Current mood: It’s not just a game

If you really, really want to rile my dad (and, honestly, I often do) then tell him that football is just a game. Because, really, isn’t it possible to reduce any and every pursuit that falls outside the remit of basic human survival instincts like that? Hamlet is just a man pretending to be a Danish prince! Jackson Pollocks are just paint splatters on a canvas! Politics is just people shouting at each other! (Ok, based on the Conservative leadership debates, there is a splash of truth here).

Nevertheless, football has made it easy to diminish it in recent years. I’m not talking about winning and losing (I support Pompey, we are on very comfortable ground with losing thank you very much). I’m talking about it being fuelled by this insecure machismo. I’m talking about it being pumped with obscene amounts of money. I’m talking about the fact that you finally get a thoroughly brilliant role model like Marcus Rashford, and he is subjected to vile abuse. For women, all this – plus the lairy, laddy, loutish culture perpetuated by the few who ruin it for the many – has made it hard for lots of us to enjoy football, let alone play it. If, until a few weeks ago, you thought that becoming somebody’s WAG was the only way to get to the top of the Premier League, who could blame you?

That, however, was before the Lionesses were anointed National Treasures™. But they had secured that title before kick-off, just by showing up in what's traditionally been seen as a man’s world. Caring about football isn’t a prerequisite to caring about them and what they stand for. As manager Sabina Wiegman put it in her post-final press conference: ‘I think we really made a change. I think this tournament has done so much for the game but also for society and women in society in England but I also think in Europe and across the world and I hope that will make a (bigger) change too’. That’s not hyperbole. The Lionesses remind us that at its best football, sport, is about community, unity, respect. It’s not just a game.

Laura