skills so that when they go back home they also feel a little bit more empowered to take action to level the playing field themselves.
“So we hope that will inspire some players to go home and put themselves on referee courses or just to try out for the first team. But we also hope to inspire them to take action for others. So that might be to set up the girls’ team in the local school or help out with coaching at a local club. And just to get more involved and more committed to furthering the game.
“We’ll show that when the World Cup finishes, and the cameras stop running, that thousands of people will still be continuing to push the agenda and make sure women’s football doesn’t slide off it for another four years.”
