Reign of the Lionesses: How European Glory Changed Women's Football in England

By Carrie Dunn

Acclaimed author Carrie Dunn, one of the most respected voices in women' s football, brings us a unique insight into a fast-growing and massively popular sport at a crucial moment. This is the third book in Dunn' s popular series exploring the women' s football pyramid.

The Lionesses' famous triumph, beating old rivals Germany at Wembley to become European champions, gave them a platform to call on the world to do better when it comes to women's football to give girls equal opportunities to boys, and to lift up inspiring female role models. But was it too little too late?

While Women's Super League matches sold out if they could guarantee a gold-medal-winning Lioness, the rest of the pyramid still had their own challenges to face. From training pitches to home stadia, from sponsorship to electricity bills, women all over England continued to fight a battle that had been going on for more than a century to be treated as footballers, not second-class citizens.

This is the story of the season after the summer before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Aug 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781801506373

Carrie Dunn

Carrie Dunn is a journalist and academic who has been combining research, teaching and professional practice since 2005. Her research interests include fandom, sport, feminism and the consumption of popular culture. She is the author of The Roar of the Lionesses and The Pride of the Lionesses.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

I HAVE never been the kind of sports fan who remembers statistics. Nor do I have the kind of memory that has instant recall of the entirety of a match. Instead, I remember the moments that have meant the very most to me, and the excitement, the happiness, that I felt.

So I know that in the years to come, when I think of the sunny, glorious days of July 2022, I’ll remember it in a series of snapshots.

Assuring friends and colleagues after England’s mediocre performance in the first match of the Women’s Euros that it didn’t matter, that the result was the only important thing, and the displays would follow.

The phone calls and incoming emails gradually ramping up as media outlets across the country and all over the world began to sense that this tournament was going to be something special for England; answering the phone at 6am and already primed to go on the radio and explain once again what a seminal summer this was proving to be.

Literally falling off my chair with the audacity of Alessia Russo’s back-heel, the third of the Lionesses’ goals against Sweden in the semi-final. I crashed on to the floor with a holler not of pain but of delight and incredulity.

Chloe Kelly scoring the winner in extra time of the final against Germany, checking mid-celebration that her moment of glory was not about to be stolen from her by the electronic eye of VAR.

The final whistle blowing, and me bursting into tears.

‘Are you all right?’ asked my husband – used to the intensity of my reactions when it comes to sport but having never seen me crying to such an extent.

I gathered myself enough to be able to reply through choking sobs: ‘I’m just so HAPPY.’

The trite trilling about ‘football coming home’ was fun, of course. Initially a song laden with irony to mark the men’s 1996 European Championships held in England, the chorus has taken on a life of its own. Fans wheel it out for their clubs and for their countries, a way to assert one’s superiority and hopes for victory.

But it wasn’t just about winning a trophy. It wasn’t about seeing Beth Mead’s beaming face on the front and back pages of every single newspaper I picked up, although the way these young women became superstars in the space of a month was truly thrilling.

Nor was it about the chatter in the pub and the corner shop being about the Lionesses, with everyone watching the matches, regardless of how casual their interest in football.

It wasn’t even about those slightly smug memes on social media, noting that when an England senior team last won a major international tournament, back in 1966, women were still officially banned from playing the game at all – and wouldn’t it be just so hilarious if they were the ones to ‘bring it home’ after all that time?

No. For me, it was about the women who had laid the groundwork, some of the most incredible women I have ever had the good fortune to get to know.

The women who set up their own leagues and competitions, found their own pitches, and got their own sponsorship deals, even when they weren’t allowed to play on FA-affiliated grounds.

The so-called ‘Lost Lionesses’, who went to Mexico for an unofficial, unsanctioned Women’s World Cup in 1971, suffered dire retribution, and never spoke about it – even to each other – for the next half-century.

The England squads who played for the honour of it and paid for their own travel, doing their own training and fitness work every night after work or school, using their holiday allowance so they could go to international tournaments and represent their country.

When the whistle blew – and after I calmed down – I picked up my phone, and emailed or texted dozens of these women. I congratulated them, because although Sarina Wiegman and her team lifted the trophy, the victory was one orchestrated in the decades before. Without the commitment and sacrifices of the previous generations, the triumphant, lauded Lionesses would never have been able to take to the Wembley turf at all.

