J\u00fcrgen Klopp liked to call Liverpool\u2019s fearsome meetings with Manchester United “the salt in the soup.” On Sunday the fixture carried an added visual message as Liverpool wore a new shirt tied to the “Play On” campaign.<\/p>\n
The “Play On” initiative was launched by sports marketing company Octagon in 2023 as a way of “strengthening the global spotlight on women\u2019s soccer.” A club statement cited the campaign alongside sponsor activity, quoting a press release: “Our research discovered that girls quit sports typically due to stigmas imposed by society,” and “Girls dropping out of sports is a concern to us all, and by featuring elite male players in the \u2018Play On\u2019 campaign, Standard Chartered and Liverpool showed that everyone\u2014from the top down\u2014has a responsibility to support and encourage girls to play on.”<\/p>\n
The shirt arrives against a background of scrutiny around resource allocation between Liverpool\u2019s men\u2019s and women\u2019s setups. The club\u2019s men were, according to the draft details, Arne Slot\u2019s Premier League champions treated to the largest spend in football history , with around \u00a3415 million ($557.2 million) splashed on an array of talent all over the pitch. That level of investment prompted debate while departures dominated Liverpool\u2019s women during the same transfer window.<\/p>\n
Two examples underline the turnover: Taylor Hinds started each and every WSL game last season but was allowed to join Arsenal on a free transfer over the summer. Olivia Smith also headed to north London, although Liverpool did extract a world-record \u00a31 million fee from the Gunners. <\/p>\n
Wearing the “Play On” shirt against Manchester United was a visible endorsement of an initiative designed to focus attention on the women\u2019s game. The club and its partners framed the move as part of a broader responsibility to encourage girls to remain involved in sport, while critics point to player exits and disparity in spending as the context in which the campaign is unfolding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liverpool wore a special ‘Play On’ shirt versus Manchester United amid scrutiny over women’s team…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969],"tags":[1161,1160],"class_list":["post-3905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-play-on","tag-taylor-hinds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}