Go On Lionesses

With the 2023 Women’s World Cup getting underway in just a few hours time, Ada Hegerberg’s Norway and co-hosts New Zealand get proceedings underway in Auckland, it feels only right to return to my blog to wish the European Champions all the best down under.

Sure England’s Lionesses may be without many of the players that fired them to glory at Wembley less than 12 months ago, but they are still a force to be reckoned with on the international stage.

Even without the experience of retired stalwarts Jill Scott and Steph Houghton or the mercurial goal-scoring talent of Beth Mead, out with an ACL injury, to guide them through the harder moments they are still many pundits favourites to go all the way.

Winning major tournament titles in back to back years would sky rocket the popularity, quality and commercial draw of the women’s game. This triple threat of positive outcomes is surely more than enough motivation for the Ladies to bring back the trophy.

There is also the added bonus of being able to introduce themselves to other in the game as “Queens of Europe and the World”, that sounds pretty damn good to me.

Of the 31 other teams in the newly expanded format there are only 2 that England may consider as rivals for the title.

First of those is the enemy nation for most of the 20th century, Germany, who will be going all out to break English hearts as revenge for last summer. The chance for their revenge is most likely to present itself at the Semi-Final stage.

Should the Lionesses overcome that hurdle they will come up against their greatest challenge in the tournament in their final game, the all-conquering United States of America.

The Americans have won 4 of the 8 World Cups to date and never finished lower than 3rd at any of them.

They have won the last 2 editions comfortably and the motivation of being the first team at either the Women’s or Men’s competitions to score a hat-trick of back to back victories will be potent motivation for them to raise their levels even further this year.

If anyone can beat them though it will be the Lionesses. They have the talent to destroy the juggernaut and will want to avenge their 2-1 defeat in the Semi-Final at France 2019.

The Lionesses have all they need to go and win the trophy, now it’s just the difficult bit to go.

Wishing the Lionesses the best of luck on their quest for glory.

Destroy the juggernaut and bring back the trophy Ladies.