The date is 31 July 2022.The lights are glis tening, the grass is green, and Wembley Stadium is buzzing with the excited murmur of a record-breaking 87,192-dense crowd. After an energyinducing, history-making few weeks, England’s Lionesses are playing Germany in the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 Final.
It’s a tense moment. We’ve been here before. In 2009, Germany and England went head-to-head in the final of the Women’s Euros. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be: Germany took home the trophy with a 6-2 win.
It’s 13 years later and the Lionesses turned that around. Pulling in a peak audience of 17.4 million viewers on BBC One, the 2022 final was the most watched women’s football game on UK television in history. On a Sunday afternoon in the midst of a heatwave, the outside world stood still, quiet and reflective. We laughed as we lip-read Jill Scott’s incredible exclamation of “fuck off, you fucking prick”, sat on the edge of our seats as Germany scored that nail-biting first goal, and cried, “Football’s coming home”
