“Does she know what she’s talking about?”

What Pien Meulensteen would consider an interesting experiment: if a female and a male TV commentator on different channels used exactly the same sentences when recording the summary of a football match. And then look at the difference in responses. ‘I think it would scare you, to be honest. That the female commentator is judged much more negatively.’

Born in the Netherlands, but raised in England, Meulensteen has recently been featured as a TV commentator on Match of the Daythe BBC football program that is at least as big in status as Studio Sport in the Netherlands. She is only 25 years old. And she is female.

A female football commentator on TV is still a rarity. Studio Sport doesn’t have one. Resistance is still there, she tastes. Not with the broadcasters, who say they would like women in their commentary team. “The BBC really pushes it.” It is more embedded in society, says Meulensteen. ‘People are not used to it. You still often hear things like, “Does she even know what she’s talking about?”

As a girl, Meulensteen wanted to ‘do something with TV’, perhaps become an actress. After she joined MUTV, the channel of the English football club Manchester United where her father was an assistant coach, when she was 15, she knew: she wanted to present a sports program. Female presenters were no rarity. ‘It never occurred to me that I could also become a commentator. You hardly heard women during football matches.’

She tells it via video calls from Wilmslow’s hometown (near Manchester) during an interview of more than an hour. She never sounds bitter, usually very cheerful. She speaks excellent Dutch with a Brabant accent, taught to her by her parents, who made the crossing when she was 4 because of father René’s work. She feels ‘mostly British’, but she has a Dutch passport and her name is unmistakably non-British.

Pin Mjulinstienher name is sometimes corrupted. Although her star is rising fast. She also provides commentary for Sky Sports, another icon of British media broadcasting live matches, and US CBS.

She was the very first journalist in England to interview Dutch coach Erik ten Hag when he took office as the new Manchester United coach for MUTV. For that, her agent moved a flight to Turin, where she would beat the Champions League final in the women. With excitement in her voice: ‘I still find it unbelievable that all this was arranged just like that. I had already canceled that interview, I thought it was not possible. They kept pushing from MUTV. My agent said, ‘Of course you’re going to do that.’

She hopes that Ten Hag will succeed at Manchester United, which for a long time was the measure of things in global club football, but has fallen far in recent years. “I think it will take him a year and a half to rebuild the team. I hope he gets that time and space.’

In Old Trafford, the stadium of Manchester United, Meulensteen watched almost all matches in her youth, because of her father’s work. Only between the ages of 10 and 12 she turned away from football for a while, because ‘girlfriends preferred to do other things’. But it always kept her busy. With a grin: ‘Even though my brothers never wanted to play football with me before. There was also no football team for my age. That’s why I started playing hockey.’

She walked in the players’ home between top players such as Ronaldo, Rooney, Van Persie, Van der Sar and her favorite, the ‘cute’ Mexican striker Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernandez. As a result, she never looked up to top football players. The Van der Sars were friends of the family.

She went on to study audiovisual journalism at university. A year later, at 19, she already had a job at the BBC. ‘I was able to spend two weeks on BBC Radio Manchester, which was two minutes from the university, so I was there as much as possible and left my number after that internship. I added, “If you need someone, let me know.”

Well, maybe we could use another assistant, she was told. “I immediately said, yes, I’ll do it, whatever it is. Because I knew: when you’re inside the BBC, you’re really inside.’

Within the BBC and in British society, more and more voices have been raised to give women the opportunity to be TV commentators at football matches. Jacqui Oatley was the first in 2007, followed by Vicki Sparks and Robyn Cowen. ‘They had to work very hard for that and paved the way for me. There is a lot of demand now for female commentators, I have really nice clients, I also do Champions League matches. I got lucky with that, but it didn’t fall into my lap. You have to be proactive, say: hey, here I am, this is my voice, is that something for you? I’ve networked a lot and now know a lot of people at different broadcasters.’

