Member-only story

England Women Win First Trophy and Get Hollywood Ending

Euro 2022 was all-round success

Manny Otiko
4 min readAug 1, 2022
Photo from England football team (Facebook)

The best team won. That’s what happened on Sunday when the England women’s soccer (football) team beat Germany 2–1 in the final of the 2022 European Championship.

Unfortunately, often in soccer, that can’t always be said. Soccer is such a complex game that frequently the team that plays the most exciting soccer and entertains the fans, ends up on the losing side. A great example of this is the famous Brazilian 1982 squad who lost in a quarterfinal to Italy. That squad will go down as one of the best teams to never win the World Cup.

The Germans have a reputation for playing dour, uninspiring football and still winning. That’s not to say they are always unexciting, but sometimes they grind out victories and still grab a trophy. As former German coach and player Jurgen Klinsmann once said, German players are tournament players. This means they only turn it on when there is something at stake.

Breaking the Curse

And that almost happened in this tournament. England, also known as the Lionesses, was clearly the better team. They played better football, scored the most goals (22)and had the support of a trophy-thirsty nation behind them. This was the women’s first trophy in their history and…

--

--

Manny Otiko
Manny Otiko

Written by Manny Otiko

Manny Otiko writes about race, politics and sports. He has been published in Salon and LA Weekly. Follow him at @mannyotiko.bsky.social

No responses yet