Clermont Foot has since hired another woman, Corinne Diacre, to replace Costa. Diacre, who has been an assistant for the French national team for the past seven years, is undoubtedly qualified, but her hasty appointment begs the question of whether Clermont wanted her for her coaching credentials or for her gender. It seems to confirm what Costa accused them of—hiring women primarily for the publicity, and after, to be “the face of the club” without power or authority.

It remains to be seen how Diacre will fare at Clermont, but this episode has already made it clear: women are not really welcome in football. Sexism is built into the sport, and it extends from front offices to the bars where women who know to call it football go to watch games. We are assumed to be with our boyfriends. We are met with snide remarks and knowing smiles—we’re only there, obviously, to watch attractive men run around and tussle with other attractive men. No woman could possibly like football the way men do, understand how it’s played, know its history, or appreciate the skill behind James Rodriguez’s goal against Japan or the evil genius of Robben’s drawn foul against Mexico. Forty-three percent of World Cup 2010’s global audience was female, but the people hired to write about, comment on, and narrate this World Cup remain almost exclusively male. The message is clear: only men are real fans; women are fangirls.

It’s true that Buzzfeed lists like “The 30 Hottest Bearded Men Of The World Cup” or “18 Sexiest Soccer Players To Look Out For This World Cup” don’t help matters. But they also highlight an underlying difference between men and women, and the ways in which they are perceived. Male sports fans can watch the game with a pundit’s keen eye and ogle the athletes (just think about Maria Sharapova), but women sports fans are defined by finding athletes attractive. To have even a chance at being taken seriously, women football fans have to keep their mouths shut, to pretend not to see how handsome some players are and keep their comments strictly to tactics and goals.

Television cameras show male fans regardless of appearance, but pans for pin-up girls when it comes to female supporters. Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images and Damien Meyer/AFP/Getty Images

The entire footballing world is set up to subtly promote this idea. Think about the last game you watched. Crowd reaction shots are part and parcel of World Cup coverage, from the despair of a missed opportunity to the euphoria of victory. The men come in all shapes and sizes, picked out of the crowd for their amazing costumes, their passion, or their despair. But the women? The women are almost always young and beautiful. When was the last time you saw ESPN or Fox Soccer Channel or Sky Sports show an older woman or even regular-looking woman in a football crowd? (I was taken by surprise when watching the Bundesliga on German television last season, where cameras show entire groups of older women in the crowd. Maybe it’s a demographic thing, or maybe the Germans just aren’t embarrassed about their grandmothers.) It’s another way of saying that women aren’t real fans, that their presence in the stands is of only superficial value. They are there to ogle and be ogled. Leave the football to the men.