What EXACTLY did Northern Ireland women’s manager Kenny Shiels say about females being more emotional than males – and what was the context?

Kenny Shiels, manager of the NI women’s football squad, has been castigated extensively after he made a remark earlier in the week about women being more emotional than men.
By Adam Kula
Published 15th Apr 2022, 17:31 BST
Updated 15th Apr 2022, 17:44 BST
PACEMAKER PRESS BELFAST 12-04-2022: Northern Ireland Women v England Women FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 Qualifiers. Northern Ireland's Kenny Shiels during the game at the National Stadium, BelfastPACEMAKER PRESS BELFAST 12-04-2022: Northern Ireland Women v England Women FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 Qualifiers. Northern Ireland's Kenny Shiels during the game at the National Stadium, Belfast
PACEMAKER PRESS BELFAST 12-04-2022: Northern Ireland Women v England Women FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 Qualifiers. Northern Ireland's Kenny Shiels during the game at the National Stadium, Belfast

It came against the backdrop of his team losing 5-0 to England in a women’s World Cup qualifier.

During a post-match press conference, Mr Shiels pointed to the fact that some of those goals had come in fairly quick succession: 26 minutes, 52 minutes, 60 minutes, 70 minutes, and 79 minutes.

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Just days previously, NI had conceded three goals in the space of nine minutes when they lost 3-1 to Austria.

In the press conference Mr Shiels made the following comments (while some other media have paraphrased what he said, these are his verbatim remarks, and the News Letter reproduces them here for the record):

“In the women’s game you’ll have noticed – I’m sure you will, if you go through the patterns – when a team concedes a goal, they concede a second one within a very short period of time.

“Right through the whole lot, the whole spectrum of the women’s game, because girls and women are more emotional than men, so they take a goal going in, they, they don’t take that very well.

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“So if you watch, you go through the stats – which journalists love to do, going through stats – and you’ll see teams conceding goals in 18 and 21 minutes, and then in 64 and 68 minutes.

“They group them: because that’s an emotional goal.

“So we conceded in 48. We’d three in seven minutes, was it? Or three in nine, on Friday [in 3-1 defeat to Austria] and we were conscious of that.

“When we went 1-0 down, we killed the game and tried to just slow it right down to give them time to get that emotional imbalance out of their head.

“And that’s an issue that we have – not just Northern Ireland – but all countries have that problem.

“I shouldn’t have told you that.”

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It was these remarks which sparked widespread outrage among commentators, including the head of public funding body Sport NI.

Write to letters@newsletter.co.uk to share your views.

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