Look At The Bright Side

This summer’s European Championship captured the imagination of the host nation and signalled a shift in the way the women’s game is talked about, though England still have plenty of work to do on and off the pitch.

- Glenn Moore

A crowd of over 28,000, delirious with joy. Young men wearing shirts with “Miedema” on the back. Newspaper front pages. A victory parade along the canals of Utrecht, so packed and excitable people were in danger of falling in amid the crush. Huge television viewing figures. Is this, could this be, the future? Paradoxically an ugly tale of alleged racism and bullying suggests it could.

Women’s football has spent most of the last decade hoping to make that great leap forward, out of the margins and into the mainstream. It may have done so in the Netherlands after the hosts’ triumph at the Women’s European Championship. In England the wait is likely to take longer, but there are signs that women’s football could finally step out from the “big event” spotlight to which sports outside the big three of men’s football, rugby and cricket are usually limited.

England’s run to the semi-finals of the 2015 Women’s World Cup attracted widespread coverage, but this was not sustained. The domestic Women’s Super League (WSL) and Women’s FA Cup occasionally surfaced, but usually even fixtures were hard to find. The national team have been equally invisible. In the build-up to this year’s Euro finals England played two matches, in Switzerland and Denmark. No newspaper attended either.