This could not have happened without sports bras
THE BBC’s coverage began with Gabby Logan in a girl-power trouser suit, striding across the Wembley pitch, patent heels sinking into the sacred turf as she talked of a ‘pivotal moment’ for women’s sport.
‘Upwards, onwards and forwards from here,’ she cried, approximately two hours before England beat all the odds, some dodgy tackles and a German team who had never lost in a final before.
Gabby was joined by pundits Ian Wright, former England women’s player Alex Scott and Jonas Eidevall, current manager of the female Arsenal team. Before the match began, all four blathered together excitedly, forced to shout over the Wembley sound system belting out pop hits.
Between Harry Styles and Dua Lipa, there was much fevered talk of sporting magnitude and dreaming big dreams. ‘The journey these girls have been on, this is the dream, this is what they have been dreaming of, they probably couldn’t even dream of this,’ babbled Ian Wright. ‘We are not going back,’ said Gabby – but back to what?
To obscurity, one supposes. A few weeks ago, only diehard fans were roaring on about the Lionesses, but as the team rose through the tournament to the final, suddenly everyone was getting in on the sister act, everyone was a fan.
Out on Wembley Way, presenter Kelly Somers was setting the scene as the fans arrived. ‘We’ve got young people, we’ve got old people, we’ve got a couple of fathers with their daughters,’ she said, and that was good to know.
There was a pre-match interview with England’s Ellen White who said that no, she was not overwhelmed by finding herself in a football final. ‘You play the game, not the occasion,’ she said. ‘ The maturity!’ cried Gabby, approvingly. The Beeb broadcast a clammy montage of the great and the good cheering on the team. They included Richard E Grant, Richard Osman, Princess Charlotte and Zoe Ball. ‘Bring that cup home,’ urged David Beckham, now so heavily tattooed that he looks like a whiskery ink blot. There was even a little speech from Hollywood actress Natalie Portman, who founded the women’s Angel City Football Club in Los Angeles.
‘Please not let us focus on this being women’s football,’ she said, looking super sincere. ‘Skills are skills, goals are goals and football is football.’
And pieties will always be pieties. It is tragic that nothing can happen in modern life today withjan
out someone telling us how to think and what we should be feeling, especially when it comes to gender issues. It just makes me want to say something unpardonable about the German team’s hairstyles, namely that I haven’t seen so many bad buns since that unfortunate explosion in the kugel factory.
And triumphs may be triumphs, Natalie, but no one mentions the sports bra, without which this tournament could not have happened in the first place. I note that the female coaches for both sides wear them too, perhaps in supportive solidarity – which coincidentally is exactly what players require from these underpinnings.
I’m trying to move on from sports bras, but after she scored the winning goal, Chloe Kelly even took off her top and ran around the pitch to show off hers, receiving a yellow card for this transgression.
Anyway, if there was a gender bar over which we were all supposed to hurdle on this momentous occasion for female sport, no one told Ian Wright.
‘When you listen to the ladies, they say how great it is to be here,’ he said of the England squad. And what about the younger fans? ‘The little girls are so grateful,’ he purred.
During the half-time chat, he and Alex Scott traded some marvellous banalities in a conversation that was hard to follow. ‘You really need to let the ball do the work,’ said Alex.
‘Yes, get the ball in, get something, keep it further away from our half of the pitch,’ said Ian.
‘In those dangerous areas, be clever,’ said Alex – but that is what we women have been doing for centuries. M OST of the match commentary came from old hand Robyn Cowen, who always likes to line up a hat-trick of superlatives. ‘The atmosphere? Palpable, physical, visceral,’ she said at the beginning. At the end, ‘Dream makers, record-breakers, game changers,’ was her verdict.
As the victory celebrations continued, nearly everyone choked up or was openly sobbing. ‘I am so emotional,’ said Ian Wright.
Maybe so, but earlier he was pointing out where the ‘ladies’ had faltered. ‘She made the wrong choice there. She should have done that low,’ he said of one England player.
That is the thing. You can be a female football player, you can win the Euros, you can triumph both in life and on the pitch. But whatever you do, there will still be a man on the sidelines, telling you where you went wrong. Never mind. Well done, girls!