Old Trafford, Manchester. England’s largest club stadium, host to FA Cup and Champions League finals, matches at World Cups, European Championships and even Olympic Games.
The Theatre of Dreams, they call it, but for Ella Toone, the prospect of ever playing there was not long ago so far distant that even in the subconscious world of abstract night-time wonderings and wanderings it seemed a touch fanciful.
Growing up, Toone supported Manchester United, a club whose men’s team had dominated English football and been crowned kings of Europe but whose women’s side… well, there wasn’t one. For one of the star players in the club’s girls’ academy, the pathway offered only a dead end.
“Unfortunately, it was always at the back of my mind growing up that I’d have to leave,” Toone tells Standard Sport. “There was no women’s team to look towards, to dream towards and to try and get into.”
Leave she did, first switching to Blackburn Rovers’ academy and then after making a senior breakthrough, joining Manchester City in a move that in most other circumstances might be deemed unforgivable. Coincidentally, it was City that played host to the first match of the last Women’s Euros to be held in England, back in 2005, when a crowd of just over 29,000 was by a margin the biggest of the tournament.
So, it speaks volumes of both the development of the women’s game in this country and the change in Toone’s personal fortunes that on Wednesday night the 22-year-old will walk out at a sold-out Old Trafford as England take on Austria in their Group A opener and do so as a United player.
“As soon as United formed a women’s team I knew I wanted to come home,” says Toone, who re-crossed the divide in 2018 for the club’s inaugural season in the WSL Championship. “I think my dad rang me. He must have heard a rumour, I don’t know where it came from, that they might be forming a United team. It was just crazy.
“It was always going to be a matter of time, it was just a case of when and it just came at the perfect time in my career. I wanted to play regularly and it being the team I support, the place I grew up, I just wanted to come home as soon as I heard.”
Toone has been drip-fed Old Trafford, like an astronaut gradually introduced to otherworldly levels of G-force in a NASA simulator before being packed off on a face-melting mission to the moon.
Her first on-pitch experience came as a child, the academy youngsters allowed on for a half-time kickabout during a men’s Premier League match.
“I think it was Man United vs Bolton because my godfather was taking pictures of me in the stand and he was a massive Bolton fan,” she recalls. “I just remember going out at half-time, playing little small-sided games, then coming off the pitch afterwards and keeping a bit of grass off my boot. It didn’t last very long, it died!”
In a professional capacity, there have been two WSL outings, the first behind closed doors during the 2020-21 Covid-hit season, and then in front of more than 20,000 against Everton back in March.
It goes without saying though, that with well over three times that number expected on opening night of a home Euros, Toone is finally set for the full works and the chance to live a dream she didn’t even bother having.
“I think having played there before will help, it’ll make me more at ease,” says the playmaker, who has bought an extra 24 tickets for family and friends. “The girls who’ve played there have done it before and maybe it takes a bit of pressure off you and a few nerves away but it’s going to be a lot different with it full.
“It’ll be a lot louder than the first time, I’m sure.”
Ella Toone was visiting Bloomsbury Football Foundation on behalf of her drinks partner WOW HYDRATE.
The sports drink have teamed up with the football club to provide bursary placements for young people so that they can play football.
