• ‘Women are getting more beautiful,’ says Brazil women’s game official • ‘They go in the field in an elegant manner,’ says Marco Aurelio Cunha

Marco Aurelio Cunha, the head of co-ordination for women’s football in Brazil, has said the growing success of the women’s game is down to players looking “more beautiful” by putting on make-up, doing their hair and wearing shorter shorts.

Cunha’s comments came in the aftermath of Marta’s record 15th World Cup goal, a feat that was greeted with barely a shrug in her homeland, where the men’s game dominates.

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Cunha told Canada’s Globe and Mail that he hoped the game would soon get more attention in Brazil because the way players present themselves is now making it more aesthetically pleasing.

“Now the women are getting more beautiful, putting on make-up. They go in the field in an elegant manner,” he said. “Women’s football used to copy men’s football. Even the jersey model, it was more masculine. We used to dress the girls as boys. So the team lacked a spirit of elegance, femininity. Now the shorts are a bit shorter, the hair styles are more done up. It’s not a woman dressed as a man.”

Cunha’s comments echo those made by the outgoing Fifa president Sepp Blatter in January 2004. He said: “Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. They could, for example, have tighter shorts.

“Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they already have some different rules to men – such as playing with a lighter ball.

“That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in fashion?”