Two giants of European women’s soccer will relish a huge crowd and past glories when they confront on Sunday in Euro 2022.
England against Germany at Wembley Stadium. A final that underlines the growing stature of women’s soccer in Europe and echoes decades of history. When host nation England takes on Germany in the European Championship final Sunday, it will have a tournament-record crowd of nearly 90,000. Euro 2022 as a whole will be easily the best-attended ever. It beat the previous mark of 240,000 part-way through the group stage. “It’s going to be a great festival of football,” German coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg said Wednesday. “That’s a classic in soccer, England-Germany.” England is aiming to win its first major women’s tournament title on the site where the English men’s national team beat West Germany to win its only major title to date, the 1966 World Cup.
Germany has won all eight European finals it’s played – and crushed England 6-2 in 2009 final – but its momentum had seemed to slow in recent years as other countries invested heavily in women’s leagues.
England has scored a tournament-leading 20 goals on its way to the final, more than half in two storming wins over former European champions, 8-0 against Norway in the group stage and 4-0 against Sweden in the semifinals. Beating eight-time winner Germany would be the perfect way for England to write history. England showed it is possible back in February, winning 3-1 in Wolverhampton for its first-ever victory against Germany on home soil. Germany’s fans are used to their team winning titles, even if it’s not quite the all-conquering dynasty it once was. Since Germany won the Olympic gold medal in 2016, Euro 2022 marks the first time it has passed the tournament’s quarterfinals.
Key players
Forwards Alexandra Popp and Alessia Russo have made very different contributions. Captain Popp has scored in each of Germany’s five games – a new record – and started all except the opening game against Denmark. Russo has started none but is the ultimate impact substitute. After missing the 2013 and 2017 European Championships with injuries, Popp is making up for lost time as the joint top scorer with England’s Beth Mead on six goals. Popp has her club teammates around her as one of five Wolfsburg players in the starting lineup for the 2-1 win over France, when she scored twice.
Popp started out as a full-back at now-defunct FCR Duisburg and won her first European club title aged 18. She studied at a sports-focused high school with special permission to let her take soccer classes as the only girl alongside boys from the academy of men’s club Schalke, and is also a fully qualified zookeeper.
Russo’s explosive impact off the bench has been crucial. The Manchester United forward, who played college soccer at the University of North Carolina, has scored four goals as a substitute at Euro 2022, including a backheel through the goalkeeper’s legs against Sweden in the semifinals. Her assist for Ella Toone’s goal to send the quarterfinal against Spain to extra time was just as valuable. “I think when you’re enjoying your football, you play your best,” Russo said. “Maybe (the backheel against Sweden) does show a bit of confidence – but I’m just loving playing football.”
Coaches
England’s Sarina Wiegman and Germany’s Voss-Tecklenburg have already secured a place in history as players and coaches. Voss-Tecklenburg has been a driving force in German soccer for decades – 125 games played for the national team and four European titles, a UEFA Women’s Cup (now the Champions League) title as a coach in 2009, even five years editing a women’s soccer magazine. She has noted England’s slow start against Sweden in the semifinal when the hosts were on the defensive. “The first 30 minutes against Sweden showed that you can hurt (England), and that will be our task,” she said. Wiegman played 99 times for the Netherlands and coached the Dutch to the 2017 European title before joining England, and is still unbeaten in 11 games as coach at the championships. “We said before the tournament and we still say it every time that we want to inspire the nation,” Wiegman said. “I think that’s what we’re doing and we want to make a difference, and we hope that we will get everyone so enthusiastic and proud of us and that even more girls and boys start playing football.”
England expects
Izzy Short, 13, struggles to pick her favorite England player as she anticipates the team’s appearance in Sunday’s final. There’s forward Ellen White. Defender Lucy Bronze. Midfielder Georgia Stanway. Captain Leah Williamson. The whole team, basically. “I just look up to them really,’’ the high school player from Manchester said, excitement filling her voice. “They are all very positive … they all, like, appreciated one another and how they are such a good team and all of them just working together really. And they’re just so kind and so good as well.”
The march to the final has energized people throughout England, with the team’s pinpoint passing and flashy goals attracting record crowds, burgeoning TV ratings and adoring coverage. The Lionesses, as the team is known, have been a welcome distraction from the political turmoil and cost-of-living crisis that dominate the headlines.
