Karen Bardsley proud of women’s football reputation ahead of Euros: ‘Do we want to end up where the men are?’

Former England goalkeeper Karen Bardsley hopes the upcoming Euros can showcase positive fan behaviour in football.

The recently retired Man City star, who played 81 times for her country, told i the game is reaching a “fork in the road” amid increasing financial success.

With 450,000 tickets sold across 25 days and a global audience of 250m, this week’s Euros are set to be the biggest women’s sporting event in European history.

But Ms Bardsley said she hopes the sport can not only retain its reputation as safe and inclusive for fans, but embrace it.

If England get to the final of the Euros on 31 July they will play in front of a sell-out crowd at Wembley of more than 87,000, just as the men’s team did last summer.

But the occasion is unlikely to be marred by the kind of disgraceful fan behaviour – including widespread drug-taking, public urination and ticketless fans forcing their way in – that led to Gareth Southgate’s team being handed a stadium ban afterwards.

“I think there will come a point where you have to decide which way you want to go, and I think we’re getting close to it,” Bardsley said.

“We’re going to come to that fork in the road where it’s ‘do you want to take the same financial model and end up in the same sort of environment as the men are?’ Where people are crushing each other to get into a European Championship final and destroying cities and things like that?

“We need to consider how we want to represent the game and everyone involved in it.”

She added: “I think we should embrace it [the reputation of the women’s game].

“You look at the people involved in the women’s game, at the most basic level, women are great role models, they’re empathetic, they’re good communicators, they’re collaborative,