ark Sampson sits in a quiet corner of a downtown Montreal cafe, sipping mineral water and staring intently into the middle distance. A crest embossed with Three Lions adorns his blue tracksuit top. Sampson is too young to have developed the sort of under-eye puffiness which characterises most England football managers during World Cups but, for the coach of the national female team, those lions still weigh exceptionally heavy.
After Wednesday night’s victory against Colombia ensured the Lionesses qualified for the knockout stages of Canada 2015, Sampson is preparing for Monday evening’s round of 16 meeting with Norway in Ottawa. Much is at stake. In recent years the Football Association has poured millions into an increasingly professional game, yet crowds at domestic Women’s Super League (WSL) fixtures remain stubbornly low. It seems a sport craving a catalyst, a transformative moment.
Since China staged the first World Cup in 1991, England have never progressed beyond the quarter-finals. Should they fail again, Sampson’s policy of constantly rotating his team – in only three games he has already used all 20 outfield players – and switching tactics, will attract considerable criticism. Expect searching questions as to why a Welshman who five years ago was coaching non-league male side Taff Vale was appointed as Hope Powell’s successor.
Progress to a semi-final, however, perhaps even one step better, will prompt praise of Sampson’s bold management techniques, honed during a stint working in Swansea City’s academy, and his use of sports psychology and corporate-style bonding techniques.
There can be little doubt the latter initiatives are generally working. A squad divided in the latter days of Powell’s tenure frequently sing the praises, privately as well as publicly, of a coach apparently pulling off the tricky balanc ing act of fostering acute competition for places at the same time as genuine esprit de corps.
It probably helps that England’s class of 2015 know they are fortunate to be the first generation of their gender to earn a proper living from the game. Salaries provide a useful barometer of progress – and while no English player earns anything near the £1.9m a year commanded by Alex Morgan, the US and Portland Thorns striker, remuneration is creeping up.
The England and Manchester City captain, Steph Houghton, receives around £70,000 a year from a combination of a £26,000 central FA contract and her City salary. Unlike their American counterparts, English players struggle to attract major sponsors, and wages tend to taper off pretty sharply. As Houghton, who earns in the region of £4,000 per annum from endorsements, acknowledges: “Some WSL players are on £50 a week.”
Others have signed club contracts typically ranging from £20,000 to £35,000-plus but they remain in the minority – the league remains only partly professional with many first-teamers juggling an eclectic range of part-time careers.
Claire Rafferty, Chelsea’s left-back and an economics graduate, chooses to work three days a week as an analyst at Deutsche Bank, while her club and international team-mate Eniola Aluko is on an extended sabbatical from life as a lawyer. Unlike many male footballers, the Lionesses are often well-educated, invariably highly articulate and usually open and engaging.
The advent of agents is slowly reducing access to players, but Karen Carney and Fran Kirby, arguably Sampson’s two most creative individuals, have both suffered from acute depression and speak candidly about their illnesses. Meanwhile, Fara Williams, an influential midfielder spent the early part of her career either sleeping rough on the streets or in hostels and is now a prominent charity campaigner for the homeless.
Although the majority of the 23-woman squad, who range in age from early 20s to mid-30s do not have children, Katie Chapman is a mother of three. She has talked frankly about struggling to balance her commitments to a husband and sons with the demands of football.
Last week, Casey Stoney, a long-serving defender, was awarded an MBE, but her announcement, via Twitter last autumn that her partner, Megan Harris, had given birth to twins, also served as a public declaration that she is gay. Infinitely more inhibited and old-fashioned, the domestic male game is still waiting for its first Stoney to come out.
Lionesses are largely enthusiastic users of social media, and the FA – which earlier this month announced a new seven-figure sponsorship deal for the female FA Cup – is quietly optimistic this will eventually provoke a surge in individual commercial contracts.
Yet however many retweets the Raffertys and Alex Scotts attract, the marketing world is unlikely to take the game overly seriously until WSL crowds improve. Although attendances have risen to a record average of 892 in the first division and 326 in the second, only Manchester City regularly breach the 1,000 barrier.
More encouragingly, almost 46,000 watched England lose to Germany in a friendly at Wembley last November. “We’re aware of our responsibility,” says Sampson. “Of the potentially huge opportunity to inspire the next generation of women footballers and push the game to the next level. If England won the World Cup it would be the biggest boost it could ever get.”
Should his side somehow confound all expectations and end the “49 years of hurt” since Sir Alf Ramsey’s boys triumphed in 1966, the game’s entire domestic landscape could alter almost beyond recognition. “It would change everything,” says Sampson.
Even now things are not exactly standing still. While one significant watershed was reached last autumn, when Houghton became the first female footballer to grace the cover of Shoot magazine, further milestones were passed this spring.
The sight of Houghton and company modelling for both their first Panini sticker book and the forthcoming edition of Fifa’s computer game may appear trivial but indicates a wider, hitherto grudging, acceptance of the women’s game.
This shift from niche to mainstream has been accelerated by leading Premier League clubs including Manchester City joining Chelsea and Arsenal in creating affiliated WSL sides. At City, Rodolfo Borrell the men’s global technical director and a coach credited with developing Lionel Messi and Andre Iniesta at Barcelona regularly helps put the women through their paces. “He’s taught us so much,” says England’s Lucy Bronze.
Ranked sixth in the world, the England side are also learning fast, but currently face formidable opponents in the shape of Germany, the US and Japan, the World Cup holders. Daunting as that opposition is, it does not quite remove a definite pressure on the squad to complement off-field advances with on-pitch success.
When Hope Powell played for the Lionesses during the 1990s, she slept on gymnasium floors before internationals and washed her own kit. Largely thanks to Powell’s readiness to, quite brilliantly, stand up to “the blazers” at FA HQ once she became coach, things are now very different.
The class of 2015 flew to Canada business-class, have been housed in the Fairmonts, Sheratons and Crowne Plazas of the five-star hotel world and are accompanied by a 19-strong support team. This not only comprises highly qualified medics but a psychologist, an exercise scientist and performance analysts.
“There’s definitely a sense of responsibility,” says Rafferty. “Doing well in Canada will increase, and hopefully sustain, interest in the WSL.” Down the years she has undergone three career-saving knee operations – the latter two were funded by the FA but the first was financed by her parents.
Chapman is similarly grateful to Chelsea for a flexible approach to childcare responsibilities. Sampson has been equally sympathetic but, not so long ago ago Powell dropped Chapman after proving rather less understanding about sometimes conflicting loyalties.
Five years on from the establishment of the WSL a velvet revolution is under way. Now a summer competition, it has an eight-team first division – Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Sunderland, Liverpool, Notts County, Birmingham City and Bristol Academy – and a 10-strong second tier.
Sunderland, once part of the historic north-east “hotbed” of men’s football, are an emerging force in the women’s game. Almost a quarter of Sampson’s squad – including Houghton, Bronze and Jill Scott – were developed by a club now home to the runner-up in Fifa’s 2014 goal of the season competition. Although the actual winner was a man – Colombia’s James Rodriguez – the recognition Sunderland’s new signing Stephanie Roche attracted for her fabulous volley for Ireland’s Peamount United saw the female game traverse another frontier.
Back in that Montreal cafe, Sampson waits to depart for Ottawa. “We’re in a good place,” says a man prone to “taking the positives” and no stranger to the odd cliche. “We’re confident we can beat anyone. We want win to the World Cup.”
Doing so really would put English women’s football in a very good place.
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