Wood you believe it? The footballer who made Euro trophy cases on the Wirral

Yana Daniëls in her workshop, where she has made the presentation boxes for player-of-the-match awards at Women’s Euro 2025. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

On the Wirral, to the west of Birkenhead and behind a hospital and a Toby Carvery, is Arrowe Park, a 250-acre country park. This is one of the many fields of play for Yana Daniëls, a footballer and a carpenter, and one of the more solitary and spacious.

There is something to be said for the similarities between the art of carpentry and Daniëls’s sport, of the precision born of graft and execution, although crafted by hand rather than foot. But perhaps more to be said about the balance of life, control and chance.