Quick breaking news: Ted Lasso fucking rocks. It's an elite show, and it's honestly worth an Apple+ subscription (if only for a month). It'll give you the whole spectrum of emotions in a way that I've never experienced in a show that holds itself out to be a comedy. It's wonderful, and I'm excited to see where they go with the show. As of my writing this, I have one episode left of the first season.
That Ted Lasso emotional spectrum touches on workplace issues, sexism, relationship troubles, personal development, and everything in between. This post is going to focus on a narrow subsection of sexism. In Season 1 Episode 9, Rebecca Welton (the owner of the club at the center of the show, if you are unfamiliar) briefly mentions the lack of women in prominent roles in top-tier English football. She says, "There's, like, four of us: me, Karen, Delia, and Posh Spice." When she said it, I had no idea how these women fit into the bigger picture of English football. So I thought we'd jump into a deep dive to learn something.
Rebecca is a fictional character, and I'm not really interested in learning about her backstory other than what they I gather by watching the actual show. As for the other three, though, I wanted to learn more about these women, their relationships to the EPL, and how they got involved in top-tier football.
I think Posh Spice, alternatively known as Victoria Adams Beckham, is going to receive a similarly brief summary. Unless I'm mistaken, I think her primary relationship to English football is the fact that her husband had a 20-year football playing career that included twelve seasons at Manchester United. If I'm missing something here, please drop a comment below.
When I was trying to uncover who "Karen" was, some Google searching led me to think that it was referring to Karen Carney, "an English sports journalist and former professional footballer" presently employed by Sky Sports. I'm probably oversimplifying the comparison here, but it seems like Rebecca could have Americanized this quote by replacing Karen with the host of NBC's soccer coverage, Rebecca Lowe.
Carney, to her credit, had a career that was not quite as long as David Beckham's but saw her appear for Birmingham City FC, Arsenal, Chelsea, and the English national team. She hails from the West Midlands, and Birmingham City seems to have been her home club (she joined them when she was eleven years old). Between her professional career, her national team career, and her work in broadcasting, she was appointed the honor of MBE in 2017.
If I can peel back the curtain and be honest, I'm a little sad to have learned that Posh Spice and Karen Carney do not own clubs in real life the way Rebecca Welton owns one on Apple+.
Delia Smith, however, is "famous for her role as joint majority shareholder at Norwich City FC." If I can read through the British-American language differences, I believe she dropped out of school in London at age sixteen to become a hairdresser and then a waitress and a chef. She moved into a food writing position at a British magazine, and then married the editor of the magazine. That man was Michael Wynn-Jones, who will appear more in the next paragraph. From the magazine, Smith jumped to an impressive career that spanned television, cookbooks, and supermarket commercials.
It's obviously impossible for me to know for sure, but I get the sense that Smith's involvement with Norwich is at least partially a product of her involvement with her husband. He went from running that aforementioned magazine to owning a publishing company, and he sold that company for the equivalent of $13.4 million today. Wynn-Jones and Smith have owned Norwich since 1997, and by all accounts they are as passionate as a fan base could ever want its owners to be. Who among us wouldn't want their owner to drunkenly grab a stadium microphone and shout "A message for the best football supporters in the world: we need a 12th man here. Where are you? Where are you? Let's be 'avin' you! Come on!"
It's also worth noting that Wynn-Jones and Smith are likely the least wealthy EPL owners, which to me makes them worthy of knowing. They're richer than I'll ever be, sure, but they aren't "live on their own private cruise ship" rich like Roman Abramovich or Sheikh Mansour.
And, to wrap this up, I'll give you an M. Night Shyamalan twist: the "Karen" that Rebecca mentioned was actually probably "Karren" as in Karren Brady, the "British business executive and television personality" who was the managing director for Birmingham City FC and is now the vice-chairman of West Ham FC. She's fucking awesome. Her complete name is The Right Honorable Baroness Karren Rita Brady, CBE. Brady's CBE is is two steps above Karen Carney's MBE, although the two honors are for different types of achievements.
Karren's backstory is complicated for me, because I don't know whether I should be in awe of her achievements or be cynical about them. She was born in London to rich parents, but those parents were Irish and Italian immigrants. She attended day schools and boarding schools that I presume were restricted to students from well-off families, but she entered the workforce instead of continuing on to one of the elite English universities. She apparently had a knack for advertising sales (which I especially love), but her first big client was a publishing company affiliated with her father. I'll be positive and focus on the bravery that must have been required for a young woman to dive headfirst into the male-dominated field of English football.
As the story goes, Karren saw a news story about Birmingham City FC being in receivership (that's British speak for bankruptcy, shoutout to Force India) and convinced her then-boss to buy it and put her in charge. He did, and at age 23 she became managing director of a Premier League team that traced its history all the way back to 1875. Birmingham bounced between the Premier League and the Championship (one level below) during Karren's tenure, and she moved to West Ham in 2010.
West Ham, like Birmingham City, has a long history of football competition (West Ham began in 1895). The club have competed in the Premier League in ten of the eleven seasons since Karren joined (including the current season). They've qualified for the Europa League twice in that time, and their current roster includes household names like Yarmolenko, Souček, Cresswell, and Fabianski. It would be fairly stunning if West Ham were relegated from the Premier League anytime in the near future, which makes Karren's tenure an unquestionable success.
I'm going to close this post by just totally ripping off a paragraph from Wikipedia, because I think it summarizes the whole point that I wanted to research this post. Karren Brady is amazing:
Brady has long been renowned for championing the cause of women in business. She has repeatedly called upon her fellow female professionals to help those trying to make their way in the business world. She explained in this Guardian column: “Any board executive can forget just how many people helped them get where they are. Those women who have got to the top need actively to ensure there is a pipeline of younger women, whether by networking or mentoring, who in turn is encouraging those below them. Women in the boardroom must not forget how many challenges and difficulties we have overcome, and we should share our coping strategies."
“It is critical to create opportunities to identify talented women in business, then support them to develop their confidence to aim for the boardroom. We need to look outside the corporate mainstream, at female entrepreneurs and self-employed businesswomen, who can inject different insights and diversity to any board.”
Brady famously told the Independent: "If you don't have a woman on your board you should write to your shareholders and explain why. Tell us how many women you've interviewed and what skills they've been lacking, because that will give us some basis to teach the new generation of women in business." Brady was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to entrepreneurship and women in business.
