When The Lionesses Win What Changes?
02.08.25
Mark Perryman from Philosophy Football measures the impact of England Women's Euro 2025 victory
The 2025 sporting summer will forever be remembered for three and a bit weeks in Switzerland and England winning the Euros. Checks notes, the Women's Euros. A mere decade ago when the Lionesses made it to the World Cup semi-final, losing to Japan, was the first breakthrough. One which scarcely anybody had expected, it provoked ripples of interest. But nothing compared to 2025. It has been a slow but steady growth of interest ever since, which detonated three years ago with the Euro 2022 victory and if anything has been even more explosive this time around.
The miserable men who loudly decry all this as not 'proper football' remain a vocal minority, but they are precisely that, loud but marginal. Never mind Wimbledon, Chelsea's World Club Cup, the Lions, the Test series against India this sporting summer belongs unquestionably to the Lionesses. And that's one huge change, for the better.
The best thirteen words ever written on Englishness were provided by the historian Eric Hobsbawm " The imagined community seems more real as a team of eleven named people." England is a nation which doesn't even have a National Anthem to call our own and a national day, St George's Day, which year-in-year-out passes by unnoticed dwarfed by a Guinness-driven night out for that other Saint ,from across the Irish sea. All this changes for a Euro or World Cup tournament when Hobsbawm's 'imagined community' is wrapped in the St George's Cross. Except this was always previously for a team of eleven named men. Not anymore, the Lionesses and their support in turn reshaping this summertime version of a popular Englishness.
As I've chronicled elsewhere it was always something of a stereotype to picture all England fans as xenophobes, racists, far right. And the brutish expressions of football Englishness, arms out, 'Ten German Bombers', beered up, ready for a fight, a minority too. But that's not to say this ugly mix doesn't exist. Compare and contrast the morning of the Euro 2021 final to this summer. A pissed-up fan starts proceedings off in Leicester Square with a flare stuffed up his arse, before promptly lighting it. And it's all downhill from there. His flare now safely extinguished, even if his backside is feeling a tad warmed up, joins thousands of others making their way to Wembley Way. Their mission? Ticketless, to battle with police and security to force their way into the Final. Official reports estimate some 5,000 succeeded. It's hardly essentialist to point out these were all men, nothing remotely of this sort occurred at the Women's Euros, 2022 or 2025. Does that mean this popular Englishness has been entirely transformed by the Lionesses' success. No, of course not, but nor is it the same as what it had been.
A signifier? On the eve of the vital Group match which if England lost they'd be out the, Lionesses captain, Leah Wiliamson, was asked how she'd tackle her partner, the main Dutch goalscoring threat, Viviane Miedema. A question never had to be asked of Terry Buthcer of bloodstained head bandage fame or Stuart 'Psycho' Pearce. But the mental toughness demanded of Leah in these circumsances was every bit as heroic as these two England titans provided. Miedema? Leah led the back line, Viviane didn't get a look in, 4-0 to the England, job done.
These are changes of mood and attitude, changes 'from below' and wiyh an impact on a mass scale. However change isn't a simple process, principally because of the forces that seek to determine what can and can't be changed. The business that football has become does its best to eliminate the kind of risky endeavour that depends on the kind of last-minute equalisers and penalty shoot-outs that shaped the enormous impact of the Lionesses this summer. And such risk aversion is central to domestic women's football. No club comes anywhere close to challenging the absolute dominance of Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City Women. And spot the difference with men's football. Liverpool the only one missing of the Premier League's dominant quartet. But in men's football there is the odd exception, Leicester most famously, Nottingham Forest so close last season, the multibillion petro-dollars Newcastle can rely on getting them there or thereabouts. In women's football the triumvirate appear even more impregnable that the men's 'big four.' But in men's football there's also the chance of a cup upset, a giant-killing, Crystal Palace lifting the cup. Women's football has even managed to eliminate this flicker of hope, the cups almost always ending up with one or other of the 'big three'. I follow non-league Lewes FC, mainly the men's team. But my best ever moment I've had at our much-loved ground, The Dripping Pan, was when Lewes Women made it into the FA Cup Quarter-Finals to face Manchester United. United dominated, as expected, 2-0 up and then ... I saw something I thought I'd never witness, a Lewes player chipped England's first choice goalie. Never mind the gender this was historic. Mary Earps, England hero of Euro 2022, beaten. Of course, United then brought on another England international, Nikita Parris, to finish the job 3-1 but that moment was unforgettable.
The big three hegemony is rarely rattled. And it gets worse, 11 out of the 12 Women's Super League clubs are the sister clubs of Men's Premier League Clubs. The one exception? London City Lionesses, owned by an American billionairess. The Women's Super League Two (AKA, the Championship)? Same pattern, sister clubs of Premier League and Championship clubs, sole exception Durham. The modernisation of women's football has all but extinguished autonomous women's football clubs at anything resembling elite level, with just a handful reaching the Women's National League North and South (AKA League One) and none coming close to being promoted.
