Lionesses: Euro 2022 has helped 129,000 more girls get into football

Stacey Mullock, senior national development manager within grassroots football at the FA, says they have been overwhelmed with the success of the programme.

“Without grassroots, you know we don’t really have a future England team,” Mullock said.

“The game has grown so much over the last few years, and it gives us real hope for our talent pathway and what our development teams at England are looking like now because there is a bigger pool of talent to choose from.

“There is no doubt that the fact that we won, at Wembley, that summer was just everything we all couldn’t even imagine dreaming of really. And it was amazing.

“But I think we would have seen growth anyway – whether it would have been on the same scale, you know, who knows?

“I think it’s really helped having all of the media profiling, the personalities that we have in the squad and people that are doing such a good job to promote what women’s football is all about and how it is different to the men’s game, how they want to use their platform to be able to make a real change in society.”

One of those personalities has undoubtedly been Earps.

England played the first match of Euro 2022 at Old Trafford, beating Austria 1-0 – and, after spending five years at United before signing for Paris St-Germain in France, she now has a mural in Manchester.

“To open the tournament there at Old Trafford was… Yeah, it was unbelievable, really,” Earps added.

“I remember training at the pitch the night before and having no idea, I guess, of the journey we were about to embark on and just being super focused and being excited to play at the Theatre of Dreams.”

Earps is now encouraging people to get involved in football, even if they don’t want to play. “There’s so many different ways you can be involved in football. Whether that’s a season ticket holder, as a fan, or a coach, ref, official, whatever.”