As the Team GB manager at the London 2012 Olympics, Hope Powell left Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on foot following the 1-0 win over New Zealand in their opening game.
She was, in her words, “mobbed” by fans. In her book Hope: My Life in Football, she recounts spending hours signing autographs and posing for photographs with supporters. This was not normal.
A decade before England’s victory at the 2022 European Championship, 70,584 fans watched Steph Houghton score in Team GB’s 1-0 group-stage win over Brazil at Wembley. Up until then, Powell herself had only played or managed in front of a crowd of a few hundred.
She described Team GB’s participation at that summer’s Olympics — the first time Great Britain had entered a women’s football team despite the event existing since 1996 — as a “major breakthrough” for the sport.
Team GB players at the London 2012 Olympics (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
London 2012 was part of the vehicle to increase professionalism and commercialism in the women’s game in Britain. But that vehicle has now stuttered and choked: Team GB will play no part in the 2024 Paris Olympics after England, the nominated nation to attempt qualification on behalf of Great Britain, beat Scotland 6-0 but failed to better…
