While England's women's team have made the entire nation proud following their historic third-place finish in the recently-concluded FIFA Women's World Cup in Canada, the English bosses have taken their excitement to a whole different level and in the process had to repent for the actions they took on social media.
A tweet from the official account of the England football team read:
Immediately after the tweet appeared online, the official account was hurled with criticisms for the sexist tweet, and the FA had no choice but to delete the post in an instant. The same wording in an online story was also changed.
The organisation behind England's national team, however, said that the message was taken out of context by everyone, and in the article posted in the official FA website, the line about "mothers, partners and daughters" originally depicted the event of the players being reunited with their families.
In the statement, the FA added: "The full story was a wider homecoming feature attempting to reflect the many personal stories within the playing squad as has been told throughout the course of the tournament.
"However, we understand that an element of the story appears to have been taken out of context and the opening paragraph was subsequently revised to reflect that fact."
Some of the twitter reactions:
One user wrote - "For those of you wondering what twitter would have looked like in the 50s, @england has helpfully obliged #Lionesses"
Technically Ron wrote - "SUPER AWESOME WOMEN MUST NOW RETURN TO THE KITCHEN BECAUSE WOMEN."
Feminist writer Mona Eltahawy posted - "The #ENG women's team went further than the men's has since 1966 and yet the FA sees just "mothers, wives, girls girls blah blah."
Actor Louise Brealey tweeted - Our #Lions go back to Premier League pre-season training today, but they have taken on another title - fathers, husbands and sons.
The most sarcastic rhetorical question came from Gregory Mendham, an Aerospace Engineer based in the UK:
Next time @England men are knocked out winless from a tournament, @FA will say they are returning to being "fathers, husbands and sons"?
— Gregory Mendham (@AeronautGreg) July 7, 2015The author of the online article, James Callow, said he was misinterpreted and rejected "any accusation of sexism".
"Sorry if I caused offence. The piece is intended to sum up a nice moment when players are reunited with their families," he posted on twitter.
"I reject any accusation of sexism and human interest is a big part of any sport reporting. Id have done the same for England men, absolutely."
The Three Lionesses finished third at the FIFA Women's World Cup 2015 in Canada after they beat World No 1 Germany 1-0 in the extra time in the third-place playoff game last week.
