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WIN or lose in today’s World Cup final, we should all  say thank you to our heroic Lionesses for giving us reason to be so hopeful, happy and proud this summer.What a massive achievement to go all the way and put England’s women’s football on the global map in the process.
Whatever happens in the World Cup final, Sarina Wiegman and the England Lionesses are heroesCredit: Getty
A peak audience of 7.3million tuned in to see England beat Australia on Wednesday, the BBC revealed, even though the time difference meant an 11am kick-off.
And their thrilling performance was worth the watch.
The Lionesses are an exceptionally talented bunch and they play brilliantly to each other’s strengths.
But it’s not just about skills and teamwork. Female footballers who have come as far as these girls must be particularly determined and tenacious.
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And in the excellent Sarina Wiegman they have a coach worthy of their talents.
Despite playing for the Dutch national champions and representing her country, for most of her own football career she had to work as a PE teacher to supplement her income.
No seamless lucrative hop from multimillion-pound player’s contract to multimillion- pound manager’s deal for Sarina.
She had to graft to make her way as a manager. But along the way, she became a gifted and in- spirational leader.
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Within three years of gaining her full coaching licence, she led the Dutch women’s team to victory at the 2017 Euros and the final of the 2019 World Cup. Sound familiar?
Last year, she took the Lionesses to victory at the European Women’s Championship and now our women’s team is in its first World Cup final.
No wonder the FA are considering her as a potential successor to Gareth Southgate for the men’s national team.But for all her success, she is in a minority.
Spain, who England will play today, have a male manager, as do many other women’s teams.
Just 12 out of the 32 squads in this year’s World Cup are headed by female coaches, despite clear evidence that women leading women in sport adds up to success.
And you have to ask — why are there so many blokes in charge, given that no women manage men’s teams?
I was the first woman to hold a top-flight role in English football at Birmingham City, after joining the club as managing director aged 23.
When I started out, I was subjected to the most overt sexist chauvinism.
A chairman of a fellow football club claimed that I would do a “Sharon Stone” in a football tribunal to get out of a Football Association fine.
I was banned from boardrooms — which had a “no women allowed” policy — and was once chanted at by 30,000 football fans with words too rude to print in a family newspaper.
It was a slog and, at times, depressing. I always say that the boardroom door was the first door I kicked down, and I have held that door open as long and as wide as possible to get as many other women as possible through it over the past 30 years.
So, whatever happens today, I’m proud of how far we have come.
Women’s football in England has come a long way and a World Cup win would take it to the next levelCredit: PA
A nation is gripped. And proud. And excited. We are in the finals and bossing it!
As a result, people are taking women’s football more seriously than they ever have. For which I give a giant hurrah.
These women deserve to be celebrated, and I back The Sun on Sunday’s calls to give out gongs to the Lionesses.
But there is still some major catching up to do when it comes to parity with men’s football.
First, there’s the economics of it. Forget making a profit, or even breaking even.
Every Women’s Super League club loses money.
The interest in the game is there on a national level, which is obviously wonderful.
FIERCE AND FABULOUS
But it does not yet filter down to domestic leagues.
So, the truth is that the men’s teams are funding the women’s game.
Domestic leagues can’t even think about equal pay at this stage as the broadcast, sponsorship and gate revenue of the WSL doesn’t add up to a hill of beans. But this is expected to change.
The latest figures from 2022 show that the 12 WSL clubs boosted their revenue by 60 per cent in one year — and that’s before the inevitable World Cup effect.
Nike have not made Mary Earps’ England goalkeeper replica jersey available to fansCredit: AP
So it’s a shame that sponsors Nike have yet to notice this team is breaking the mould, and they need to address that.
How ridiculous that fans can’t buy a replica of Mary Earps’ goalkeeper’s shirt because the sportswear giant doesn’t think it’s worth manufacturing one.
Then there’s the massive disparity in prize money.
This summer is the ninth Women’s World Cup and each member of the winning team will get £213,000 from a total tournament purse of £88.5million.
Meanwhile, the men’s purse has grown to £345million.
In my view, it’s time for FIFA to take the lead. The women’s World Cup earns almost £1billion.
