England’s top female footballers don’t like tidying hotel rooms. Such is their aversion to clearing up their belongings, in fact, it’s become a point of principle not to do it. But the Lionesses aren’t simply a hotelier’s nightmare – the informal no-pack rule grew into one of the key psychological tricks that inspired them to European Championship glory on home soil last year, during a lengthy stay at The Lensbury in south-west London. It’s sure to be in use again this summer at Queensland’s Novotel Sunshine Coast Resort, as England attempt to win the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. After all, why bother packing if they don’t intend to leave?
“That was something we really enjoyed doing: not packing our suitcases, leaving our stuff exactly where it was,” Georgia Stanway tells FFT, a smile cracking across her face at this small act of rebellion. “It was never really spoken about, but for every matchday minus one, we would travel to a different hotel, and it became tradition to leave everything unpacked at our base hotel.
“It was where all of our clothes were and where everything was unpacked. We had made the rooms our own and made it the Lionesses’ hotel, and there was always a bit of, ‘Are we taking our bags?’ But it became normal to leave them because we knew we were coming back. That meant we were coming back to the hotel for the final.”
It may seem to be but a minor detail in a campaign that brought England’s women the first major trophy in their history, but the confidence conveyed in such an act speaks volumes about the bubble of positivity that manager Sarina Wiegman has created around her team. At first, it was leaving their rooms unpacked; then it was proving on the pitch that this was more than a superficial gesture, by going all the way to the final.
In major tournaments, when the finest of margins can dictate whether a team progresses or crashes out, having that inner belief can provide the extra push to get over the line. “Over the course of the 10 years I’ve played with England, we have definitely changed mentality-wise more than ability-wise,” defender Alex Greenwood tells FFT. “I think the ability has always been there – we’ve always had enough top-level players to compete with the world’s best teams – but I don’t know if the mentality or the ruthlessness were there.
“Sarina has changed so many things about England and how
