“You don’t even like football, do you?”
I was showing off my new England shirt and explaining that I’d written my company’s group comms last week to encourage my colleagues to get behind the Euros tournament when he said this.
Look, he’s not wrong. Well, I like football, I guess. Do I understand the offside rule? No, I do not. Will I try to understand it again this summer? Yeah, I will. Will I retain this information when the World Cup 2027 rolls around? Absolutely not; I don’t intend to either.
(Joking, I’ll try my best.)
I’m not exactly an avid football fan, no.
But what I am a fan of?
Well, I’m a huge fan of women doing their thing on the biggest stage possible and doing it unapologetically as themselves. And while I truly look forward to learning more about the game this summer, I’m mostly looking forward to seeing women do the thing they love most and doing it loudly, bravely, strategically, with humour, with feistiness, with kindness and with a whole lot of kickass skill.
Because, when I watch the Euros, I see myself and I see my friends, my colleagues and my loved ones reflected back at me.
Chloe Kelly ripping her shirt off when scoring the winner in the Euros 2022 final is the high-five I share with my colleague and friend, Beth, when we finish our weekly Run Club and we’ve hit a new record of some kind.
Mary Earps’s fiery reaction to saving that penalty in the 2023 World Cup final against Spain is my friend, Jess or I pulling off a punch line and celebrating – big – with the other one of us ready and waiting to give a deserved pat on the back.
The squad goofily dancing to Will Grigg’s on Fire when they’ve won a game is my friend, Hattie and I letting our hair down on a Friday night at the local Slug & Lettuce with dance moves literally nobody asked for – totally ridiculous, totally magic.
Earps speaking out against Nike’s decision not to make replica goalie shirts for the World Cup 2023 and the team backing her is sitting in a women empowerment ERG, with so many of my fantastic women colleagues at work, speaking through our experiences and encouraging each other to back ourselves fiercely and confidently.
And the Lionesses’s hungover address to fans at Trafalgar Square post the Euros 2022 win is my my best friends (Courtney, Sarah, Alissa) and I on the final day of Courtney’s hen do in Ibiza, sunglasses on, bellies churning while we share silly, brilliant, hilarious and hungover stories from the night before.
The Euros is like getting the chance to watch my best mates from the sidelines as they do what they do best, being brilliant in all the ways I know they are but the world might assume they’re not. Watching the Euros is bathing in all it is to be a woman (whilst recognising my experience of being a woman is a hugely privileged one); it’s celebrating our passion, our fire, our humour, our work ethic, our anger, our heart and our kindness.
No, I don’t know everything there is to know about football. In fact, it took me the whole season of my year-long football career in year six to work out I wasn’t meant to be toe-punting the ball with every shot and that, yes, that was why my toes hurt so much after a match each week. But the Euros 2025 represents a massive opportunity to put women, their talent and the ever-present inequality with their men counterparts centre stage.
And that’s worth re-learning the offside rule for.