STEPH HOUGHTON
Position Centre-back | Caps 104 | Goals 12
“I WAS KEVIN PHILLIPS On THE PLAYGROUND, BUT no ONE WAS TALL ENOUGH TO BE NIALL QUINN”
What’s your first football memory? Probably Euro 96, when Paul Gascoigne scored against Scotland. I was eight. I had a bet with my Aunty actually. She’s Scottish and said if England won, she’d buy me my first England kit. That’s probably why I remember it, and it wasn’t a bad goal either, was it?
Which players did you admire growing up? I supported Sunderland, so Kevin Phillips was pretty much the guy during that time. I was a striker as a kid and he was scoring loads of goals, so I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I was Kevin Phillips on the school playground and one of my best mates was Michael Gray. Sadly I didn’t have any friends tall enough to be Niall Quinn...
You have been around the England setup since 2007. How much have things changed in that time? A lot has changed. The first time I went away with the squad, we weren’t training full-time. We’d be training with our clubs once or twice a week and then playing on the Sunday. The pitches we used to play on were awful and we didn’t get many people coming to watch us. Now, we train every day, we have opportunities to play in fantastic stadiums, we get our meals prepared and we follow strict training regimes. I’m glad to have been a part of the transition from semi-professional to professional – it’s helped me to appreciate the life I have now.
Did you have a part-time job when you first started playing? As soon as I turned 16 my dad was like, ‘Right, you need a job now!’ So I started working in Sports Soccer and earned about £3, maybe £4 an hour. I was also going to sixth-form college and then university, on top of going to the gym and training. There was a lot of travelling, and at one stage I was playing for Leeds and at university in Loughborough. It was difficult to juggle everything but it was worth it in the end.
Is it safe to assume there are players from 10-15 years ago who would have slipped through the net because there weren’t professional teams, so they’ve gone down a different career path? Yeah. There were probably quite a few players who had a lot more talent than me, but slipped through the net because they were forced into choosing between football and education, and decided education was more important. They probably didn’t see much potential in football as a full-time career. It’s sad when you think some people have missed out, but that’s all part of the revolution in women’s football.
Is there one particular area where you think women’s football is still being neglected? I think it needs to be televised a lot more than it currently is. If we could have one match on a main channel every single week, that would increase the number of young girls getting interested in football, be that as fans of clubs or even as players.
What’s your best memory from the World Cup four years ago? The quarter-final victory against Canada. They were the hosts, so we were playing in front of 50,000 Canadians who booed every pass and every touch of the ball. So, to go out there and win a match like that in those circumstances was obviously incredible. I think that may have been the moment a lot of people realised we were serious contenders. Were you aware of the hype and noise about the tournament back in England at the time, or was it hard to keep track of it? Maybe after beating Canada. We were passing so many milestones – it was the first knockout game we had ever won, our first quarter-final and our first semi-final. The longer we stayed out there, the more members of our families were flying out to watch. They’d all be saying, ‘Oh, you were on the news last night’ or, ‘It’s all over Twitter, it’s all over Instagram.’ It was a bit of a whirlwind when we got back home. We landed at Heathrow and there were loads of reporters and cameras waiting for us. We’d just got off a 10-hour flight so everyone was looking rough. Then the next minute we’re at Downing Street, we’re meeting Prince William, we’re at Wimbledon. For two or three weeks it was surreal. We were all absolutely knackered, but it was an amazing time.
How different will the tournament be this time around? Will expectations be higher? There are definitely higher expectations. The fact that we’re now ranked third in the world adds a little more pressure, but we’ve dealt with that well in the last few months against some of the top sides.
What’s Phil Neville like as a manager? He’s really ambitious and his professionalism is second to none. The thing that’s impressed me most about him is his man management. It’s not just about football; it’s about you as a person and what makes you tick. He cares, and he knows that for you to play well on the pitch, things needs to be right at home, too. It’s always nice for him to check in and ask if you’re OK. For me, that just allows the players to be themselves and continue repaying him with performances on the pitch.
What does it mean to be England captain? When you say that it gives me goosebumps. It’s something I never expected to do in my England career, yet here I am sitting with you, talking about my third tournament as captain. For me, it’s an honour and a privilege, and I’ll never change the way I think about playing for my country. It’s about wearing the captaincy with pride and hoping I can lead these girls to victory by being myself and the professional player I always hold myself up to.
England take on Scotland in the first game? Is that going to be a feisty one? England vs Scotland is always something that captures people’s imagination – whether it’s male or female football. Hopefully the whole of the UK will be watching. It’s on prime time television, which is fantastic. It’s going to be an unbelievable advert for the women’s game, and for the World Cup as well.
What’s your aim for the tournament? God, I’ll be getting told off here. Of course we want to go there and win the thing! You can’t go into a tournament thinking, ‘Oh, we want to get out of the group’.
The decision to hire the former Manchester United and Everton player, a manager lacking the experience and profile of many rumoured candidates, and who hadn’t even applied for the post in the first place, drew widespread consternation. But the FA have been proved right with their pick.
Neville has drawn eyes from men’s football onto women’s, and came with no baggage from an unprofessional women’s game. He’s got extensive experience of succeeding at the highest level as a player – winning six Premier League titles, three FA Cups, the Champions League and Intercontinental Cup under Alex Ferguson – and knows what an environment of champions looks like.
And when challenged over his suitability for the job, specifically not having experience of working with elite female athletes, Neville countered it by saying he had grown up with an elite female athlete who had sacrificed a lot to play – twin sister and England netball head coach Tracey.
On the pitch, his team have certainly danced to his tune. The battling, direct football of the last four years – effective though it was – has now been replaced by a possession-based game. The team patiently build from the back and are thriving in the system, thanks largely to the fact it aligns more neatly with the way they play with their various clubs. It’s a side filled with flair players that want to have fun and express themselves on the pitch – and Neville has let them off the leash and allowed them to do just that.
The Neville era began with an impressive 4-1 thumping of France, a 2-2 draw with Germany and a 1-0 loss to the USA at the 2018 friendly Shebelieves Cup. These were good early signs.
It was followed by a near-perfect World Cup qualifying campaign. The Lionesses won seven out of eight matches and drew the other 0-0, scoring 29 goals and conceding just the one.
And by the time this year’s Shebelieves event rolled around in March, England were ready to stake their claim as contenders this summer.
After recovering from a goal down to beat Brazil 2-1 and drawing 2-2 against World Cup holders the USA, the Lionesses thumped 2015 runners-up Japan 3-0, gaining a modicum of revenge for their semi-final agony to lift the increasingly-prestigious cup for the first time.
All the while, Neville experimented with how to inject some battling spirit into the middle of his side – after losing Arsenal’s Jordan Nobbs through injury – and pushed hard to give his young charges playing time, so they travelled to France with as many caps as possible.
Neville has made no secret of his target; to return home in early July with the World Cup trophy. He has nowhere to hide if they fail to achieve that goal. The professional setup of the FA Women’s Super League, which some now argue is getting close to usurping the USA’S National Women’s Soccer League as the best in the world, means there are fewer excuses to not be challenging internationally.
Group D will be no cake walk, though. While England traipse the 1,122 miles from Nice to Le Havre and back again, the US dot between the northern cities of Reims, Paris and Le Havre.
UNDER NEVILLE, THE LIONESSES HAVE CULTIVATED A FEAR FACTOR AND CONFIDENCE THAT GIVES THEM EVERY CHANCE OF MOUNTING A CHALLENGE. IT’S TIME TO GET BEHIND THEM