Eve from EastEnders has been raving about the Lionesses all summer. One supermarket chain expects to sell 45 bottles of prosecco a minute this weekend. Boris Johnson wants to “strap the Taliban into their chairs on Sunday” and force them to watch the game.
Meanwhile, a psychic from Bath called Jemima Packington, who claims to be able to predict the future by throwing asparagus spears into the air and seeing where they land, has forecast an England win on penalties. “The asparagus could not reveal the score in normal time,” Packington admitted, a little unhelpfully.
Just another extremely normal week on our extremely normal island then, as a nation prepares for the extremely normal spectacle of an England football team playing in a World Cup final. Perhaps it is as well that coach Sarina Wiegman and her 23 players are securely sequestered on the other side of the world, a safe distance from England and its festering madness. For this is a team who – unlike so many who have gone before them – have no time for our petty psychodramas. They have work to do.
It begins at 8pm Sydney time on Sunday, when an American referee, Tori Penso, will blow the whistle on the Women’s World Cup final between Spain and England.
In the 90 minutes that follow – plus possible extra time and penalties – will be written a thousand stories, tales of personal heroism and redemption, tales of collective endeavour and individual brilliance, but, above all, a tale of how English women’s football broke out of its strongbox, stepped brazenly out of its lane and set out to conquer the world.
Lucy Bronze remembers hearing the final whistle at Wembley last summer and being struck by a strange sensation. The career-defining European Championship she and her England teammates had won in that very second immediately faded into history. “Once I’ve won a trophy, I’m not even that bothered about it,” she would say later.
And so, as her teammates tore around the pitch in celebration, as England exploded in ecstasy and possibility, all the Barcelona defender could think about was the following year’s World Cup.
But for most of the last year, the idea that England could follow up their Euro 2022 triumph by claiming the biggest prize of all seemed fanciful. One by one, the protagonists of Wembley seemed to recede from the frontline: Ellen White and Jill Scott going into retirement, and top scorer Beth Mead and captain Leah Williamson suffering devastating knee injuries. Their dreary opening skirmishes in Australia offered scant evidence that we were watching champions in waiting. Against Nigeria in the last 16, they were outplayed and outnumbered, progressing only via a nerve-shredding penalty shootout.
How did we get here, then? Largely through those most un-English of qualities: composure under pressure, a refusal to succumb either to introspection or extrapolation and, principally, an unsinkable faith in their vocation. Through red cards, injuries, changes of formation and often hostile crowds, they have endured. Their defence, marshalled by the remarkable Millie Bright and Alex Greenwood, has been perhaps the best in the tournament.
And in a team short on individual superstars, it is their Dutch coach Wiegman who is their X-factor. Smart but relatable, dispassionate but empathic, Wiegman is a planner and a schemer: a pragmatist who leaves nothing to chance. All week, she and her team of analysts have been studying Spain’s passing patterns, pausing and unpausing the tape in search of minute weaknesses, taking heart above all from the way they were ravaged 4-0 by Japan in the group stage.
Having led the Netherlands to the Euro 2017 title and narrowly missed out at the 2019 World Cup, this is her fourth big final in a row. Neither victory nor defeat will shake her status as a bona fide national treasure, a woman universally loved by the same players she flogs on the training pitch every day.
Which is more than can be said for her opposite number. Spain’s path to the final has been beaten through a thicket of internal turmoil and external judgment, a juddering wagon that feels like it might derail at any moment. Last year, 15 Spanish players wrote letters to the national federation resigning from the squad in protest at the environment created by coach Jorge Vilda. Some have returned, including their star midfielder Aitana Bonmatí; some have not.
A ridiculous depth of individual talent has allowed them to paper over the fissures and reach a first-ever big final. Defeat here would threaten to open them up spectacularly.
As for calling the game itself – well, you may as well toss a bunch of asparagus in the air. Spain’s superior technical ability will probably see them dominate possession, but a lack of killer instinct in front of goal is perhaps their biggest weakness.
England’s forwards, meanwhile, are coming into form at just the right time, with Alessia Russo of Arsenal and Lauren Hemp of Manchester City forming a deadly partnership up front. Much will depend on whether England can break the aggressive Spanish press and launch quick counterattacks.
England’s players will be too focused on the task ahead to engage in idle reveries about what happens if they win. The rest of us, by contrast, are free to dream. Comparisons between men’s and women’s football often obscure as much as they reveal, but should England return home with the trophy, it would be an achievement at least as seismic as that of the men’s team in 1966 – achieved on home soil in a smaller and less global tournament. Honours and endorsement contracts will be strewn across their path like palm leaves.
An entire generation of girls will be raised in the shadow of champions. Never in the history of women’s football have England been able to claim primacy in the sport the country invented. And it has been a pilgrimage as well as a journey, a swelling and proselytising wave of investment and interest, a fight for dignity and equality, a tale of crushing setbacks and cautious evolution.
Eight years ago, England lost a heartbreakingly close World Cup semi-final to Japan. Four years ago, they were thwarted by the USA, until recently the dominant force in the women’s game. It is still impossible to buy a replica England goalkeeping jersey. Tweets about women’s football are invariably swarmed by a mob of furious men trying to convince us that nobody cares.
These are battles that have still not been won. Winning a World Cup will not address the chronic inequalities within the professional game, the lack of female-specific research into cruciate ligament injuries, the slowly eroding nub of misogynists for whom the very sight of women exercising their power is a primal affront.
But sport has never simply been a vessel for change. It exists primarily to make us happy and drive us potty. And from Sydney to Sidcup, from Boxpark to the Queen Vic, from the prosecco-splattered sofas of the old world to the bright wintry lights of the new, a nation impatiently awaits its next manic fix.
