England Lionesses building a legacy as countdown begins to Euro 2021

Yesterday marked 500 days to the start of the next women’s football European Championships, and with England as hosts, 2021 promises to be the biggest yet.

The boom in the women’s game really began as England reached the last World Cup semi-final, watched by a television audience of 11.7m. That enthusiasm has been reflected in attendances since, both in the Women’s Super League (WSL), and at international level, where a crowd of 77,768 were at Wembley to watch England lose 2-1 to Germany in November.

The last time the tournament was held in England, in 2005, it was an all-north-west affair. The eight teams played in Blackpool, Manchester, Preston, Warrington, and final venue Ewood Park in Blackburn. The Lionesses finished bottom of their group as a total of 118,403 spectators – 7,894 per match – watched from the stands.

Sixteen years on, the growth of the game will be there plain to see. The tournament might not venture north of Leigh Sports Village, but the venues stretch to the south coast. As well as group matches, Rotherham United will host a quarter-final, and Sheffield United a semi-final. If the geography is wider, so is the ambition.

Manchester United’s Old Trafford opens the tournament, Wembley hosts the final, and the size of those grounds (the smaller Eastlands Stadium hosted Manchester’s 2005 matches) is a pointer to Euro 2021’s aspirations. The Netherlands hosted the last edition, another 16-team tournament in 2017, and drew a record combined crowd of 247,041. There will be almost 750,000 tickets available next year.

The Football Association and Uefa want more than just bums on seats, though.

“Quite often people think legacy happens after something but I’m a great believer that you have to have everything in place beforehand,” says Baroness Sue Campbell, the FA’s director of women’s football.

“We’re auditing what’s happening in those cities where the games will be played and looking to see where women and girls are playing. We’ll set up stakeholder groups of anyone who’s got a real interest in driving the game forward and we’ll put in place a plan to turbocharge the plans we’ve already got for the women’s game.”

Despite providing England with the likes of Whitby’s Beth Mead, Harrogate’s Rachel Daly and York’s Lucy Staniforth, the fruits of women’s football’s recent success has largely passed Yorkshire by. Sheffield United, in the second-tier Championship, are the county’s highest-ranked club. England midfielder Jordan Nobbs comes from further north, Stockton, but also knows about having to leave home to make her name in the game, swapping Sunderland for Arsenal when the Black Cats were refused a WSL licence.

“We’ve been asked a lot if we’d like it (the tournament) at one stadium but whenever we travel around it’s more exciting for us and the crowds we get,” argues the 27-year-old.

“When I went home to Middlesbrough (for October’s game against Brazil) we sold out and for us home-grown players to see that support even though the women’s game maybe isn’t as strong up there as it is down south is incredible.

“I wish there was more we could do but we just hope the region keeps supporting the clubs up there to keep allowing opportunities for women to play. You only need to look at the talent which has come from there and we don’t want to be missed out. Hopefully, that carries on and can be improved.”

Having played in the last European Championship semi-finals – a 3-0 defeat to the hosts in Enschede – and sat out the 2019 World Cup with an anterior cruciate knee ligament injury has given Nobbs different perspectives of the part fans play, and she cannot wait for Euro 2021.

“Naturally, it was all orange, it was absolutely incredible,” she says of the 2015 game. “They (the fans) all met in one place then walked to the stadium. Our bus was going one mile an hour with a sea of orange banging it. I was stood up looking over and it was absolutely incredible.

“The girls say that even now the likes of Sari (van Veenendaal) and (Shanice) van der Sanden (Arsenal team-mates) can’t walk down the streets in the Netherlands without being spotted, which is just incredible.

“We want to take the game to that level, not as celebrities but role models to create a legacy and be able to say you were part of that, to allow other girls to be professional footballers and maybe known from the age of 17 rather than 27, 28.

“Having been at the Euros and the World Cup before that, I was a bit more involved in the lead-up to the (2019) World Cup. The girls were probably just preparing to train whereas I was seeing all the sponsorships come in, the attention, the appearances I was asked to do before we’d even kicked a football.

“People were interested before that tournament started and are with this one, whereas before I think it was only after the tournament where we’ve done well that people would say, ‘Oh, England are actually all right.’

“Wembley’s a place where years ago you dreamt of playing and now we’ve done it in front of 78,000. Now it’s how do we dream of that final?

“I will definitely be thinking about it and it’s about time England got to the final.

“We were walking around London when the men’s World Cup was on and just seeing the whole nation come together with England shirts on is a phenomenal experience. I’d be very disappointed if people were singing ‘Football’s Coming Home’ and throwing beer around again!”

This generation of Lionesses have seen a transformation of their sport, and are determined to keep pushing it.

“Four or five years ago we used to write down the things we wanted to achieve and one of the main points was building a good legacy for the women’s game,” recalls Nobbs. “We didn’t just want to win trophies, we wanted to be a part of a great group of girls teams for people to look up to as role models.

“Maybe I would love to be 10 years younger and just grow up in a totally different environment but I think it’s more exciting to have come from a semi-professional to a professional world and say we have been part of that change.

“It’s a dream for any women’s footballer to not just play in front of family and friends but be part of a legacy. In another 500 days the women’s game will be in an even more incredible place and I definitely want to be a part of it.”

Hopefully, so do plenty of young girls in Yorkshire. If they are, it has to be the start of our game of catch-up.