The UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 kicked off with an image of the England captain, Leah Williamson, beamed onto Tower Bridge, one of the most recognisable landmarks in the country. “You’ve never seen an icon like this” ran the tagline.
The tournament’s first match, featuring the Lionesses against Austria, took place in front of over 68,000 supporters at the home of Manchester United, Old Trafford.
These moments are evidence of women’s football’s move to the mainstream; more milestones on the game’s journey towards becoming firmly embedded in the nation’s sporting consciousness.
“That moment at Old Trafford, when the teams walked out and we sat there singing the national anthems, and I looked around, my heart was beating just a little faster. It was a little special,” the FA’s Director of Women’s Football Baroness Sue Campbell tells the Mirror.
When the hosts beat one of the favourites for the title, Norway, by a tournament-record scoreline of 8-0 in Brighton, a new wave of patriotic euphoria was unleashed.
“To win the tournament would be phenomenal, it would turbocharge everything we’re trying to do,” says Baroness Campbell.
“But equally, I wouldn’t underestimate that just taking part and staging these Euros here in England is having a big, big impact in so many different ways, the games projecting itself to people.”
The games - having been delayed by a year due to the restrictions wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic - are taking place amid nationwide excitement and in a carnival atmosphere.
The women’s game has found its place in the big time.
“It’s sending a message that women’s football isn’t just great to play but great to watch,” Baroness Campbell says.
“I think - and I am hoping - that young girls are completely inspired by watching our players and seeing them competing at the highest level.
“I’m passionate about girls and women's opportunity in life, not just football, and I think it’s wonderful to be able to see woman as players, as referees, coaches, succeeding on a major platform like that because it says to the girl; one, you might want to play this game but also you can lead, you can manage, you can referee, you can play, you can do whatever you want.
“Girls should have the same opportunities, not better, not worse, just equal. Equal opportunity to play our national game and to perform on a major stage like that, I think it sends a phenomenal message to youngsters.”
Look around and you’ll see England now features record numbers of women and girls playing football, record attendances and viewing figures for matches, a full-time professional league and, to top it all off, one of the finest international sides in the world.
The sport’s journey has been taken at hypersonic speed over the past couple of years - Covid notwithstanding. Since the Lionesses’ 2019 World Cup semi-final defeat to the United States, players like Williamson and Beth Mead have become household names.
The Women’s Super League is a now a regular fixture on the BBC and Sky Sports and has featured some of the game’s greatest global superstars including the USWNT’s Alex Morgan and Tobin Heath as well as Vivianne Miedema and Pernille Harder - the world’s most expensive women’s football player.
“We went out to get a broadcast deal and we got free-to-view, BBC, and we got Sky, investing considerably,” Baroness Campbell says.
“Now, people can see the game on a regular basis, they can see it on free-to-view and on paid television. The number of people watching the game is phenomenal.
“There’s a whole raft of things there which have gained this massive momentum and the Euros is just adding to that momentum.”
Since England’s bid to host this tournament went in four years ago, the landscape has changed utterly. A friendly between England and Germany at Wembley in November 2019 attracted some 77,000 fans - a record for the national side - while over one million people watched the WSL’s Manchester derby in October 2021 on the BBC.
While those achievements command the headlines, the tireless and committed work behind the scenes by the FA has paved the way for this generation of English footballers to showcase their talents and, ultimately, should facilitate the participation of women and girls across the country for years to come.
There are now over one million females under the age of 16 playing football across all of England and a further 2.4 million over that age. There are over 12,500 registered women’s and girls’ teams, according to the FA’s “Gameplan for Growth” final review and report which covers the period from 2017-2020.
The objectives of the gameplan were to double the number of female participants in football, double the attendances at matches and to establish England as a top-level competitive international side. All those objectives have been achieved… and then some.
The average attendance for a Lionesses match - pre-Covid - stood at around 24,000 according to the report. Average attendances around the fully-professionalised WSL, meanwhile, stood at over 3,000. That figure was up over 176 percent against 2016. That World Cup semi-final defeat in 2019 was watched by 11.4 million people on the BBC. Over 500,000 of the some 700,000 tickets available for the Euros, meanwhile, were sold before a ball was kicked.
The establishment of the WSL as a 12-team, professional league in 2018 was one of the catalysts behind the dramatic rise of the game. It has led to a higher standard of play, an influx of overseas talent to complement those homegrown and key sponsorship deals such as the ones signed with Barclays - the largest such deal in the history of women’s sport in the United Kingdom - with more following.
“We took the very big decision to take the Women’s Super League a full-time professional league,” Baroness Campbell says. “Up until that point, we had a few clubs who were full-time and professional but we had other clubs in the Super League which weren’t.
“What that did was created a momentum so that every player in the Women’s Super League is now contracted and plays the game full-time.
“The product has got better,” she says. “So we’ve attracted commercial interest; Barclays stepped in which was - and is still - a big important partnership for us. Then others followed like Vitality [sponsor of the Women’s FA Cup ].”
From there, the game has gone from strength to strength with the national team at the forefront, promoting a new generation of role models for aspiring players to look up to.
“They feel that is part of their duty, their mission is to grow the game,” says Baroness Campbell of England’s stars.
“You have to have that, particularly girls, confidence to believe they can make their dreams come true.
“We had an event at St. George’s Park, we opened up training and every grassroots club that the girls had started at, their first club they had ever gone to, we invited some youngsters along to watch training.
“Afterwards the players went over and they were out there probably an hour or so after training, where they were just talking to these young women, taking photographs, signing their books.
“One of our goalkeepers actually ran in and got a pair of gloves to give to one of the kids that said she wanted to be a goalkeeper, she said she didn’t have any gloves.
“There was a real kind of natural warmth and connection and I think that connection with our players and the audience is very real. It’s not something we have to work at, it’s very real because they’re real people.
“I think those role models are very important to girls, not just in terms of playing football and achieving what you want to in life.”
The FA’s Women’s & Girls’ Football Strategy 2020-2024 - entitled Inspiring Positive Change - promotes new objectives around participation, player pathways, elite domestic leagues and competitions, the national teams, coaching and refereeing.
“Doubling participation was something we wanted to achieve and have,” says Baroness Campbell. “But we want to make sure girls have equal access to the game in schools and clubs, so right now we are halfway through rolling out a schools programme.
“We are in 12,000 schools, our ambition is to be in every school to offer football for girls, part of the curriculum, also at lunchtime and after school. We don’t expect every girl to do it at lunchtime and after school but we want them to have the opportunity to experience the game in a positive way during curriculum time so that’s the big ambition with participation.
“Of course, if you’re going to grow the game in terms of participants, you’ve got to grow the number of coaches, grow the number of referees.”
The current number of female coaches in the country stands at close to 35,000 while FA-qualified female referees now number over 2,000.
“The second big push is the talent pathway,” says Baroness Campbell. “We want to pick them up and make sure that that talent pathway towards the professional game and England women’s game is really clear, signposted, and most importantly accessible to every girl that wants to be in it.
“Not a very constrained model which we’ve got at the minute; an open model, more diversity of young people.
“We want to continue to grow the professional game and invest in all of those other roles that are important in the game whether that’s physiotherapy, nutrition, psychology, and lifestyle management.
“There’s a lot of people we want to invest in to try and have a professional game where the number one priority is the welfare of the player.
“Are they getting an opportunity to be the best they can be?
“But not in any way exploiting them but empowering and enabling them to be the best they can be.”
