The Lionesses love to put themselves under pressure. They thrive when things get tough. Whether that's losing to France in their first match in the tournament, going 2-0 down in the quarter-final against Sweden knowing that no team had ever come back from that deficit to win in the knockout stage of the competition, or recovering from a goal down in the final to beat Spain in a dramatic penalty shoot-out – with super-sub Chloe Kelly scoring the decisive kick – England won Euro 2025 the hard way.
But then, female footballers have always had to do things the hard way.
The FA declared football "quite unsuitable for females" in 1921 and stuck to that edict for half a century. Even when women were officially allowed back on to the hallowed turf of the football pitch, they were hardly given equal facilities. Just take a look at the first-ever Women's Euros final, in 1984, between England and Sweden. The second leg of the final was hosted at Luton's Kenilworth Road, which had suffered hours of torrential rain before kick-off. Yet in a world where the best female footballers in the continent had to take time off from their day jobs and sort out their own travel to matches, postponement wasn't an option, so they played in ankle-deep mud.
With those glorious memories of 2022 so vivid in the collective consciousness, folk might not remember that England hosted the Euros in 2005 as well, and only a few hundred people turned up to watch some of the matches – and not all of them were even available to watch live on television.
Fortunately, things change. And they’re still changing.
In recent years, women's football in England has been leading the way – our sensational Women's Super League is the envy of countries around the world, with its top-tier superstar talent, and Arsenal winning the UEFA Women's Champions League this year for the second time. Not only does it inspire young fans, but it also gives other nations impetus to keep up, encouraging them to back their women and girls as well, because if you do, the rewards will come. Look at Italy, beaten by England in the Euros semi-final, but with a professional league in their country for only three years – great things will come for them.
I've just published a new book that explores the lives of the female players from the UK who opted to pack up their lives and move abroad to chase their footballing dreams. One of those women, Jeannie Allott, was an original Lioness back in 1972. She chose to go to the Netherlands, where she felt women's football had more respect. One of her team-mates at her new club KFC '71 was a young starlet named Sarina Wiegman.
We chatted to the England legend about heritage, the Lionesses, and the importance of grassroots clubs.
Wiegman's success as a coach and her value to England as a footballing nation cannot be overstated. She's led her teams to the finals of five major tournaments in a row, and won the Euros three consecutive times, which is simply incredible consistency. The rumour was, even before the final, that an honorary damehood is heading her way.
Inevitably, the question arises about whether Wiegman will be the first woman to coach in the Premier League, a rather tired and tiresome debate that used to circulate regularly around Hope Powell, one of her England predecessors, and Emma Hayes, now the US Women's national team coach. Nobody wonders whether these women would even want those jobs; there is simply an assumption that everyone must want to coach elite men's football. It’s similar to the persistent search for parallels between female players and male counterparts, as if a woman’s abilities can only be understood and appreciated if there’s a man she can be likened to.
The continuing comparisons between women's and men's football are unhelpful, and exhausting. There are still so many battles to be fought in the women’s game, and the Lionesses are fighting them – whether that’s the Let Girls Play campaign they launched immediately following their Euros victory in 2022, demanding equal access to football at school for girls and boys, or their swift public statement of solidarity with defender Jess Carter after she received racist abuse on social media, in which they called for anti-racist action, not meaningless gestures.
Female footballers want respect, fair treatment and equity of opportunity. It’s been a quest that has been taken on by successive generations of determined, resilient, incredible women. With every ball the Lionesses kick – and every trophy they lift – we are getting there.
Carrie Dunn is the author of ‘Flying the Flag: The Footballing Heroines of the Home Nations Who Made History Abroad’.