The final is seen as a watershed moment for women’s sports in England. Although the game, known here as football, is a national passion, female players have often been scoffed at and were once banned from top-level facilities. Now the women’s team has a chance to do something the men haven’t done since 1966: Win a major international tournament.
Hope Powell played 66 times for England and coached the team from 1998 to 2013. “I think we have to give thanks to the people that worked really hard before us, that went through all of that, being banned, fighting for the right to play,” Powell told the BBC. “I think we have to remember what came before is what got us to the point we are today.”
There were 68,871 people in the stands at Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United when England beat Austria 1-0 in its opening game of this year’s European championship. That helped push total tournament attendance so far to 487,683, more than double the record of 240,055, according to tournament organizer UEFA.
But it’s not just the victories that are attracting fans. It is how the team wins. With money from sponsorship deals and a new TV contract supporting full-time professional players, there is more flash and polish than many expected. While they don’t play like the men’s team, that’s not a bad thing. There are fewer players flopping to the ground to draw fouls, fewer rolling around on the turf dramatically clutching purportedly injured knees or ankles and little shouting at the referees. Instead, there is teamwork, artful passes and stunning goals like Stanway’s 20-meter (22-yard) screamer in the quarterfinal victory over Spain and the backheel from Alessia Russo in England’s 4-0 semifinal win against Sweden.
And here’s the thing: People like it.
Naomi Short, Izzy’s mom and the goalie for Longford Park Ladies Football Club, said fans are being treated to a “totally different vibe’’ at the stadium and on the field, one that’s more welcoming than the lager-fueled tribalism that has put some people off the men’s game. “It’s not just girls watching it, it’s families, it’s men, women, children. Everybody’s watching it. It’s brought everybody together,’’ said Short, 44. “Whereas, you know, sometimes when you go to a men’s game, there is sometimes (a) slightly different atmosphere.”
There is also less distance between fans and the players, who know they have a responsibility to build a game their mothers and grandmothers were excluded from. The players stay after games and sign autographs. They take selfies. There is time for a chat. They know that little kids look up to them. The groundswell of support for the team is also being fueled by the country’s dismal record in international competition and hopes that they can bring a European championship home to England, which prides itself as the place where modern football was invented. England’s last major international championship, men’s or women’s, came at the 1966 World Cup, a lifetime ago for most fans. The men’s team disappointed fans again last year when they lost to Italy in the final of their European championship. That leaves it to the women to end the drought.
Women’s football has a long and sometimes controversial history in England. The women’s game flourished during and for a few years after World War I, when teams like Dick, Kerr Ladies Football Club filled the sporting gap created as top men’s players went off to the trenches to fight. Women’s teams, many organized at munitions plants, attracted large crowds and raised money for charity. One match in 1920 attracted 53,000 spectators. But that popularity triggered a backlash from the men who ran the Football Association, the sport’s governing body in England. In 1921, the FA banned women’s teams from using its facilities, saying, “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.” The ban remained in place for the next 50 years.
Women organized their own football association in 1969, and soon after the FA ended its ban on women. The FA took over responsibility for the women’s game in 1993, beginning the slow process of improving funding and facilities. Things accelerated after the 2012 London Olympics when authorities began to recognize there was a global audience for the women’s game, said Gail Newsham, author of “In a League of Their Own!’’ which tells the story of Dick, Kerr Ladies.
Last year, the FA signed a three-year deal for broadcast rights to the Women’s Super League, increasing funding and exposure for the game. Sky Sports will broadcast a minimum of 35 games a year on its pay TV channels, and the BBC will carry another 22 on its free-to-view network. “It’s not that long ago that girls, you know, top players, were paying for their own travel to get to matches and then having to get up to go to work the next day. So all of this is helping,’’ Newsham said of the funding. “You can see the difference now in the professionalism of the girls playing football.”
The excitement about the final has triggered a scramble for tickets. Tickets that originally sold for 15-50 pounds ($18-$61) are now selling for 100-1,000 pounds ($122-$1,216) on resale sites. The Short family has decided to watch the game at the local pub, making an afternoon of it, like fans around the country.
“I don’t think it will matter if it’s men or women,’’ Naomi Short said. “It’s England now. It’s coming home. You know, I’d like to think that’s what people are getting excited about.”
