Study shines new light on women's game

The full version of this article can be read in UEFA Direct 194

"There are so many statements about women’s football and we wanted to check if they were true," says Professor Daniel Memmert, executive head of the Institute of Exercise Training and Sport Informatics at the German Sport University Cologne.

That is the reason he gives for the study he has led, titled ‘A comparison of football-specific tactical performance of women and men in Europe’, which examined 12 high-level matches, six men's, six women's, from the perspectives of tactics and positioning.

Using key performance indicators including number of passes, number of successful passes, pass success rate, number of crosses, number of dribbles, number of clearances and number of shots on target, findings show similarities between the genders.

"With our event and position data, nobody can see if it’s a women’s or men’s match," says Professor Memmert. "Of course, men are stronger than women – that’s obvious – and we didn’t have physical variants like endurance and speed, but from the tactical and cognitive points of view, the football seems very similar. This is surprising and that’s good for women’s football."