It may have ended in defeat for England, but Hope Powell's team produced a first-half performance that signalled the nation's arrival on the big stage of women's football. In their first final in 25 years, England scored twice against a Germany team that won the 2007 World Cup without conceding a goal.
Against the masters of women's football – now seven times European champions and twice World Cup winners – England took on a side that had only once failed to win a competitive match since 1999, a 0-0 draw against Powell's side. Still, for the tear-stained cheeks of the women who were the latest team to succumb to the invincibles, those were minor consolations.
"We scored but we still lost, so who cares?" said a despondent Kelly Smith, who set up Karen Carney for England's first goal and then scored the second. "I'm tired, battered. We really believed we could win, every single one of us. We had our game plan, we had them panicking in the first half, but we didn't manage to do that in the second. We can hold our heads up high. No one expected us to get to this final, except ourselves. Hopefully, we've opened people's eyes with our first-half performance."
Smith, who scored three goals in this championship despite struggling with injury, admitted to wide-eyed wonder walking on to the pitch. "It really felt like a final with the crowd, the anthems, the balloons. I tried to take it all in and look around, because you're not going to get this opportunity too many times."
Germany, though, had been here before. Aggressive from the off, confidently clattering into English knees, this was their final, their party and they were damned if it was going to be spoiled by a team of upstarts who had never won a bean. A victory parade in Frankfurt had already been planned, and Germany's president Horst Köhler was on hand to celebrate at Helsinki's Olympic Stadium.
Behind the dugouts, friends and family of the England team blew their horns and banged their drums, singing in chorus for the women in white. In honour of the captain, Faye White, who played with a fractured cheekbone, the supporters also donned face masks. Outside the stadium teenage girls fired penalties into mini goals, the sugary smell of toffee-coated nuts pervaded the air.
Ballooning over the halfway line the German fans had hung a banner: England's NEID mare‚ it read, a reference to their coach, Silvia Neid. As Germany went two goals up after just 22 minutes, it certainly felt that way. England were visibly rattled as the opposition's substitutes stormed the pitch in celebration as if the trophy was already theirs.
England would not let it be that easy, with Smith and Carney making the score 3-2 after 55 minutes. Frustratingly though, whatever England came up with, Germany had more. As the fourth, fifth and sixth goals went in it was clear that Powell's side would not recover.
England were defeated by the best team women's football has produced. But the important thing is that they were there at all, not just for English football but for the increasingly competitive nature of the global game.
There is a feeling of momentum in the sport. The return of a professional league in the United States this year – pitting the best players in the world against each other from Kelly Smith to Brazil's female football genius Marta – has been a huge boost. And in Europe, Uefa has announced a new format for the European club competition, to be expanded to become the Champions League held in the same city and the same week as the men's final. For England there is the 2011 World Cup to look forward to, and the opportunity of finally being allowed to compete in the Olympics come 2012.
Mo Marley whose England team won the Under-19 European Championship this summer, said before the game that experience of playing in a final is vital before going on and winning it. Now England have been there, next time they will have that experience.
