Record attendance as England’s Lionesses play Germany at Wembley
Written by News on 09/11/2019
A record-breaking attendance is expected as England women’s football team play Germany at Wembley.
The game is sold out, with 86,619 tickets issued for the friendly, easily beating the 70,584 who watched a British women’s team play Brazil at the 2012 Olympics.
The game kicked off at 5.30pm and Germany took an early lead in the ninth minute through their captain, Alexandra Popp – follow the live blog.
It is the biggest turnout for women’s football since the 1999 World Cup final when 90,185 saw the US beat China at the Rose Bowl in California.
“It shows we are getting respected for the work we’ve done day in and day out,” said England’s Gemma Bonner.
“It’s been a long road to get to this occasion, but one we should embrace, enjoy.”
Interest in women’s football has been growing and received another boost when the Lionesses reached the World Cup semi-finals this summer.
Striker Ellen White said: “Hopefully this is the start of us selling out massive stadiums, of people supporting us and wanting to come and watch women’s football.”
A Super League record was set in September when 31,213 watched the Manchester derby, while more than 24,000 have since watched games at West Ham and Chelsea.
England’s semi-final loss to the US in July started a five-match winless run for the team, which only ended last month with victory over Portugal.
“Coming off the back of the World Cup where we all reached a massive emotional high, we have probably all found it a little bit difficult to get back up to that high mentally and physically,” said manager Phil Neville.
“But this is the type of game where there are no excuses.”
Neville added: “It’s the biggest game the England women’s team have ever had in terms of the size of the game and I think emotionally, physically and tactically we need to be at our very best.”
(c) Sky News 2019: Record attendance as England’s Lionesses play Germany at Wembley
