The city was blue on Sunday night as Everton triumphed emphatically against Liverpool in an historic first Women’s Super League Merseyside derby at Anfield post-pandemic and more crucially post the Lionesses’ victory at the European Championships.
2022 has already gone down as a landmark year for football in England after Sarina Wiegman’s side’s 2-1 extra-time success over Germany that secured the country’s first major international trophy since the men’s team’s World Cup triumph of 1966, which should now provide the platform for the women’s game to embark on an exciting new era on these shores.
A significant part of that revolution will be transferring the kind of bumper crowds that roared the hosts on to victory at the Euros to WSL matches and while we’re not quite there yet – certainly in these parts – the numbers are at least going in the right direction. This weekend, Arsenal were hoping to break Goodison Park’s fabled record attendance for a women’s club match in England that has stood for almost 102 years since 53,000 – with a further 10-14,000 locked out – watching Preston’s Dick, Kerr Ladies defeat St Helens 4-0 on Boxing Day 1920, but had to make do with an albeit still impressive gate of 47,367 for their thrashing of north London rivals Tottenham Hotspur by the same scoreline.
