The Women’s World Cup has concluded. After more than four weeks of dramatic action in Australia, Spain defeated England in the final on Sunday to reach the highest of peaks and, with it, footballing immortality.
It’s not over the top to suggest it as such, either; some of the sport’s most iconic and memorable images down the years have come from this very tournament and that very match, both in the women’s and men’s games: Birgit Prinz’s joy in 2007, Lionel Messi lifting the trophy adorned in a bisht in Qatar, Brandi Chastain’s shirt-off shootout celebration, Pele carried off the Azteca pitch in 1970.
