On the edge of South London, boots clatter on concrete, balls thwack the back of training nets and rallying cries intensify as players practise headers. But I’m not here to watch a match. At the heart of the grounds, in a vast sports hall, the focus is on something entirely different. Some of the world’s best female players – all Nike athletes – are huddled together. Heads down, they are rifling through rails of Rejina Pyo and Conner Ives. They’re joined by standout community figures and new-gen players who are driving change on and off the pitch. It’s 100 days before the biggest Uefa Women’s Euros to date, and they are all here for a photoshoot that celebrates the unprecedented growth, soaring quality and fierce feminism powering women’s football in 2022. This is a moment to reflect on a new era of football where everyone – of all levels and backgrounds – are included.
‘This is my femme moment!’ declares Roya Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy, aged 23, from Football Education Charity ‘Football Beyond Borders’, marvelling at the Chopova Lowena kilt and Nike’s new England jersey that they’ve been styled in. England defender Demi Stokes, 30, swaps her usual top knot for an afro, while her international teammate, Lotte Wubben-Moy, tries on Isabel Marant. ‘We’re out of our comfort zone, but it’s really fun to try something new,’ says Chelsea forward and Denmark captain Pernille Harder, 29, as the shoot begins. She echoes the self-confessed ‘tomboy’ Lucy Bronze, 30, who plays for Manchester City and England alongside Stokes. (The pair have known each other since they were young: ‘Her mum used to drive me to practice,’ Stokes says with a smile.) Harder and her girlfriend, the Chelsea captain and Sweden international Magdalena Eriksson, 28, don bright pink dresses.
It hasn’t always been like this. I’ve been writing about the women’s game for the past six years, as the founder of SEASON zine, a football and fashion platform to counter the male, pale (and sometimes stale) state of football culture. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of change, but it’s days like this that show what’s to come. Not just for this summer, but beyond.
DOING IT OUR WAY
As the well-known story goes, the Football Association (FA) banned professional women’s football in England in 1921 after deeming the sport ‘quite unsuitable for females’, only to reinstate it 50 years later, in 1971. While men’s international football peaked in 1966 when England won the Fifa World Cup, women’s football started to find its feet in the 1990s and was the top participation sport in England for girls and women by 2002. But while the dawn of the Premier League in 1992 sent sponsorship, coverage and salaries in the men’s game skyrocketing, the FA Women’s Super League (WSL), the Premier League’s equivalent, only went fully professional in 2018. Full-time WSL players earn as little as £20,000 a year; Premier League players can earn over £350,000 a week.
‘People always talk about money but, for me, it’s the resources that we get,’ says Bronze, who is the most decorated English footballer in the women’s game, and is heralded as one of the top players in the world. ‘If you give us the same access to the best facilities, good pitches and the same sports science, with more research on women’s bodies… It makes a difference. We’re not trying to compare ourselves with men’s football. We want to be who we are and do things our way.’
ROUSING THE CROWDS
Investment in women’s football is increasing: a new three-year £30m deal with WSL title-sponsor Barclays was announced last year, double what it had been in previous years. Likewise, Nike continues to drive development and funding within the women’s game and its burgeoning community, and by pushing for equity in the sport. This led Nike to invest in the England football kit for the Euros this summer, ensuring innovative new designs that embodied the female athlete: new contours for motion, sweat maps and rib lines to push mobility. Not to mention the new iridescent geometric three-lions emblem.
And while prize money and media coverage still doesn’t match the men’s, match attendances sometimes do. However, this often depends on whether the women’s teams can play their matches at men’s higher-capacity (and more prestigious) stadiums. ‘Borehamwood [Meadow Park, home of Arsenal WFC] is a great pitch, but you can [only] get around 3,000 people in there,’ says England and Arsenal goalscorer Beth Mead, 26.
In March, I was one of the 20,241-strong crowd – the largest attendance in the WSL this season – at Old Trafford to watch Manchester United Women beat Everton Women 3-1. That same month, a record-breaking 91,553 spectators watched Barcelona Women’s take on Real Madrid Women’s in the Champions League quarter-final at the Nou Camp – and that record has since been broken again.
POWERING THE FUTURE
Such era-defining moments will surely be recreated this summer when England players Bronze, Mead, Wubben-Moy and Stokes play in stadiums up and down the country. Now, the quartet can focus on fulfilling their potential on the pitch as full-time professionals and use their (back-up) degrees by choice – not necessity.
‘Football doesn’t last forever, and I wanted to go to university because I was thinking about my career after,’ says Mead, who has a sports development degree. She’s launched the Beth Mead Scholarship at her alma mater Teesside University to support four professional female footballers as they train and complete their studies. ‘For me, to collaborate with a university and help young girls pushes them to do both.’
