Nou Camper

This summer’s Euros gave women’s football a huge boost. Piers Ward meets one of the stars of the show

What a feelgood event the Women’s Euros were this summer. The home win (if you’re English) obviously helped, but it was more than that, as the nation got used to a football tournament without any crowd trouble or dodgy diving.

Stars were created overnight (who can forget that back-heel?), but one social media phenomenon wasn’t a footballer. Volkswagen’s Tiny Buzz ball-delivery car made its debut at Old Trafford on 6 July and was still going strong at the Wembley final three weeks later, with 17.6 million views on TikTok and more than 24,000 Twitter followers by the end of the tournament.

In case you missed it, the premise is to take one remote-controlled car (this a miniature ID Buzz running Pride colours), hack out a section of the roof, insert a football, drive it onto the pitch and deliver the cargo to the referee for kick-off.

All very simple stuff, and it’s how I find myself at the Milton Keynes Dons Women’s training ground with the very same Tiny Buzz that appeared the final – one of just two in he world – in order to see how t performs.