The Final Word: The broken lioness

By Paul Moore

So we are going to have to listen for another 20 years about how the English soccer team is the only team to have won a major national competition on foreign soil. We are going to have to see the penalty saves time after time-after-time and hear how the gallant English are never beaten, how these women (although some fools still refer to them in the press as girls) epitomise what it means to be English – they are seemingly actually England – and we will be told that these are the real thing so you can forget about David Beckham, Harry Kane, Bobby Charlton et al.

If it was the men’s team it would be beyond bearable. We would have to leave the country for six months or smash all our televisions, mobile phones and computers so we would not have to listen to the incessant jingoistic twaddle. Yet for some reason I do not mind that it is the women that have won the trophy.

I even found myself hoping they might win it, in much the same way as when the English cricket team play I hope they also are successful, provided of course they are not playing Ireland. There is something less offensive about the women. They do not appear to have the same arrogance as the men, or assume that being England they should simply be allowed to win but perhaps that will change now that they have found themselves in possession of two major trophies.

Recently the women’s game saw its first one million pound player and it is to be hoped that this is not the start of a move away from playing the game through passion and playing the game because it is a lucrative way to make a living.

The thing which seems to set the women soccer players apart is that they still look surprised that they are in this place with thousands of people watching them in the stadium and millions more viewing through television across the globe. They appear to simply want to enjoy as much of this new focus as they can attract and to show themselves in the best possible light. They also do not want to miss one second of it if it is at all possible.

The proof of this is to be found in one Lucy Bronze. She is 33 years of age and may not have the opportunity to play at this level again by the time the next competitions come around.

She played every game, was central to the victories in a number of them and was substituted only for the last 15 minutes of extra time in the final. Remarkably she did so while carrying a fractured tibia for the full duration of the competition. Whatever about the team being the only English team to win a tournament on foreign soil, she is the only person ever – and probably will continue to be so – to have done it on one leg.

The reason for this has to be one of a range of factors. Firstly, she may be unhinged, mad, loco whatever term one wishes to use. Right backs in soccer do by tradition have a penchant for insanity. Secondly, she may be stubborn to the point of said previous madness. Thirdly, she may have thought I am only a few months away from retirement and so I am going to live with this and feed on the adrenaline and hopefully glory.

Finally, she may just have wanted to be on the team and not let any of her compatriots down if she was needed.

Whatever the reason I am fairly certain it would not have happened had it been Lionel Messi.