Women’s Super League.

Women’s football in England got a massive boost this summer with their national team winning the 2022 Euros in home soil, thus ending a 56 year drought when it comes to international trophies at a professional level. It was a massive occasion and England’s 2-1 victory over Germany has proven to be a major factor into a lot of people wanting to see more of these players in their own league, the Women’s Super League, whose season started out this last weekend.

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The league was about to begin in September 10th, but the passing of Queen Elizabeth II meant that all football activities in England had to be postponed. The Women’s Super League is made out of 12 teams and last season’s champions were Chelsea, who managed to make a massive comeback in the second half of the season to take down Arsenal’s lead.

There were a lot of surprises in this opening weekend, with one of them being particularly impressive for fans of women’s football: the record of tickets sold for the opening fixtures highlights an increasing interest in the game in England, both as a result of the players’ exploits in the summer, but also a natural increase of women’s football in quality and general marketing strategy, resulting in more people consuming this product.

In terms of actual results, one of the most surprising was Aston Villa’s massive 4-3 win over Manchester City. History wasn’t on Villa’s side when it came to their matches against the Citizen: they had faced each other four times in the Women’s Super League, with Villa losing all four, failing to score in all of them and receiving 17 goals in the process. But this time around, in a match that was very even and filled with quick transitions, it was new big signing, England international Rachel Daly, who made a massive debut by scoring two goals and assisting another to give Villa an historic win.

Manchester United also had a major win by defeating an always competitive Reading side by a 4-0 score. United had fell short of Women’s Champions League qualification in their three seasons in the WSL, finishing fourth in all of them, but a strong transfer window and only losing one key player in Dutch starlet Jackie Groenen has given manager Marc Skinner and his players a lot of logical confidence they could crack the top three this season. A double by defender and new signing, young English talent Maya Le Tissier, a penalty by club captain Katie Zelem and a header by new England darling Alessia Russo meant that the Red Devils made a strong showing of what they can do this season.

Another interesting result this weekend involved the return of Liverpool to the WSL. After a very strong showing in the Championship, it seems logical to think that the Reds are going to focus in England’s top flight division, but their 2-1 win over reigning champions Chelsea, especially considering it was a comeback, make things a lot more exciting this season for Liverpool. Fighting for the league title could be a bit of a pipe dream, but the Reds have shown with this result that they are here to compete.

Arsenal were the ones that got the season going last Friday by beating Brighton with a whopping 4-0 score, highlighting another flying league started for the Gunners, just like it happened last season. Euros winner and Player of the Tournament Beth Mead scored a double against the Seagulls, once again maintaining her outstanding form from the summer while Kim Little and Stina Blackstenius completed the trashing of a Brighton side that had to play with ten women after a red card for Emma Kullberg in the opening seven minutes of the game. Arsenal seem to start the season as usual, but the key is to see if they can keep up this level of form.

A team that made a very interesting impact last season were Tottenham. While they ended up finishing fifth, there were periods when they were in third position and really challenging for that Champions League spot, so it was interesting to see how they were going to fare this season now that they were not the surprise package and people have genuine expectations for them. They had a solid 2-1 victory over Leicester City with goals by Ashleigh Neville and new signing Drew Spence. The Foxes were not particularly strong last season, battling relegation for the most part, so is hard to see this as a great test for Tottenham.

Two teams that have been underachieving in recent seasons have been West Ham United and Everton. The latter is a particularly notorious case when you consider the expectations people had last season and how things fell apart for the Merseyside team. In this case, things haven’t improved that much as the Hammers won 1-0 with a header by Scotland international Lisa Evans to secure the win.

It was a really exciting opening weekend for the Women’s Super League with many interesting results and an unpredictable feeling that makes the best tournaments exciting. The likes of City and Chelsea, two of the favorites to challenge for the league title, have lost their opening games, which leaves a bit of an opening for other teams to seize, at least in the first couple of weeks as they showed last season that they can recover.
The most important thing to highlight is how the competitive levels and interest in the Women’s Super League has increased every year, with more and more fans showing a genuine interest in their teams and what they’ve been up to. The 2022 Euros were definitely a catalyst and it has helped to put the likes of Arsenal’s Beth Mead, City’s Chloe Kelly, Villa’s Rachel Daly, Chelsea’s Millie Bright or United’s Ella Toone and Alessia Russo in the map of people that perhaps were not all too familiar with women’s football.

Overall, it was a very good start for a league that only gets better every year.