Mollie Kmita’s Level 7 Academy, which has recently partnered with Nike London to encourage more women to become coaches, makes it possible for players aged 16 to 19 to do their A levels too. ‘When I was 16, I had to make a decision between pursuing my education or football,’ says Kmita, a former Tottenham and West Ham player who established the football education program last year with her twin sister Rosie. ‘I had to stick to my education, but I never wanted another girl to have to make that choice, and Level 7 prevents that.’
The beating heart of football in England remains the grassroots, where people of all ages, levels and genders form powerful communities. No one speaks more passionately about their importance than Football Beyond Borders’ (FBB) Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy. ‘Go to a FBB session and you’ll see girls that despise school running around in skirts because they didn’t bring their kit. The goal goes in, and they’re gassed and doing TikTok dances. That’s when you realise how powerful grassroots football is because it’s not [just] about football.’
From supporting education and social-inclusion initiatives (like FBB) and leagues such as the Girls Super League to providing equipment and safe spaces for amateur women and non-binary teams to play, Nike is safeguarding grassroots football. In March, British world 200m champion Dina Asher-Smith selected non-profit youth team Girls United to receive a CAF (Charities Aid Foundation) America grant as part of Nike’s Athlete Think Tank, commending the ‘amazing work [they do] for our community’.
All of the elite players on the shoot today stress the importance of grassroots football; reminiscing about discovering the sport in that carefree team environment, playing with boys first before breaking through when someone spotted their talent. It seems not much has changed when talking to the next generation: Bloomsbury Football player Ava Marie King, and Girls United FA’s Mia Hill, Mabel Luxford and Anna Harder. ‘I went to watch England and Germany at Wembley [in 2019] – the record attendance – and it was a good atmosphere,’ says under-12 goalkeeper Hill. ‘I was the only girl that chose football in PE.’
King, 13, won the Girls Super League last season with Bloomsbury and has had a trial with Arsenal. ‘Being a professional footballer is my main goal,’ she says, naming Mead as her favourite player. ‘There’s a stereotype that we [girls] are not good enough. So when I see [England Women] doing well, it shows we’re just as good as men.'
THE QUESTION OF RACE
As far as women’s football has come, much of the progress being made isn’t intersectional enough above the grassroots level, and women of colour rarely see themselves in positions of power or at the highest level on the pitch. ‘When I watch [football], I see white women with blonde ponytails. It’s difficult because I don’t [really] see anyone with my skin colour or curly hair,’ King continues. The UK’s first female Muslim referee JJ Roble is visibly widening representation as she works her way up through the leagues, wearing her signature Nike Pro performance hijab. ‘I like to make players feel like we’re all in it together and I’ll let the game flow,’ the 28-year-old says, recounting the match she refereed between the Afghanistan development squad and female MPs for Amnesty International Football Welcomes Month 2022. ‘I’m a refugee myself [from Somalia] and I know it feels confusing [for them]. It was so nice.’
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, footballers started taking the knee before matches. Stokes, one of the England Women players of colour, believes it’s still important to do so. ‘It triggers people to think why are we doing this? [We can] continue to have the difficult conversations and still advocate. It might be someone’s first game and it sparks a conversation.’
A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
It’s telling that, until very recently when Blackpool forward Jake Daniels came out publicly as gay, there have been no openly gay male players in the UK since Justin Fashanu in 1990. But even though more women in football are out, not everyone is comfortable being open about it. ‘From my personal view, [women’s football has] been an inclusive and open environment and I want to spread that,’ says Eriksson, who has become an outspoken LGBTQ+ advocate with Harder after their on-pitch kiss at the 2019 World Cup went viral. Reliving its impact in the first episode of the Sky Sports show The HangOUT, with American captain Megan Rapinoe, Eriksson and Harder discuss how normalising positive gay stories creates a more welcoming place in sport. ‘The reaction has been good,’ Harder says. ‘Some don’t agree, but they listened to it. Maybe we can change something.’
The refrain that people don’t care about women’s football is no longer valid. A record 28.1 million people watched BBC’s coverage of the 2019 World Cup, and Euro 2022 final tickets sold out in under an hour. No matter who lifts the trophy on 31 July at Wembley, history will be made. ‘The players are integral, but it’s not just about that,’ Kmita believes. ‘It’s the coaches, referees, presenters, social-media influencers – anyone that young girls look at and think, “I want to do that when I’m older”. The tournament brings an opportunity for everyone to see different pathways for themselves.’
This article appears in the July/August issue of ELLE UK.
