LONDON: England against Germany at Wembley Stadium. A final that underlines the growing stature of women’s soccer in Europe and echoes decades of history.
When host nation England takes on Germany in the European Championship final Sunday, it will have a tournament-record crowd of nearly 90,000.
Euro 2022 as a whole will be easily the best-attended ever. It beat the previous mark of 240,000 part-way through the group stage. “It’s going to be a great festival of football,” German coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg said Wednesday. “That’s a classic in soccer, England-Germany.” England are aiming to win their first major women’s tournament title on the site where the English men’s national team beat West Germany to win their only major title to date, the 1966 World Cup.
Germany have won all eight European finals they’ve played — and crushed England 6-2 in the 2009 final — but their momentum had seemed to slow in recent years as other countries invested heavily in women’s leagues.