“Sven still has the date in his diary,” a Football Association spokesman said yesterday.
Uefa, European football’s governing body, will chair talks between the two national associations, but Gunes has said there is no point in the managers becoming involved. The England manager Sven Goran Eriksson is still prepared to travel to Switzerland on Thursday for a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Senol Gunes ahead of next month’s European Championship match, despite the latter’s reluctance to take part. It’s now a huge rarity for someone to say they don’t have a team.”. I think it started because there were a lot of good-looking players and snowballed from there.”Trizia Firoellino, 34 Chelsea fan since 1980s”Since all-seater stadiums, it’s become safer and that’s attracted more women It’s also become fashionable. Clubs are encouraging a family thing, and girls play football now, so get into it younger.”Louise Price, 23 Wolves fan since 2001″I really like all the passion, you feel part of something special – even when you lose. But Fulham’s attempt to woo women with a ‘ladies’ bag’ was dreadful – they gave us sanitary towels.”Christine Wardle, 44 Man City fan since 1970s”There used to be one women’s toilet in the ground, but new stadiums are much better.

women get mouthy, but we don’t fight.”Samantha Sweeney, 34 Fulham fan since 1980s”Nick Hornby made it cool to be a fan Before I had to drag my female friends. And it’s groups of women, not just tagging along with boyfriends … They still shout the same obscenities at the referee.”On the terracesClaire Holywell, 30 Liverpool fan since 1990s”Going to games is a lot more secure, the clubs look after women better and there are more toilets! It’s rubbish to say that we come because the men look good in shorts.”Elise Dawkins, 44 Leicester fan since 1980s”You do notice a lot more women at games nowadays. She’s a better fan than most men and equally knowledgeable.”Mr Davies also pointed to the number of girls now playing football at school as a reason for the rise.But Mr Davies said swearing is just as prevalent as it has always been “People still say the same things.

A lot of women go because of their children now – they don’t just go because of their boyfriends or husbands.”My next-door neighbour has been going to Spurs with me for the past five years She’s a total diehard. The aim of the research, reported in the European Journal of Marketing this week, was to profile the different types of modern football supporters.Hunter Davies, the author and football writer, said: “Football has become a middle- class sport You’ve got to be well-off to follow it properly. Supporters are also more affluent, with one in three working as managers or professionals. A third of football followers have incomes of more than £30,000. Only 8 per cent earn less than £10,000 a year.The academics say that the emergence of football as big business means that clubs need to know more about their customers, just like any other business. A bit of aggro’s not going to bother me.”The researchers say that the increase in women fans is just one of several dramatic changes in the game over the past decade.

“Fulham’s always been a friendly place to watch football,” she said. “It’s just a great day out.”That was something 39-year-old Noriko McNish was hoping to discover. Mrs McNish, originally from Japan, was on her way to her first ever match with her Fulham season-ticket-holding husband, Andy Was she concerned about the atmosphere? “Not at all. If it was that I was after I’d go and watch rugby.”Fulham fan Theresa Dobbs, 43, has been going to matches since the 1970s. “It’s about the buzz, and seeing a good game,” she explained “It’s not about fancying the players. As supporters of both clubs mingled happily in the sunshine along the road that leads to the ground from White City underground station, it was clear that a sizeable proportion of the crowd was female and that they spanned the age range.Typical of the new generation of women supporters was Lisa Adams, a 25-year-old Manchester City fan who was there with her friends Denise Fuller and Sharan Anjla, and not a boyfriend in sight.