England 1-0 Austria
by Adam Millington
at Old Trafford

FORGET the match for a minute and just soak in what actually happened. 68,871 people paid to watch a women’s international tournament take place in England. Old Trafford was packed to the rafters to watch the Lionesses.

Cast your gaze back to 2017 when games were on Channel 4 and the WSL was still only semi-professional. Could anyone truly have envisaged a near future in which this would be the case?

Back in a time when only few newspapers or broadcasters took women’s sport seriously, would anyone have thought that every seat in the Old Trafford press box would be filled with journalists from across the globe who had travelled to see this occasion?

Yet the game has undergone catalytic growth over the past half a decade and now sits in a position where moments like this come to be expected. From three hours before the kick off, you could barely move at the fan party behind the ground, thousands lining up to experience a true festival of women’s football.

Four years since the FA successfully bid for the rights to host the tournament and the hopes and dreams of those involved have all materialised. England’s very own tournament is underway, and it happened in the perfect fashion.

From the moment that a smoke-filled Old Trafford (Uefa went rather heavy with the pre-match pyrotechnics) saw the players walk onto the hallowed turf of Old Trafford, the anticipation left the minds of all who were there to see it; now it was time to sit back and enjoy the show.

Though it wasn’t a show which was easy to enjoy in its opening moments. This was England’s event, but Austria turned up and came to play. They happily took the game to the hosts and for a while were the better of the two sides.

Laura Feirsinger caused problems for England to contest with, Nicole Billa up top too. It seemed is if the grandeur of the event had got to their heads, and the razor-sharp England which has been present for so long seemed to have failed to turn up.

But then it happened. Against the run of play and looking like it was going to be chalked off, England got their goal.

Fran Kirby looped a ball over the top, and Beth Mead needed only the deftest of touches to dink clubmate Manuela Zinsberger and send the Stretford End into jubilation.

A VAR check — the first in women’s Euros history — was made to see if the ball still went over the line after a defender attempted to clear it. But the goal remained. England had their perfect start.

Before that it had been a rather sloppy affair, and after it much of that sloppiness remained. The right tempo just couldn’t be found, and every attack seemed to occur under a cloud of hesitation which held the players back.

Time and time again, the ball made its way into Austria’s defensive third, but England could do little to turn it into much more than a half-chance. They hit, and they hoped with crosses. The strikers tried to get anything on it, but ultimately it just wasn’t enough.

That early breakthrough proved to be the only goal of the game, but England won’t care. They’ve won their first game of the Euros.

The Lionesses seem to have overcome their biggest hurdle — the expectations of the nation — and come out of it on the other side.

Sure, it may not have gone as well as some may have hoped for, but warm-ups and the real thing are two very different beasts. Sarina Wiegman’s side have found their footing.

Notwithstanding some shock results elsewhere in the group, this could be a result which has all but clinched a spot in the knockouts for the Lionesses. A win against Northern Ireland is to be expected, and that would then leave them on six points no matter the result against Norway: that should surely be enough.

While those games are less important than they may otherwise have been, had the Lionesses slipped up on Wednesday night, there still needs to be improvements in the team.

Wiegman needs to hone in on the skills which England have exhibited in the past under her guise and make sure that they’re now put on display for all to see in the Euros. The indecisiveness needs to be eradicated rapidly, the sharpness needs to be improved.

If you were to give this England side a report card after this first game then it would be “could do better.”

Maybe now the cult of England is something which they can use to their advantage. This is a nation which has a unique talent for creating grand bubbles of hype around national teams, and that can go one of two ways: it can either make a team thrive or it could be their own worst enemy.

The Lionesses faced as much pressure on Wednesday night as many would have in the biggest moments of their career so far. Had they failed to deliver, then the weight of the nation would have come crushing around them. Now the might of the nation can come to their aid.

So let’s see what’s to come from England and if they can improve. Women’s football prevailed on Wednesday night and so did the game in this country, but as is always the case when it comes to matters strictly on the pitch, there’s always room for improvement.