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Willie Kirk: Leicester City boss says women's football 'needs more games' to grow support bases
Leicester boss Willie Kirk believes the country’s top women’s teams “need more games” to continue to grow the sport.
Women’s Super League sides play 22 league games a season, with 11 at home.
Average WSL crowds have increased by 200% after England’s Euro 2022 triumph but Leicester’s biggest turnout at King Power Stadium this term is 4,007.
“To follow a team that only has one home game a month normally, it’s really difficult to build that momentum with your crowds,” Kirk said.
Women’s Football Weekend featured several bumper attendance figures, with 27,919 watching Manchester United thrash West Ham 4-0 at Old Trafford and 22,161 witnessing a Merseyside derby at Goodison.
On Sunday, 6,489 saw Aston Villa beat Kirk’s Leicester 5-0 at Villa Park and the Foxes boss admits his side do not get the “fantastic one-off crowds” others enjoy as they play every home game at King Power.
“Our crowds have been OK this year, I think they are continuing to improve,” added Kirk.
“It’s getting the balance between doing it [playing at a men’s stadium] every week or just doing it as one-offs. We prefer it every week at King Power because it’s such a great arena to play in.
“But I definitely think we need more games and I think the publicity around it can be better.
“Sometimes you can go a week and not really see any adverts or hear anything on radio channels or see anything on newspapers or websites – I think there’s got to be a bigger push collectively to do that.”
‘Four of last six winnable – it’s in our hands’
Having narrowly stayed up last season in their first-ever WSL campaign, Leicester are again enduring a relegation battle, bottom of the table with six games remaining.
They are two points adrift of Brighton, who have two games in hand. Reading are a further two points clear and Leicester host the Royals in a crucial encounter on Sunday (2 April).
“I think it was always a must-win,” Kirk says of this weekend’s meeting. “We’ve got six games left – I think four of them are winnable.
“We’ve got to be honest – we’ve got no right to beat Arsenal or Chelsea. We’ll go there and if we get a really ugly point, I’ll be delighted.
“If we win all four winnable games, we’ll stay up so it’s still in our hands. But one of those four games is this week and we’ve got to do everything in our power to make sure we get a positive result.”
The five-goal defeat at Villa was Leicester’s second heaviest loss of the season, behind an 8-0 home humbling by Chelsea, and Kirk admitted “the scoreline was a tough one to take”.
“The mood and the environment has always been really good and positive but I suppose there’s a bit of me that doesn’t want it to be good and positive this week, because it shouldn’t be,” he added.
“We shouldn’t be positive after a 5-0 defeat so I’m hoping I don’t find a positive and bubbly environment because that should hurt – and we should use that hurt to galvanise us.”
Original article published 27.03.2023 on the BBC Sport website.
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