On Sunday at 11am, history is tantalisingly close to being made in Sydney, as the England football team take on Spain, playing for the first English World Cup win since that seismic summer of 1966. Don’t say you won’t be watching. Everybody will. By Sunday morning, a time traditionally reserved for religious worship, irreligious hangover or a selection of Steve Wright’s indomitably cuddly Radio 2 love songs, a collective fever pitch will grip the nation. Everybody is on their side. It feels almost ominous to say the words, but triumph is within touching distance.
This is good news for football. It is joyous news for the country, which has felt singularly bereft of happy bulletins since long before the pandemic. But it is, frankly, amazing, near revolutionary news for LGBT+ people. During their astonishing rise to prominence, the Lionesses have come to represent not just the best of the best of English football, but a dream state of gay equality in action.
