Opinion – Renata Mendonça: How England made football come home

For at least four years, we’ve heard the English announcing: “It’s coming back, it’s coming back, football is coming home.” It started at the World Cup in Russia in 2018, when England were semi-finalists (something that hadn’t happened since 1990) and reignited the hopes of the British, who hadn’t won a title since 1966.

Then came the Euro 2021 with the final scheduled precisely for Wembley Stadium in London. And England was there. “It’s coming home”, announced the fans in the stands before penalties defined the real destination of that trophy. “It’s coming Rome”, in the end, it was the Italians who were right.

And on July 31, 2022, football finally “came home”. Only by their feet. Women have put English football at the top again after 56 years. Detail: on top of a historic rival, Germany, and in front of a record audience: 87,192 people at Wembley.

The title came to cap a historic Eurocup held in England. In addition to audience records, there were impressive numbers in TV viewership, with 17.4 million people watching the final (surpassing 11 million in the 2019 World Cup semi-final against the United States). In addition, the game also recorded the highest ratings of the entire year 2022 on British TV.

But none of this was by chance. The seed began to be planted exactly ten years ago. It was also on the 31st of July, only in 2012, that England began its “awakening” to women’s football. And isn’t that what Brazil has to do with it? A match still in the group stage of the London Olympics brought together 70,000 people at Wembley.

Just against the Brazilian team, Marta, Cristiane, Formiga… Nobody expected that the stadium would be practically full to see “only” women on the field. The TV audience of that match also drew attention. And it was from this that the English Federation launched a plan called “Game Changer” a few months later.

The idea was to make women’s football the second most popular sport in the country within five years. The plans were based on four key points: the creation of centers of excellence to develop players, the delivery of a new commercial strategy specifically for women’s football, the expansion of the Women’s League (WSL) and the promotion of women’s football in the youth categories. .

At the time, the WSL had only one division with eight teams. Today, there are two divisions, each with 12 teams, and attendance records for local competitions are broken year after year. There are major sponsors enhancing the commercial value of the tournament, which is now also broadcast on TV.

In terms of selection, women started to have more investment and a space in the excellence training center (St. George Park) opened in 2012. The results started to come as early as 2015, when the England team reached the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cup. world for the first time.

The audience and audience records at this Euro and England’s title itself are just the consequence of all the planning and investment of the last decade. Brazil, for example, also saw a Maracanã packed with 70,000 people cheering for women in 2016. And what did the CBF do with it? It still took three years (until the 2019 World Cup) to understand the potential of the sport and start investing in the base and national competitions.

The saying goes: the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. May we now know how to make up for lost time and not interrupt what started to be done. We started to plant late, but you can still dream about the harvest.