Within a few minutes, my phone began to ping with responses. To a woman, they were thrilled to have seen such a triumph; some were there in the stadium, others were watching on television at home, but all of them felt as I did: that these forerunners of today’s newly minted superstars had a share in the glory.

The phone calls and emails kept pouring in over the following few days. It was important, I thought, to set the Women’s Euros victory in its context; yes, to remind people how long women had been banned from playing football in England, but also to remind them that winning one major international trophy was not and should never be the end of a story. These women – the elite of the elite – are full-time professional footballers, reaping the benefits of training every day with a ball at their feet, concentrating only on their skill, fitness and technique, just as their male counterparts have done for so many years.

But for each of those women clutching a gold medal, there are dozens more still struggling to make a living in the game, desperately trying to balance their home life with their playing career, facing the tough decision of whether to keep striving towards the aim of professional football or to play it safe and sensible by pursuing a steady career with a more stable income and a more secure future.

There are hundreds more further down the footballing pyramid who continue to fight to overcome the obstacles so entrenched in the game, with men’s teams always taking precedence when it comes to funding and facilities, still dealing with people’s tedious, lazy sexism.

And there are thousands of little girls who might want to lace up a pair of football boots – just like their brother, or their cousin, or their friend at school – but have always been told it’s not a game for them, but for boys. If they haven’t been dissuaded, they might seek out a team to join, and find that while there are scores of them for boys, they have to travel miles for a girls’ club; while mixed football is still a possibility for youngsters, it is utterly understandable that teenage girls might prefer to be in a team with other teenage girls, simply to reduce their anxiety around trying a new sport. Or they may be looking ahead, thinking about progressing to the women’s game in a year or two, and wanting to find a club that offers a clear pathway from junior to senior.

The Lionesses knew that perfectly well.

On Wednesday, 3 August – three days after they lifted their trophy at Wembley, two days after thousands of fans joined them in London’s Trafalgar Square to celebrate – they released an open letter. In the midst of the governing Conservative Party’s internal wrangling over who would win the vote to become the nation’s next prime minister, the European champions called on the candidates to back women’s football – for all age groups.

All 23 squad members put their names to a powerful call to action, saying: ‘We want every young girl in the nation to be able to play football at school. Currently only 63 per cent of girls can play football in PE lessons. The reality is we are inspiring young girls to play football, only for many to end up going to school and not being able to play.’

That statistic came as a shock to many, but it was one quoted by the FA in the pre-tournament publicity as they set out their aim to get 75 per cent of girls playing football at school. The issue was not primary schools – where boys and girls tend to have the same sessions – but secondary schools, where boys and girls tend to be split by sex, and where female PE teachers may not have football as one of the sports they are most confident to coach.

The Lionesses had something to say about that, too.

‘We ask you and your government to ensure that all girls have access to a minimum of two hours a week of PE,’ they added. ‘Not only should we be offering football to all girls, we also need to invest in and support female PE teachers too. Their role is crucial and we need to give them the resources to provide girls’ football sessions. They are key role models from which so many young girls can flourish.’

The Lionesses acknowledged repeatedly over the course of the summer – and even before that – that they were role models for a generation of boys and girls. Over and over again, these players, young women in their twenties and thirties, talked about how they lacked female footballing role models when they were little.

Over and over again, I thought how lucky I had been to benefit from what I have come to think of as a strange mid-generational glitch. There remains little tangible evidence of it, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Channel 4 showed women’s football matches – both live and highlights. It was there that I first became aware of the all-conquering Doncaster Belles, for example, and there that I first saw players of the calibre of Karen Walker, Gill Coultard, Marieanne Spacey and more. For just a few years – as far as I can ascertain now, the years before the FA finally took the women’s game in house and in hand – I, as a little girl, could watch women playing football on one of the four television channels we had available to watch back then. The little girls who love football now, of course, have it even better: domestic league and cup fixtures as well as international clashes available on terrestrial television, streaming and cable. They live in a world where the England team who finally brought football home is female.

SUMMER

1

Retention

ELLEN WHITE, born in 1989, would have been too young to remember Channel 4 showing women’s football. Early in her career, she had talked about her parents and her brother being her role models when she was small. Indeed, it was her father who set her on the road to footballing stardom, signing her up to the ‘Mini Ducks’ kids’ programme he ran in their home town of Aylesbury. In terms of players who inspired her, though, she often mentioned two England legends, both men: Gary Lineker, for the sheer number of goals he scored, and David Beckham, for his professionalism on and off the field.

