In Pompeii a new find has been made that could be the first ever pizza! Or at least, it’s a picture containing something that looks very much like a pizza.
Unfortunately the guys in charge of the latest excavation there say the cheesy bits can’t be mozzarella – that didn’t exist in the first century – so it’s a boring old flatbread.
But what’s coming out of the Italian town preserved by a volcanic eruption 2,000 years ago is still remarkable as long as you don’t want it to be an American Hot: an oven for 100 loaves, a bed, fragments of mattress, a friendly snake shrine. And, with around a third of the town still under ash, there is so much left to come.
Now the women of Pompeii didn’t as far as we know play ‘calcio storico’, the earliest form of football found in Italy,as that came much later. But there were women playing a version of football called cuju two millennia ago in Han China.
And unless you were subject to a cheekily early commute, their descendants will have kicked off 2023’s Women’s by the time you read this, with the opening ceremony having been at 7.30am followed by co-hosts New Zealand v Norway.
Two home nations have made it to the finals – European champions and the Republic of Ireland, whose first-ever match at this level is the second game of this tournament. . Ireland captain Katie McCabe has spoken of their desire to leave a legacy back home.
And what could England’s legacy be? It was . Chloe Kelly’s celebration became iconic – local girls I met in Qatar last year mimed it to me with their hijabs – and captain Leah Williamson in her bucket hat came to symbolise something fresh, unapologetic and powerful.
But winning consecutive major tournaments is a rare feat. The delayed Euros may present an advantage in terms of continuity – the usual two years is long in football – but the starting XI named by England manager Sarina Wiegman in every Euros game last year has been carved up.
Golden Boot winner Beth Mead, two-time domestic player-of-the-year Fran Kirby and perhaps most importantly Williamson are all out with serious injuries; top striker Ellen White and second-most capped international and key squad presence Jill Scott have both retired.
Added to that, the groundswell of local support could not be more geographically remote. And that’s before you consider the strength of the competition, with the three-peat-hunting USWNT the most obvious.
Wiegman’s calibre as a manager is going to be key in the next month. Should England make it to the final that will be her fourth straight appearance there, having won the 2017 Euros and reached the 2019 World Cup final with the Netherlands.
The former PE teacher with more than 100 caps for her country has created an aura around her familiar to the best managers. Can her team be the cohesive unit it was last summer with so many absences and six brand new players in the mix?
With her clear-thinking approach, you’d believe it. Plus the England team have something else exceptional in the mix, established long before Wiegman. Its current representative is Kate Hays, the Football Association’s head of women’s psychology.
Her role is a legacy of Hope Powell’s tenure from 1998, during which she became the first coach of any England football team to provide specialist psychological support.
This means that players like right-back Lucy Bronze, who was an under-17 player when Powell was the big boss, have been having conversations around their ‘limiting beliefs’ and refining a sense of the team’s shared purpose since they were kids.
Bronze has faced six knee operations in her 16-year career and has gone on from two World Cup semi-final defeats to win the Euros and the Champions League with two different clubs.
The team philosophy has been crucial for Wiegman’s super subs like Kelly, who have so far thrived in their roles as game changers.
You could argue Bronze’s foray into sports psychology began at birth, when her parents gave her the middle name Tough. Which is the thing about women’s football. As we get more into it, there’s always more to find.
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