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LONDON — For over 50 years, English soccer followers have hoped, prayed and sung {that a} main trophy would “come house.” Now it lastly has. They usually can hardly include themselves.
1000’s of supporters screamed and chanted on Sunday at Trafalgar Sq. in central London and at different viewing events across the nation, the place the ultimate of the ladies’s European Championship was displayed on massive screens.
On Monday, photos of the Lionesses, because the group is thought, dominated the entrance pages of British newspapers after their 2-1 win over Germany at Wembley Stadium in London, the headlines lauding them as “sport changers” or “historical past makers” and declaring “No extra years of harm.”
Politicians and royals despatched messages and congratulations to the group on its victory — a dramatic conclusion with parallels to England’s final main championship, in 1966, when the nation hosted the lads’s World Cup and its group defeated Germany within the ultimate.
However the success held the potential to transcend nationwide satisfaction and euphoria, with ladies’s soccer occupying the general public consciousness in Britain like by no means earlier than.
“I believe we actually made a change,” mentioned the group’s Dutch coach, Sarina Wiegman, at a information convention after the match. The group had carried out quite a bit for the game however for the function of girls in society, too, she added, a sentiment that was echoed by others.
“It’s been a tremendous month and a tremendous day yesterday,” mentioned Mark Bullingham, the chief govt of the Soccer Affiliation, England’s governing physique for soccer.
“I believe it’s going to actually turbocharge every thing we’ve been doing within the ladies’s sport,” he mentioned in an interview on “BBC Breakfast” on Monday, including that the group had invested closely in ladies’s soccer over the previous few years.
“There isn’t a cause we shouldn’t have the identical variety of women enjoying as boys and we expect it’s going to create an entire new era of heroes who women aspire to be like,” he mentioned.
There’s definitely room for enchancment. A report revealed in March by “Honest Sport,” a collective of 34 English soccer golf equipment, discovered {that a} gaping gender divide in soccer golf equipment all through England and Wales stored the game “dwelling within the Darkish Ages.”
Solely 11.1 p.c of board members at Premier League golf equipment are ladies, and two-thirds of the league’s groups have all-male boards, the report mentioned. Considerably fewer ladies had been attending video games in England in contrast with different international locations.
“That is at a time when public attitudes towards sexism and misogyny are altering, and soccer wants to alter too,” mentioned Stacey Pope, an writer of the report.
That change felt attainable because the Lionesses emerged victorious on Sunday from a match that was attended by a file variety of followers — the gang of greater than 87,000 was the largest for any European Championship ultimate, males or ladies.
Queen Elizabeth despatched a message of congratulations to the group, writing that whereas the athletes’ performances deserved reward, “your success goes far past the trophy you’ve gotten so deservedly earned.”
“You’ve got all set an instance that might be an inspiration for women and girls at present, and for future generations,” she wrote.
Kevin Windsor, a graphic designer in London, watched the match together with his 3-year-old daughter, who was sporting a princess robe. “My daughter doesn’t should have an curiosity in soccer. She simply has to know that it’s an possibility,” he wrote on Twitter. “That she will develop into something she units her little coronary heart on. From a princess to a lioness. And every thing in between.”
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