For many of the female players of White’s generation, the first real awareness they had of the possibility of playing professional football was watching the movie Bend It Like Beckham, released in 2002. Even then, the plot focused on the very best female talent having the opportunity to move to America and pursue a footballing career there; there was still no chance of it happening in England.

White visited the USA as a child, and had the opportunity to meet England star Kelly Smith, then playing for Philadelphia Charge. That was the first genuine realisation she had that she – a girl living in an English town – could play elite football and represent her country. White and Smith later became team-mates for club and country; and it was Smith who set the England goalscoring record that White later claimed.

Having her face plastered all over the front page of a newspaper, though, was something White was used to at an early age. As a nine-year-old in September 1998, she discovered that she was no longer allowed to play alongside boys in their local league, the Chiltern Youth League. The local newspaper, the Bucks Herald, covered the story with the headline ‘Soccer girl banned by league for boys’, and reported that she had scored over 100 goals in the season before. FA rules, the newspaper declared, allowed for mixed football up to and including the age of ten, but the local league said that girls were not allowed in what they saw as a boys-only competition. The photos of White accompanying the news story were of her in full Arsenal kit; she was already captaining their under-11 side.

Twenty-four years later, White announced her retirement from football as a newly crowned European champion. After 113 international caps and 52 goals, plus two Women’s Super League titles, three Women’s FA Cups and countless more honours, she had concluded that all her dreams had come true on 31 July.

‘This has been one of the hardest decisions of my life but one that I know is the right decision for me,’ she wrote in a statement she released on social media. ‘This decision has always been one I have wanted to make on my terms. And this is my time to say goodbye to football and watch the next generation shine. It has been my greatest honour and privilege to play this game. In particular playing for England has and always will be the greatest gift.’

Stepping back from international football after winning the biggest prize of her career was perhaps something observers expected from the 33-year-old; retiring from club football was more of a shock. A few days later, she revealed that her decision had been hastened by suffering a punctured lung in 2021, when she was receiving acupuncture for her long-standing back problem. Remarkably, she had recovered, returned to full fitness, and got back into the England squad without a word of it leaking to the press. She told the media that she had gone into the Euros knowing full well that it was her last hurrah, and that she would be announcing her retirement afterwards.

‘It was a lot for me to have to go through and a big reason that accelerated my want to retire,’ she told the BBC a few days afterwards.

The next major retirement was even more of a surprise, in a way. Jill Scott – two years White’s senior – had been utterly dedicated to her England career. Finding herself out of the Manchester City first team, she opted to spend time out on loan at Everton and then Aston Villa, ensuring she was match fit and available for selection for both the 2021 Olympic Games and then the Euros. Her presence was the tangible thread connecting the current generation with the previous ones; she had played in the 2007 Women’s World Cup, when her 2022 Lionesses squad-mate Hannah Hampton, 14 years her junior, was still in primary school.

She finished her career as England’s second-most-capped player – and announced her departure in a way that truly suited her personality, in a first-person essay published on The Players’ Tribune website that completely captured her voice and style of speech. She reiterated throughout that she had promised herself that she would not cry when she finally bade football farewell, but the reaction from readers indicated that plenty of them shed more than a few tears reading her emotional love letter to the game that gave her so much. She admitted that when she was called into Sarina Wiegman’s office to find out whether or not she had made the 2022 squad, she was shaking, explaining: ‘I knew it was my last go. I just wanted to give absolutely everything I had left to this team, no matter what that meant.’

Scott did not start any of England’s matches during the Euros, but she remained a crucial part of the squad. She came on as a substitute in the second group game, for the last ten minutes; in the quarter-final, for the last four minutes of extra time; in the semi-final, for the last four minutes of the match; and in the final, in the last minute of normal time. Altogether it might have totalled only a handful of minutes, but they were crucial ones; under pressure, with the Lionesses needing to hold on to a result, it was Scott who was called on, ever reliable, able to adapt and hold her nerve. Her departure truly marked the end of an era.

***

More than a decade since the launch of the Women’s Super League, one of their aims was starting to look just a little bit wobbly. They had intended to make the league the most attractive domestic competition in the world, retaining English talent. It was a step meant to prevent a brain-drain that had become all too common in the women’s game, with players stepping up to the senior set-up and then immediately heading over to the USA, where they were able to gain a college education as well as play football at a very high level. Some of the younger Lionesses had taken that route: Lotte Wubben-Moy and Alessia Russo both played for