In 1990 All Played Out by Pete Davies was published. A runaway best seller telling the story of England's Italia 90 campaign that marked the birth of what became known as 'modern football'. Pete's book second only in importance and impact to Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. After that Pete could choose whatever subject he wanted for his next book, publisher's advance and support guaranteed. He chose, women's football. Or more specifically the Doncaster Belles. I've read an awful lot of football books I Lost My Heart the Belles is by some considerable distance the best. Prior to the formation of the first women's national league in 1991 the Belles won their regional league every season from 1976 to 1991. Then the National League for its first two seasons as league and cup doubles, having already won the FA Cup previously four times. The club was founded by Sheila Stocks and fellow women who sold half-time lottery tickets at Doncaster Rovers home matches. Sheila played for the club for 25 years. In 2003 The FA created the first women's professional league and effectively forced independent women' clubs to merge with professional mens' clubs. The Doncaster Belles taken over by Doncaster Rovers, a club whose trophy cabinet was more or less bare compared to the Belles'. Autonomy, self-organisation was a founding principle of the women's liberation movement. It is hardly 'political correctness gone mad' to observe that in the dash for growth women's football clubs subsumed into men's has lost the kind of distinctiveness the Doncaster Belles and countless other clubs like them had.
This dash for growth driven by the Football Association and their support for the women's game, having previously presided over a 50 year ban on women playing matches on any FA-affiliated club pitches 1921-1971, is of course only to be welcomed. But there is a danger lurking too. This growth is driven first and foremost by the success of the Lionesses, and in particular winning Euro 2022. The men' game had a similar breakthrough after Italia 90 when the success of the England team reaching the World Cup semi, and the dramatic ending, out on penalties to West Germany, reached a huge audience. ' New fans' escaping from the years of domestic hooliganism, English club sides banned from European competition, and the combination of decaying grounds and poor policing that led to the Bradford Fire Disaster and Hillsborough. So, what did the FA do? Sold off the old First Division' to be privately run as The Premier League. The FA in this regard is unique, a governing body effectively ceding control over the elite end of their sport. And now the self-same has happened to the women's top two divisions too. All is fine now but as the club game grows the concern must be that the divisions will enlarge, more and more fixtures, pre-season tours added, release periods for the Lionesses to prepare for, and recover from, tournaments, shortened. The primacy of the England team undermined. Yet it is the Lionesses' success more than any other single factor that has driven the growth of the women's club football.
The FA basking in the success of Euro 2025 should be careful what they wish for. The same warning signs should be applied to UEFA, and FIFA. Euro 2025 was a glorious tournament both on and off the pitch. It worked because 16 teams mean just about every group stage match counts, the turnaround between group stages and knockout rounds long enough for players' recovery, short enough to maintain attention span.16 teams ideal for a country the size of Switzerland to host, their first major tournament since World Cup 1954. A single host stamping its identity on the competition, in the most gloriously nicest possible way. None of the above applies to the men's World Cup 2026, three hosts - USA, Mexico, Canada, 48 teams spread across them, innumerable matches of little or no consequence.16 just right for the Women's Euros, 32 arguably already too many for the Women's World Cup. Bigger isn't always better.
The most immediate change however the Lionesses are expected to achieve is to 'inspire'. An ambition always linked to participation. An expectation endlessly repeated by the massed ranks of the great and the good from Royals to politicians, sports administrators, and the players unsurprisingly joining in too. Sadly, this is myth-making on an epic scale. The 2012 London Olympics made the self-same claim on the biggest scale of all. After a brief spurt year on year participation in sport has fallen ever since. Every single piece of evidence proves that elite sporting success has next to zero impact on participation. Competitive team sport is the worst possible model for boosting participation. Not good enough to be picked for the team, just doing it, done, from the earliest age. If watching a game from the sofa or in the pub counts as participation, OK. Much more of anything else, forget it. To achieve anything remotely resembling connecting inspiration to participation means entirely rethinking the latter. Investing heavily in beginner-focussed coaching. It's the hardest coaching job of all to turn non-participants into participants, coaching elite athletes hungry for success is sublimely easy in comparison.To transform joining in football from a talent contest which most will inevitably fail into bursts of fun for all girls and women, young, old and in-between. Combining imagination and positivity, we might call it, 'soccerobics' mixing ball games with fitness for fun, from the very young to those old enough to think past it. And in the process the next time the Lionesses turn out, feeling part of their wider community.
When the Lionesses win what changes ? We can only answer that question when we rethink the meaning of 'change'.
Philosophy Football's Lionesses Euro 2025 Champions T-shirt is available from here
Mark Perryman is the co-founder of the self-styled 'sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction' AKA Philosophy Football