Lioness’s sad critics are losers – 13-word riposte to silence stupid culture warriors | UK | News

I woke up on Sunday with the kind of hangover that makes you question every life choice, including the decision to ever own a duvet; dry-mouthed, one sock on, and your head humming like a broken fridge. I’d drank just enough to forget quite how many I’d had, but not quite enough to forget that England were about to play in the Women’s Euros final, a glorious, swaggering crescendo to a summer of brilliant football.

So there I was, horizontal, head throbbing, gently rehydrating, and psyching myself up to face the pub again when, against all better judgment, I tapped a YouTube notification that had appeared on my phone like a bad omen: Rod Liddle, speaking on Spectator TV.

In the grand tradition of doing things you instantly regret while hungover, reheating pizza, opening the messages you sent to your ex the night before, checking your bank account – I pressed play. And within moments, there he was. A man shaped more like a football than a footballer, offering his thoughts on the women’s game with all the authority of a homeless man shouting at pigeons in a park.

Rod, and others like him, have taken it upon themselves to turn women’s football into some sort of ideological battlefield – as if a well-timed tackle from Lucy Bronze is somehow an assault on his bizarre view of Western civilisation. His commentary isn’t just misplaced; it’s weird. Genuinely weird. The kind of weird that makes you think they need a hobby, or at least a pint. He trotted out, as ever, the bizarre line that women’s football is only “interesting” because it has more mistakes, as if that alone makes it worth watching.

Now, as someone who’s read enough of Rod’s writing over the years, I can tell you: volume of mistakes does not equal quality. By that logic, his columns should be considered works of avant-garde genius, rather than the half-cooked chortling pseudo-intellectual attempts at writing that they actually are. This peculiar obsession, the late-night tweets, the red-faced rants, the sweaty declarations that “it’s just not the same”, says far more about critics like Rod than it does about the game.

Because while Rod and his gang were moaning into their keyboards, the rest of us were actually having a brilliant time. I headed to a cracking spot in Bethnal Green, where the pints were lukewarm, the chants were loud, and the vibe was genuinely class. I knocked back a few Cruzcampos, partly in solidarity with the Spanish, partly because it was the only thing on tap, and mostly because football tastes better when it’s vaguely European and served in a plastic cup.

What really gets under the skin of the men who sneer at women’s football is the truth staring them dead in the face: that women can actually play good football. That the Lionesses don’t owe a single thing to blokes who haven’t kicked a ball since Year 6 but still think they’re Gary Neville with a Twitter account. That this is genuinely good football, and if they stopped sulking for five minutes, they might actually enjoy it.

But rather than simply say “not for me” and move on with their lives like normal people, they throw a fit. They write their odd columns. They go on YouTube, and sneer and sniffle. They clutch their pearls at the very idea of women filling stadiums and back pages. And what’s so achingly transparent is that they can’t even admit the real reason they’re angry. It’s not the misplaced passes or the occasional loose touch, plenty of men’s games are riddled with them too.

No, it’s that the game has moved on without them. It’s left them behind, mumbling into their flat pints about “the good old days” while everyone else is painting their faces, packing out fan zones, and actually enjoying themselves at women’s games! So, if you, as an Englishman, genuinely can’t bear the idea of England lifting a trophy because the players happen to be women, then you’re not a patriot, you’re not a purist; you’re just a loser.

You’re a moaner shouting at clouds while the rest of us are busy celebrating our country. This isn’t a culture war, it’s a football match. And the weirdest thing about the whole backlash is how desperately uncool and unmanly it all is. All this performative outrage, all these fragile takes, they just reek of a collective midlife crisis.

If you want to keep missing out, fine, that’s your choice. But don’t pretend you’re defending the soul of the game when all you’re doing is booing your own side because the striker’s got a braid instead of a buzzcut. I think Rod Liddle’s opinions on women’s football are perhaps better relegated to the Millwall fan forums he frequented in the early 2000s, alongside the bizarre statements he was wont to make on that site.

That’s where they belong: outdated, offensive, and irrelevant to the actual joy the rest of us are experiencing. Because really, as Big John, The Boshfather, put it better in 13 simple words than any culture warrior could: “Not woke mate, just cheering on some fellow English folk chasing their dreams.”