Football's Coming Home: England Women win Euro Final 2-1 in front of 87,000 in Wembley

[greenjar_01]

England wins its first major international trophy after a 56 year drought, as the Lionesses beat the Germans 2-1 in a packed Wembley Stadium. Ratings will be through the roof - pretty much one of the the most important moments in women's sports in the last decade.

Weirdly, hardly a word on DU.

In his recent comedy special, Bill Burr goofs on women's sports: he starts with the USWNT (that's soccer) asking for pay parity with the USMNT. He immediately switches gears to the WNBA, noting that they play "in front of 400 fans" for the last 25 years, and challenging the "feminists" to name the their top 5 WNBA player, no, any player on their team, no, the name of the team in their city. "You can't!" he laughs.

But there was a little switch in there. He shifted from soccer to WNBA because most people can name or recognize five players from the USWNT, or, if they can't, they can't name five USMNT players either. He switches from soccer to WNBA because the USWNT is undoubtedly the best in the world, and surely don't play in front of small crowds. It is a dishonest shift, because he knows damn well that the argument he makes about the WNBA doesn't apply to the USWNT, which is the group he used to start the sequence.

Do you know why the USWNT is the best in the world while even Euro teams struggle to keep up? Two words: Title IX. Universities considered women's soccer a cheap way to comply with Title IX requirements. So the US women's sport developed competitive leagues far earlier than in Europe (and England!), where footie for girls remained a dubious proposition well into this century. Remember that Bend it Like Beckham came out less than 20 years ago, and that the characters end up in US universities. (Special note: One of the key players for England, Alessia Russo, went to the University of North Carolina...maybe some of the England fans didn't know why her number was...23!)

The English women's national team just won the Euro tournament. Let's give them some applause. Women's soccer (okay, football) is fantastic.

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. Good for the Ladies!

Good for England. Cheers!

[Blue_playwright]

2. I couldn't find it on my cable stations

I was so annoyed

[greenjar_01]

3. It was on ESPN

[Celerity]

4. The FA banned women's football until 1971, called it 'quite unsuitable for females', poxy bellends

How the FA banned women’s football in 1921 and tried to justify it

A year after more than 50,000 turned up to watch Dick, Kerr Ladies play St Helens, a ban was introduced that was to last half a century

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/13/how-the-fa-banned-womens-football-in-1921-and-tried-to-justify-it



Despite women having been turfed out of the workplaces in large numbers and the return of men’s football after its suspension between 1915 and 1919, the women’s game was thriving at the turn of the 1920s, with the Dick, Kerr Ladies – a famous factory team from Preston – at the forefront.

In 1920, the team would play four international home fixtures against a French team led by the women’s sport advocate Alice Milliat at Deepdale, Stockport, in Manchester and then Stamford Bridge. The team then headed to France and played in Paris, Roubaix, Le Havre and Rouen. It would prove to be a hugely popular tour and on the team’s return to England, the hype for a scheduled Boxing Day match against rivals St Helens at Goodison Park was building. Few, though, could have predicted the seismic impact the fixture would have on the future of women’s football.

On the day of the match 53,000 fans would file into the ground for the game with, according to the diary of the player Alice Stanley, a further 10–15,000 supporters turned away from the at-capacity ground. It set an attendance record that would not be surpassed for 92 years – until Team GB beat Brazil at Wembley during the London 2012 Olympics in front of 70,584 – and remains the biggest domestic game in women’s football in England, with the 38,262 who watched Arsenal defeat Tottenham at the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 17 November 2019 at No 2.

It reportedly broke another record too, with the Lancashire Evening Post on 28 December 1920 saying: “The most remarkable ‘gate’ of the holiday, however, was at Goodison Park yesterday morning [Boxing Day] where the Dick, Kerr Ladies beat St Helens ladies 4–0 in a match on behalf of the unemployed and disabled ex-service men. The attendance was estimated at 53,000 and the receipts were over £3,000 exclusive of tickets. This being an easy record for a charity match in England.”

snip




Dick, Kerr Ladies F.C. played the first women's international in 1920 against France. The French team was from Paris and was led by the great patron of Women's sport in France, Alice Milliat.


The team captains kiss before a match v France in 1920. Dick, Kerr Ladies in striped shirt

[SunSeeker]

5. I stole this from Facebook (brilliant!):

[MaryMagdaline]

13. Funny! I laughed so much

[regnaD kciN]

6. Frankly, I'm sick of this "it's coming home" crap...

...any time England gets near to winning anything. It makes the American Outlaws' constant "U!S!A!" cheers seem tolerable by comparison.

[greenjar_01]

7. Cool cool

[OnDoutside]

8. Prince William was so excited when it was level pegging at 1-1. .

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Oh, well played!

There's a news blackout on the rumours in the UK, but I noticed he was trending on Twitter, which had Australians all laughing about it.

[OnDoutside]

11. Thanks 👍 It's nuts, though each to their own I suppose, but still

when you consider the campaign of hate towards his brother and his wife.....

[malaise]

9. I posted a thread in Sports n/t

[USALiberal]

12. Wrong forum

[MaryMagdaline]

14. Happy for England - a great country with great people

Despite that menace in Number 10 Downing Street