How Euro 2005 offered England a glimpse of women’s football’s future

It was as if a previously shuttered window had been thrown wide open and, for the first time, Hope Powell’s players could glimpse unexpectedly exciting new horizons.

Bev Ward, the Football Association executive responsible for that tournament’s marketing and communications strategy, recalls the moment well. “England were playing at Ewood Park in Euro 2005 but they were held up getting there because the team bus was waved down by fans lining the approach roads. I remember Rachel Unitt, Rachel Yankey and Kelly Smith – leading players – saying it was the very first time they’d seen women and girls wearing replica shirts with their names on the back.

“It gave them such an uplift. They could see new possibilities. It was a really inspiring watershed moment. That tournament represented a big step change for the women’s game in England.”

Seventeen years on, Ward and her FA colleagues are making final preparations for another home finals but the landscape around Euro 2022 has altered almost beyond recognition. “It’s a really different approach,” says Ward, now the senior host city manager. “In 2005 we knew England wouldn’t go beyond the group stage but we’re a bit more optimistic today!”

As the 21st century began many people might have struggled to envisage that, come 2022, the Women’s Super League would be fully professional, highly technically skilled, heavily televised and home to a host of international household names commanding six-figure salaries. Few realised that pioneers, notably including Powell and Kelly Simmons, the FA’s inspirational director of the women’s game, had spent years laying transformative foundations.

“In 2001 football overtook netball as the main participation sport for girls,” Ward says. “So Euro 2005