Her attitude is ‘typically Meulensteens’. Her father had no background as a professional footballer or top coach, yet became a key assistant to one of the greatest British coaches ever, Sir Alex Ferguson. Meulensteen: ‘I am just like my father. You have to go after something. Don’t be afraid of a ‘no’. Then you go to the next door, and if it stays closed, you go to the next one. My parents thought I should pursue my passion, even though there were hardly any female football commentators.’

Working in the men’s stronghold of football is still a survival quest for women. She tells how she started giving updates on semi-pro matches in the region, on BBC Radio Manchester. ‘I was in small stadiums where it was always cold, often very unsociable. There was never a woman in the comment box either. The men sitting there looked surprised. Nothing was ever said to me.’

It didn’t bother her, she says cheerfully. “I was so nervous I wasn’t paying attention at all. And: it’s also a bit different what I do. I have a different voice and I was only just 20. I don’t have the experience of those men. They can draw on competitions from the last century, compose beautiful sentences. I speak a bit more simply and I am from a different generation, who read more online than in books. I have to work on that. My style has yet to form.’

She has the feeling that as a young woman she has to prove herself even more. ‘My preparation for a competition takes four days. I don’t want to make any mistakes. When people hear a woman at a football game, they’re like, oh, I don’t know if I want this. If you make a mistake, they will see their prejudice confirmed. Then I think: I’m ruining it for myself and for other girls who might want to do this. Hence the extreme preparation. I now do three matches a week at different levels for women and men, so I don’t really have any free time anymore.’

After her first game before Match of the Day she enthusiastically announced that personal milestone on Twitter, but turned off the option to respond. “I deliberately don’t have the Twitter app on my phone. I’m afraid I’ll be reading the comments all day otherwise.’

Her father and brother Melle, who is now a professional player at Vitesse, warned her when she proudly forwarded some screenshots of compliments on social media after one of her first matches. “They said, ‘Don’t read it. Beneath those nice reactions is always a negative one and it sticks.’ Correct. Since I’m new, I’m still a bit unsure. So it gets in my head.’

She has two consultants who listen back to all her comments and then discuss with her what went well and what went less well. She is ‘super ambitious’ as there is still a world to be won for female TV commentators, including in England. ‘You still only hear one woman per broadcast of Match of the Day and that is still the case with a match between the smaller clubs. Also on Sky there is never a woman who does the top of the weekend. Women are still lower in the hierarchy, also because there are many more men who do this work and often for a long time. The audience may not be ready yet, although you have more and more female viewers. Maybe a station should just do it once, put a woman on such a topper.’

She’s not ready for that yet. Grinning: ‘I would prefer that as few people as possible listen. It really takes another hundred games, at least, before I’m at a good level. But I do think there will be more opportunities for my generation.’

Arno Vermeulen, football chief of Studio Sport, once said: the public simply wants to hear a low voice. Meulensteen: ‘I understand that somehow. It’s not pleasant when someone is screaming. I have to think a little more about how I react to a nice goal than a man. Apparently I have the right voice. Viewers may also need to be more open to other voices. Women have been commenting on tennis and hockey matches for decades and you don’t hear about it anymore. Football used to be a real men’s sport, but not anymore, a lot of women’s football is also broadcast and more and more women are watching.’

She smiles again, after noting: “Male commentators can do women’s football very easily, but it seems harder to accept that a woman does men’s football.”

It is a mystery to her that there is still no woman in her native country at a football match on TV. ‘I don’t know how many women aspire to that in the Netherlands. There must be a good one, you would think? Well, give it a chance and young girls’ eyes will be opened and they’ll see that this cool job is for them too. I even get messages from girls who want this too.’

There is great solidarity among female sports commentators in England. They have an app group and have a monthly Zoom session in which they discuss what they are encountering. “There’s a lot of support, we think it’s fantastic when someone gets to do a really big race or get a nice job. That’s great for her and for all of us too.’

She can’t wait for the day when a female colleague can provide the commentary at Manchester United-Liverpool. ‘And that after that they just talk about the match and not for a second about the commentator. I don’t think this will last long. Mind you, they shouldn’t do it because it’s a woman, but because she’s good enough. I think: women who can do that well already exist in England. And hopefully one day I’ll be that good too.’