They rake in SO much money from all these ever-expanding tournaments and yet, from their accounts, which I have studied, it’s hard to work out what they do with it all.
It would be great if they made it their business to redress the balance by paying female footballers more money from their gate and broadcasting revenue.
This is something domestic leagues can’t do because their revenue just can’t support it.
After all, if FIFA can afford to pay their President Gianni Infantino more than £3million a year, surely they can afford to equal the women and men’s prize money?
Unfortunately, as fierce and fabulous as the Lionesses are, when it comes to women’s football there is still too much uncomfortable mirroring with the world of regular work, where men run the show, get paid more and are taken more seriously than women.
But the success of Sarina and her team is a great reminder that if you want something done right, get a woman to do it.
After all, football could be coming home today.
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If it does, it’s the women’s team who will be carrying it.
Come on England!
Attitudes towards women in football used to be archaic, says KarrenCredit: Caters News Agency More

WITH the Lionesses roaring into the World Cup final for the first time, manager Sarina Wiegman is celebrating her own record-breaking achievement.The former PE teacher has become the first manager to take two national teams all the way to the final — having coached her native Netherlands through the tournament in 2019.
Sarina Weigman has become the first manager to take two national teams all the way to the World Cup finalCredit: Getty
Former England players have said the key to Sarina’s success is how much she gets to know her playersCredit: Getty
Sarina, who as a child disguised herself as a boy to play in her local team, is now being talked about as a possible successor to Gareth Southgate as manager of the England men’s team.
FA boss Mark Bullingham confirmed that it was considering appointing a woman when Southgate’s contract expires at the end of next year, saying: “It’s the best person for the job. If that best person is a woman then why not?”
And those who have trained under mum-of-two Sarina, a three-time winner of Fifa Women’s Coach of the Year, reckon she is well qualified.
Ellen White, part of last year’s Euros-winning squad, says the key to Sarina’s success is how much she gets to know her players.
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Ellen, 34, said: “We needed someone to bring everyone’s strengths together on and off the pitch and allow them to be free to express themselves.
“Sarina is a genuinely lovely person that shows a lot of empathy. She wants to know you on a human level, not just as a player. She has conversations with you about your family.
“Her communication levels are on another level to what we have experienced before. It’s the fact she knows each player individually and knows what makes them tick.”
True grit
But what sets Sarina apart is also her true grit — born from a lifetime of fighting for her place in a sporting world dominated by men.
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Sarina, who learned her skills playing against boys when girls’ football was banned in the Netherlands, led the charge for women to be paid professionals in the country.
Dutch player Leonne Stentler said: “She tried to fight for that at every moment. She saw our progression was going so fast that it would be possible some day that we would be full-time professional players.
“She had to fight for everything. She was trying to break through every wall.”
That fighting spirit was awakened early in her childhood in The Hague when she discovered a love of football alongside twin brother Tom.
As her country banned girls from the pitch, she cut her hair short to look more like a boy, so she could play alongside her sibling in the local team, ESDO.
Despite the ban, her parents supported her dreams.
She recalled: “As a little girl, when I was five or six, girls were not allowed to play football, but I just liked football and my parents never made any fuss. They just said, ‘If you want to play football, you’re going to play football’.”
A breakthrough then came in the 1970s, as Uefa made all of its member nations invest in women’s football and Sarina was able to move to HSV Celeritas, which had a female team.
As a child, Sarina disguised herself as a boy to play in her local teamCredit: Twitter
At the age of 18, Sarina was part of the Netherlands squadCredit: PA
Despite her obvious talent, the barriers to women were so entrenched Sarina never saw it as a possible career.
She said: “I knew in elementary school that I wanted to be a PE teacher. That’s very strange, too, but I just wanted to be involved in sports.
“I didn’t know I could be a coach because there was nothing for women in football — I couldn’t see it, so I didn’t think that it was an opportunity.”
In 1987, the midfielder joined the Delft club KFC 71, winning the national cup the same year and was selected to play for her country.
A year later, at the age of 18, she was part of the Netherlands squad invited by Fifa to compete in the Women’s Invitation Trophy, a precursor of the World Cup, in China.
