After joyous summer English women’s football faces a battle for its soul

Rule number one of English football: when Leah Williamson tells you to do something, you do it. Particularly when she is screaming it at you over the din over 90,000 supporters at Wembley. “We want them to come to WSL games!” she yelled of the 17 million viewers watching the triumphant climax of the Euro 2022 final on the BBC.

Happily, the public have taken Williamson’s advice to heart. Something has changed here. On Friday night, Arsenal and Brighton kicked off the new Super League season with a sell-out at Meadow Park. Manchester City have already sold 20,000 tickets for their derby against Manchester United in December.

Aston Villa’s season ticket sales are up 108%. And although the death of the Queen scuppered last weekend’s big opening, the stage is now set for the latest chapter in one of British sport’s outstanding success stories: a game that over the decades has built itself up from enforced extinction to create something fresh, exciting and joyful.

Now for the delicate part. With the euphoria of Wembley now a cherished memory, the arm wrestle over its legacy has begun. Never have there been so many competing visions of what women’s football should look like in this country. Everyone agrees on the imperative to “grow the game”. But how that growth should be generated and who it should primarily benefit: these are questions that will be resolved in the coming months, questions that will define the soul of the sport.

Within hours of England’s win over Germany, the Chelsea manager Emma Hayes had used her column in the Telegraph to demand a radical rethink of English women’s football. Hayes called for the WSL to be run along similar lines to the Premier League, a breakaway body geared towards maximising the