What just happened
- Oleksiy Vadaturskyi, an icon of Ukrainian agribusiness, was killed by a Russian rocket strike as the first grain ship since the start of the war prepared to leave Odesa.
- Rishi Sunak tried to keep his bid for prime minister alive by promising a 4p cut in UK income tax by 2029.
- 329 years after her conviction in Salem, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Johnson was cleared of being a witch.
Sunday’s European Championship final win by England’s women was the country’s first major football trophy since the men won the 1966 World Cup. Both victories were at Wembley, required extra-time, and were at the expense of Germany, or West Germany as they were in distant Cold War times.
There the similarities end. The men’s win restored English football’s birthright delusion. England were on top of the world and had better bloody stay there – or else. Alf Ramsey’s players each collected a £1,000 win bonus. In retirement Bobby Charlton started a travel agency and Geoff Hurst, the hat-trick hero, was briefly a door-to-door salesman. It was the end, not the beginning, of something special. For five and a half decades the men’s team has toiled in 1966’s shadow.
But as England rejoiced on Sunday night, pundits predicted an “explosion of growth” for the women’s game: a beginning, not an end, for parity of esteem and rising income. The mood at Wembley was civilised, convivial and finally exultant when Chloe Kelly scored what turned out to be the winning goal, then pulled off her shirt and twirled it round her head: a homage to the USA’s Brandi Chastain, whose own sports bra reveal at the 1999 World Cup was a global sensation (Chastain tweeted Kelly in solidarity).
England scored 22 goals and conceded only two en route to their first major international title, won sceptical (and worse) men over to the joys of women’s football, and made billboard stars of Beth Mead, Alessia Russo and others, as well as their Dutch coach Sarina Wiegman, who picked the same starting XI in all six matches and followed a routine of remarkably effective substitutions.
The story in numbers…
- The match was watched by 17.4 million on the BBC excluding those watching online or in public places – a record for a women’s game in the UK.
- Total prize money earned by England was £1.75 million. First prize for the men’s Euro 2020 – which England lost to Italy – was £8.45m.
- According to the Times, Wiegman earned a £200,000 win bonus on top of her £400,000 salary, which is a sixth of what Gareth Southgate is thought to be on as men’s manager.
- Uefa says 47 per cent of spectators up to the final were women; nearly 100,000 were children; the final drew a European Championship record crowd of 87,192; and a tournament attendance total of 574,875 destroyed the previous record of 240,055, at Euro 2017.
- England’s players are on central FA contracts worth £15,000-£30,000 a year and earn between £20,000 and £200,000 per season with their clubs. But many male England players earn in a week that peak women’s figure of £200,000 per year.
- The men’s domestic and international Premier League TV rights from 2022-2025 sold for £10.4 billion. Last year, the FA struck a deal with Sky and the BBC for Women’s Super League rights for £8m a season.
But it’s not all about money. Players and pundits are unanimous that for women’s football to exploit Sunday’s cathartic victory, attendances at Women’s Super League matches – the top tier of the club game – need to rise from their current average of 1,924. The Football Association has set a target of 6,000 by 2024. But the potential for bigger crowds already existed before England’s win. This year’s women’s FA Cup final drew a record 49,094. In Spain, Barcelona games have exceeded 90,000.
The other message driven home at Wembley was that all barriers to participation for women and girls in PE, clubs, parks and playgrounds must be removed. The benefits, as we have seen, would be vast: an audacious Russo back-heeled goal, a Chloe Kelly shirt twirl, an eruption of happiness around a team that captivated women, men and above all children.
Archive note: from 1921 to 1972, women’s football was banned from FA-affiliated grounds.
Listen to Paul Hayward’s Sensemaker Audio from the final at Wembley on the Tortoise app tomorrow.