While there, she caught the eye of Anson Dorrance, the manager of the US Women’s Team and head coach at the University of North Carolina, who offered her a sports scholarship and a place in the university’s Tar Heels women’s soccer team.
The secondment to the US, where women’s football was on the up, was a turning point, making her more determined to make her mark in her homeland.
“It was an absolute trigger for me,” she said. “I thought: ‘If I can contribute in the Netherlands, to create what is in the US in the Netherlands, I would be a happy person.’ It took 20 years.”
On her return, she worked as a PE teacher at Segbroek College in The Hague, a job she kept throughout her playing career.
She trained with the men at ADO Den Haag several times a week and eventually joined the women’s team of Ter Leede, where she played for nine years, helping them to win two league titles and the Dutch cup, while also earning 104 caps for her country.
As captain of the team, her leadership skills were clear — as well as her need to nurture the players who, unlike their male counterparts, were not paid professional wages.
Teammate Jeanet van der Laan recalled: “She was pretty loud in the dressing room and very confident about her qualities.
“Sarina came to visit me because she wanted to see where I lived.
“I only had a washing machine and not a dryer.
“She asked me, ‘How are you going to do this? You have to train, practise almost every day. How are you going to dry your gear?’.
“I said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t have any money’. So, she gave me her tumble dryer. And that’s something I will never forget.”
Sarina, who is married to childhood sweetheart and sports lecturer Marten Glotzbach, retired from the pitch to start a family at 33, and had daughters Sacha and Lauren.
While still working as a PE teacher, she returned to the club as its coach, winning the double in her first season — and continued to fight for the rights of women players.
When the Dutch women’s league, Eredivisie, was launched in 2007, she was asked to coach a new team for Ado Den Haag on a part-time basis but she refused until they gave her a full-time job.
She became the first female coach at a Dutch professional football organisation when she joined Sparta Rotterdam.
Host of honours
In 2014, she became the assistant coach of the Dutch women’s team but turned down the top job a year later. “Sarina only begins a new adventure when she’s ready for it,” explained husband Marten.
In 2017, she agreed to take over as head coach and, in one of the first team meetings, she handed players an article entitled “Thirteen things you should give up if you want to be successful”.
Sarina celebrated with the Lionesses after dispatching Australia 3-1 in Sydney to reach England’s first World Cup FinalCredit: Getty
Included on the list was, “Give up your need to be liked”.
It’s a philosophy that Dutch former player Leonne Stentler says the single-minded coach lives by.
She said: “Sarina is someone who has a goal and just tries to reach that goal.
“To anything else, she’s just . . .  blind is not the right word, but she doesn’t let anyone or anything change her mind or influence her.”
The approach worked — as she guided the Netherlands to their first Euros win in 2017, earning Sarina a host of honours, including being named Best Fifa Women’s Coach and a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau.
She followed it by taking the Dutch team to a runners-up medal at the 2019 World Cup, following which she became the first woman to be honoured with a statue at the Dutch Football Association.
But a year after the World Cup triumph she disappointed her home fans by agreeing to take over from Phil Neville as head coach of the Lionesses, saying: “Why not? I only want to work at the top. I wouldn’t be happy with any less.”
A brilliant tactician, Sarina has turned around the fortunes of the England team, who have lost just one match out of 38 under her stewardship.
While she nurtures her players, she also has a ruthless streak, and caused controversy by leaving England captain Steph Houghton out of this year’s World Cup squad because of injury.
As she heads to her second World Cup final as a national coach, she says winning is not as im­portant as changing the perception of women’s football — and creating opportunities she was denied as a child.
Sarina said: “I really love the medals but what I’m proud of most is that now young girls have perspective, young girls can play football and young girls can wear shirts [with players’ names on].
“When you go to the grocery store and people tell you, ‘My daughter was wearing that shirt but my son is wearing that shirt now too’, we’ve changed society.
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“That’s the change I’m proud of the most. I didn’t have opportunities. I have two daughters, they played football in mixed teams when they were younger, and it was normal.
“Things are changing, but there is still a long way to go.”
Sarina Wiegman, second from left on bottom row, as a girl in her local football team in the Hague
Sarina retired from the pitch to start a family at 33, and had daughters Sacha and Lauren with husband MartenCredit: sarina.wiegman/instagram More