Lionesses spark surge in girls signing up for football training

A YOUTH football training club has seen enquiries surge among girls since the Lionesses success at Euro 22.

Little Kickers, which runs classes for children from 18 months to eight years, said that interest had increased over the past two weeks, with nearly 1,000 children – 28 per cent of whom are girls – signing up since England women beat Germany in last Sunday’s final.

The company, which caters for 41,000 children – 21 per cent of whom are girls – each week, said the “distinct” increase in girls was due to the positive role models they had seen on the pitch.

Alan Kennedy, the group’s chief executive, said that it was “an interesting time for female football” and that there had been an increase in enquiries across all younger age groups, with boys also inspired by the women’s team.

“What we run is a programme that engages and develops the whole child – it’s a football programme but it’s a lot more than that,” he said, adding that the classes helped those who had missed out on socialising in the pandemic.

Mr Kennedy said the classes were based around “play not push” and were not as competitive as some training schemes. He said that while girls had a higher dropout rate than boys, this could reflect a lack of grassroots opportunities for them after age eight.

Keeley Gordon, 35, a former PE teacher who runs Little Kickers in Cheshire and Stockport, said that more mothers than fathers had signed their children up to classes recently, adding: “The people who have been most inspired are the women watching – that might have triggered something where they might not have thought about their little girls going to football.”

“A lot of the time, it’s the dads who bring them to Kickers… women now have watched that and hopefully been inspired by it,” she added.

Ms Gordon suggested that girls could now “actually see themselves in the future whereas before it was just watching the men on TV”.

She said that whereas some adult men seemed surprised by the Lionesses’ prowess, younger boys “haven’t been taught that”, adding that “the two boys I watched it with were going absolutely crazy”.