The 2023 Women's World Cup has been in contention for a month and will finally have the much-anticipated final tomorrow! With the foreshadowing of 2019, the world's attention to women's football seems to have reached a whole new level.
In today's first three or four place finals, Sweden women's team relied on Rolfoe's cushion shot and Aslani's long-range shot to win 2-0 against the host Australian women's team and won the third place in this Women's World Cup.
After that, tomorrow evening Beijing time, the English women's football team will meet the Spanish women's football team at the final venue Brisbane Stadium. Success and defeat can be described as one move! And the fact that the English women's team is now on the World Cup final may be more historic than the Spanish women's team, at least for themselves...
Ban and counterattack
Today, for any English woman born before 1970, they have faced a social environment that forbids women from football. This is a fact because in 1921 the FA issued a statement stating that football was not for women and should not even be encouraged. The ban lasted about 50 years until it was repealed in 1970.
So, given this historical background, it is indeed a historic moment for the England women's football team, which is about to step into the venue of the Women's World Cup final, and it proves that the thinking at that time is so ridiculous. So how did the England women's football team get to this point in just 53 years? Everything, but also from 1966 ...
It may be strange to tell this story from 1966, after all, the year the English men's team won the only World Cup title in the team's history, when the trophy was not even called "Hercules Cup", but "Remet Cup". But it was also that game that excited Patricia Gregory, who was sitting at home watching the game, when she was only 18 years old. And the following year, standing outside Tottenham Town Hall, she watched her beloved Tottenham Hotspur return with the FA Cup winner, a question arose, "Why can't girls play?" ”
Patricia Gregory
The pioneer of women's football then approached the local newspaper, the Hornsea Journal, in 1967, where she published a notice to recruit players to form a team, and received a lot of responses. But when she wrote to the local council asking for rental of training facilities and stadiums, she realized the 1921 ban, and this time the move evolved from simply forming women's teams to a determination to overturn the ban.
Undeterred, Gregory offered to share training facilities with a men's club called White Star. Under these conditions, a women's football club called the White Ribbon was formed, and with similar movements taking place in other parts of the UK, with the help of many people and media publicity, Gregory led the formation of the then Women's Football League and the Women's Football Association (WFA) in 1969, a move that prompted the FA to lift the ban in 1970.
Changes in the 90s of the 20th century
In 1972, the WFA formed the official England women's football team, and according to the BBC, the team played their first international match in the same year, and they eventually beat Scotland 3-2. But it wasn't until more than two decades later, when the FA took over the management of the English women's football team from the WFA in 1993, that the team gradually got on track in the 90s. In 1998, Hope Powell took over the coaching of the England women's team, the first full-time manager of the England women's football team and the first woman in the world to obtain a UEFA professional coaching license.
Under Powell's leadership, the England women's football team competed in two World Cups and four European Championships over the next 15 years, including reaching the quarter-finals of the '07 and '11 World Cups, and reaching the final of the European Championship for the second time in the team's history in 2009, although it failed to win the title, but the team's achievements came from motivation in 2005 and an initiative in 2009.
Powell coached England Women's at the 2011 Women's World Cup
Host of the first European Championship
In 2005, the Women's European Championship first came to England, with matches held in Blackburn, Manchester, Preston and Warrington. It can be said that this tournament ignited the enthusiasm of English fans for women's football, although the German women's football team eventually won the championship, but the average attendance of about 23,000 people per game, and more than 2 million fans through the BBC broadcast to watch the English women's football game spectacle, set the tone for the development of English women's football.
First England national team contract
Four years later, in 2009, they took another solid step on the right path! The FA has offered "central contracts" to 17 core players in England's women's soccer, saying they will be paid over four years from bonuses worth a total of £1.28 million, each paid £16,000. This greatly reduces the pressure on players to work outside of football, allowing them to focus more on the game, although they can continue to work at other times and earn additional income.
The Women's Super League opens
Setting the tone in '05 and moving in '09 was the beginning of a renaissance for women's football in England, and the results at the European Championships and World Cup speak for themselves. In 2011, 19 years after the establishment of the Premier League, the English Women's Super League was officially launched, and 8 teams, including Arsenal, Birmingham, Chelsea and Everton, participated in the competition.
In the first two seasons, the FA provided £70,000 to clubs for infrastructure construction, and signed salary caps with teams, and each team could only have a maximum of 4 players to receive a maximum salary of £20,000, which ensured the fairness of the league at that time. On 13 April 2011, the first match of the English Women's Super League (WSL) was played and Arsenal won 1–0 against Chelsea thanks to the first goal in WSL history scored by Gili Flaherty.
Wembley genuinely embraced them
New Wembley has always been home to England's men's Three Lions, but the England women's team didn't set foot on the pitch until 2014. Although they lost 3-0 to Germany on their debut at the new Wembley Stadium, the attendance reached 45,619. This should have been higher considering that all 55,000 tickets were sold, but due to traffic and weather in London, nearly 10,000 fans were unable to show up.
In 2019, they played the German women's team here again, and although they also lost, the audience reached 77,768. Until the final of the 2022 Women's European Championship, in the presence of a record 87,192 fans, the English women's football team defeated the German women's team 2-1 in extra time, winning the women's European Championship for the first time in the team's history. Apparently, the stadium has already welcomed a "hostess" ...
Women's Super League players professionalized
The growth of the national team is inseparable from the support of the league, just like the Premier League for the English men's team, the English Women's Super League has undergone tremendous changes in the summer of 2018, and 11 teams have entered a full-professional state after the reorganization, which represents the real heyday of the English Women's Super League. At the same time, further growth in revenue represents an increasingly mature league, with the average annual income of WSL players in 2022 being £47,000, which is £20,000 more than the average UK salary, according to the BBC's analysis. After the English women's football team won the European Championship, WSL's attendance increased by a staggering 267%, resulting in an increase in copyright fees and increased business income, bringing the overall development of English women's football to a new height.
Wegman arrives
The reason why the English women's football team has come to where it is today is inseparable from the efforts of the manager. From Hope Powell to Mark Sampson to Phil Neville, England women's football team finished third and fourth in the 2015 and 2019 World Cups respectively, and when they appointed Dutchman Selena Wigman as England women's manager in 2021, they knew they had brought in a "proven winner".
In 2017, Dutchman Wegman led the Dutch women's team to the Women's European Championship, and two years later, the French Women's World Cup, she led the team to the final. And after coming to England Women's football, she brought her "habit" of winning here, and in the 38 games she has coached, the team has only lost once! Of the 30 victories, the most important was the Women's European Championship final 12 months ago.
And now, she will lead the team to the heavier championship! For the England women's team, they have a chance to win England's first World Cup trophy since 1966! But it was ironic that in 1966, women like them in England were banned from the sport.
Perhaps, football is still suitable for women after all. It can even be said that football has bloomed more brilliantly because of the presence of women...