This French soccer ad is incredible. It shows men playing the sport when, actually, it’s a team of women. After the ad runs through a highlight reel of men making great plays, viewers are shown that editing software was used to superimpose the men onto the actual women in the original footage, as they scored goals and played very well.
Starring French players such as Antoine Griezmann and Selma Bacha, the commercial aims to challenge the inequality and perceptions of women’s sports, which are often belittled or binned off completely. The commercial was produced by ad agency Marcel for the multinational telecommunications corporation Orange, which has sponsored the French Football Federation since 2018.
AFP Sports Correspondent Simon Evans called the ad a “rare example of a brilliant football commercial.” Retired Australian soccer player Craig Foster tweeted, “Football is football. Sport is sport. Get into sport played by women.”
The advert is in promotion of the Women’s World Cup, which is due to be held in Australia and New Zealand and will begin on July 20.
People have been reacting to the ad on social media, and it’s been widely praised.
A recent report by Flashcore found that despite women’s football becoming bigger, both in terms of recognition and the number of teams participating (32 this year compared to 24 in 2019), there are still inequalities that female players are facing in comparison to their male counterparts, such as pay.
In their report, they found a shocking pay gap between the highest paid female and male player. Sam Kerr was paid £400,000 while Kylian Mbappe was paid £79 million. However, its prize money has been increased by FIFA from  £23.6 million to £86.5 million. This means there has been a 267 percent increase in the female players’ pay from the last Women’s Word Cup.
All of this positivity comes on the back of England’s massive win at the 2022 Women’s Euros, which was the most-watched women’s football game in UK TV history.
The win led to girls being given the opportunity to play soccer at school after the Lionesses signed a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak asking him to make the pledge that there would be no barriers for school girls who wanted to play the sport.
(featured image: screengrab)
