LENNART JOHANSSON was in Warrington on Thursday to see Norway face Sweden in the the semi-finals of the European Women’s Championship. The game was exceptional. It was tense, passionate and brimming with talent. It was, as he might have said, a fine advert for the women’s game. Only he didn’t. Instead, the Uefa President issued one of the most patronising and deeply sexist statements the women’s game has had to suffer.

“There are so many companies who could make use of the fact that if you see a girl playing on the ground, sweaty, with the rainy weather and coming out of the dressing-room, lovely-looking, that would sell well,” Johansson said.

Now, why would he say such a thing? It sounds quite personal. Maybe he adores wet T-shirt contests. But really, we do not need to know about his private fantasies.

Johansson’s comments, in fact, were prompted by a suggestion that women footballers should wear tight shorts. This was an idea put forward by Sepp Blatter, the Fifa President, and one with which Johansson disagreed, calling it a joke and not a very good one at that. So, for about 14 seconds, Johansson held the moral high ground. Blatter has asked for tighter shorts before, but nobody really noticed because Blatter has a habit of asking for ridiculous things — such as bigger goals and no drawn matches. But if ever football looked to be run by two out-of-touch, ageing and insensitive gentlemen, it does now.

Perhaps Blatter and Johansson could be locked in a room to discuss in isolation the merits of sweat as opposed to a visible panty line, but everybody in football should be ready to rail against such insulting ideas. This month, Johansson said that the women’s game, about which he had been sceptical, had won him over. Now, such praise sounds suspicious. Has he been watching in the rain? Because what makes women’s football work?

It is only worth watching if it takes itself seriously. I used to play in a women’s league and found it disconcerting if a girl wore lipstick as she ran out on to the field of play. Very few did this, thankfully, and those that did were not very good players. Women who play football do so, overall, because they love the game, want to be athletic, to be part of a team sport and want to win.

In fact, many women considering playing football at a higher level or just thinking about playing the game at all will pause to reconsider in light of Johansson’s remarks. Instead of a crowd cheering on a team’s efforts, the ground might well be filled with leering lads with pornographic magazines under their arms.

At least those involved in football have not rushed to Johansson’s support. In part, this will be because this European Women’s Championship has been the most successful of all. Six hundred thousand viewers tuned in to a highlights package on BBC Two just past midnight on Thursday for a game that did not even feature England. The average gates for the first-round games were 7,184 compared with 4,660 when the event was held in Germany four years ago. A crowd of 18,000 is expected at Ewood Park for tomorrow’s final between Germany and Norway.

“Sponsors will be interested in women’s football because the girls are good at what they do,” Marieanne Spacey, the former England international now a BBC commentator, said.

Asked if women should use their sexuality to sell the sport, Geoff Thompson, chairman of the FA, responded: “I don’t think so, no.” The only way forward for the women’s game is more matches such as the one in Warrington. Ironically, many of the women in that game were particularly attractive as well as technically impressive. The sponsors were already drooling. They do not need Johansson and Blatter to add a sexual frisson.

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