In a few hours, the European Women’s Football Championship will start in England. It’s a tournament that inspires joy. The reasons are obvious.
England versus Austria. This is the opening game of the 13th European Championship for women. The island’s hosts open the football tournament of the summer at Manchester’s packed Old Trafford.
It smells like weed. After a break of a few weeks, football fans are finally back to business. And the tournament stands out for several reasons.
Sport is the focus
After a long time, the European Women’s Championship is again a tournament (almost) without taste. Corona-plagued Olympic Games in Beijing and Tokyo, soccer World Cups in Russia and Qatar: While the most recent major events were strongly influenced by political and social side-war scenes, the focus of the European Championship in the motherland of soccer is on sport.
More than 500,000 tickets were already sold before the start of the tournament. For comparison: At the last women’s European Championship in the Netherlands in 2017, only 274,000 tickets were sold. “The hype is real,” one might say, if it weren’t so trite. The tragic loss of the best soccer player in the world doesn’t change that (read more about it here).