‘A nation has fallen in love’: Lionesses charge can form girls’ football
When England emerge from the tunnel at a sold-out Wembley on Sunday to play Germany, the record eight-time winners of the competition, eyes will be on them like never before.
Former England international Rachel Yankey has been at the BoxPark fan venue in Wembley for every game, watching the support for the team swell with each game, each staggering performance. “When I played, nobody knew there was a Euros final, in 2009, because there was no TV coverage up until the semi-final and then they saw us lose the final. Now, we know the journey of the players from the opening game. The nation has fallen in love with the Lionesses, which is something I never thought would happen,” she says.
“I never thought I would feel this level of happiness, enjoyment and sense of pride in our country in our team,” Lady Campbell says. “On Wednesday night, I felt it so deeply. I stood there for virtually an hour after the game had finished and the players were still on the pitch and the crowd was still rocking. It was just an extraordinary evening, an extraordinary moment.
In terms of the development of women’s football, the Euros is shaping up to be a tournament that will “turbo charge” its growth, according to Campbell.“It will move the agenda on so much more quickly than we could have done without it. It will just drive it at a different pace,” says Campbell.“It sounds weird,” says Yankey. “Of course the football comes first, but in my mind it sort of comes second. As much as I want to watch the game, I more just want to embrace the atmosphere and the crowd.
“Originally, when I tweeted about it, it looked like we were going to start three teams but now there’s talk of six teams. When I was their age there was no local girls’ team that I knew of when I was starting out. I lived in a town rather than a village. That a direct effect of this tournament is that several teams could be created in a tiny, tiny little village, one of several villages surrounding a small town in Cheshire, is just beyond what anyone could have imagined.
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