FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023-England fancy chances

For a country where women were barred from playing football as it was considered to be unsuitable for them barely five decades back, it is no mean feat achieved by England to reach the final of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023.

The history says that women in England were banned from playing football in the early 1990s. It's a fact that, given the context of this history-making weekend, is almost laughable.

"The game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged," read a statement from the Football Association in 1921, announcing the ban that would stand for almost 50 years.

Another half century on, the story tells of a remarkably different time. Already European champions, England's Lionesses stand on the cusp of global glory with a Women's World Cup final against Spain coming up on Sunday.

The credit for bringing women into the football goes to Patricia Gregory. Patricia, incidentally had watched the 1966 FIFA Men’s World Cup in 1966 on Television when England had won the men's World Cup.

Patricia, then barely 19, then wondered why women couldn't play the game too.

She put a notice in her local paper to ask for players and was inundated with replies, but the council said she could not legally rent a pitch for matches against other women's football teams.

Undaunted, Gregory eventually managed to get a pitch and ended up running both it and a women's football league, as well as founding the Women's FA as the game's governing body in 1969 - the year before the FA rescinded its ban on women

It was in 1972 that the first official England women's side played an international match - beating Scotland 3-2 - but another 26 years passed until a full-time head coach was put in post. Enter Hope Powell.

The 1990s brought many firsts for women's football. In England, it saw the first Centres of Excellence, the first national league, and the women's game being brought under the control of the FA. On a global scale, the 90s brought the first official FIFA Women's World Cup.