These Euros are going to be a huge success either way, but England doing well is going to be crucial for creating the buzz that wins a new following for the women’s game.
We want new audiences and we want your everyday fan to be excited, we want people emotionally invested going deep into the tournament — and there’s nothing like the home nation doing well for that.
Momentum is on England’s side. Sarina Wiegman has changed the mentality, she’s got everyone to raise their level. She’s a winner, and when a figure like that comes in, they bring a new culture and a different way of doing things. The players have risen to the challenge.
The biggest strength of the side is the depth. In the warm-up games, they really got into gear in the second half of matches, and the key to that is fresh legs and an abundance of talent. The players coming on are that good they can change games, and that’s such an enviable position.
The players have been talking about a really good vibe around the camp and the challenge for Wiegman will be to maintain that and keep everyone involved.
Often at a tournament you have players who end up going along for the ride and don’t really end up being a part of it. That can be difficult to manage, but she knows that from her experience. It’s a different dynamic, because she doesn’t see the players every day, but it’s almost like Emma Hayes at Chelsea: she’s got masses of talent to chose from but somehow she creates that family environment.
This is the first big summer tournament solely in England since Euro 96. I know we had a Women’s Euros in 2005, but the profile of the women’s game is in a completely different stratosphere now. We’ve had one year of women’s football on terrestrial TV with the BBC and on Sky, and even compared to the last major tournament, when we saw such a good World Cup in 2019, the women’s game has been elevated to another level.
I remember skipping a night out with friends to watch the quarter-final between France and the USA in that World Cup, because I knew it was going to be a brilliant game. Now it’s about whether we can reach that level among the general public. Major tournaments can be such communal events, so can we get people staying in and having people round to watch matches? Or if they’re going out, making sure they find a way to watch them together in pubs and bars?
We haven’t seen that level of interest in the women’s game before, but if we do, it’ll be in this tournament, especially with it being on home soil.
There are so many big pulls. Aside from England, Spain are going to be dangerous, despite missing a couple of huge stars, the Netherlands and Sweden, too. France are France — at a major tournament, men’s or women’s, there’s always a story going on! There are so many big-name players, too: the Hegerbergs, the Miedemas. I’m excited to see Marie-Antoinette Katoto and I love Lauren Hemp. I always describe her as the female Lionel Messi, she’s such an exciting player at club level, capable of magic.
There’ll be people discovering these players for the first time, people at that starting point. It’ll almost be like the old days of flicking through the Panini sticker book during a tournament and learning all the new names.
England are definitely favourites, along with Spain. I’m a bit of a Spanglophile, having lived there, so Spain are always my second team. They’re two really top quality teams, so I’d like to see them both go deep in the finals. But really, I want those England girls, who I see every week in the WSL, go all the way to Wembley and lift that trophy on July 31.
