After Phil Neville’s England team captured the hearts of a nation with their exploits at the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, there were a lot of questions about how that could expand to the Women’s Super League.
How do you make the league more visible? How do you make the league appeal to a wider audience? How do you grow attendances? Can the country capitalise on this moment and really take women’s football to the next level?
Sunday’s sold-out blockbuster title clash between Arsenal and Chelsea shows that a lot of those questions – and many that came way before them – have been answered.
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When Meadow Park is packed out on Sunday for this top of the table clash, the pitch will be littered with world class talent who have flocked over to England to be part of one of the most exciting leagues in the world right now.
Two of those are Vivianne Miedema and Sam Kerr, two very different footballers with different paths who are arguably now the best two forwards on the planet right now.
Miedema has made a name for herself as one of the world’s best while in the WSL, moving over to England from Bayern Munich in 2017 to continue her rapid development.
Last year, her 22 goals in 20 league games helped Arsenal to their first title in seven years and secured the then-22-year-old the Golden Boot and the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award.
She followed that up this summer by breaking the Netherlands all-time top-scoring record and reached a World Cup final, where only the all-conquering USWNT would deny her football’s ultimate prize.
Sam Kerr’s arrival just months later showed just where the league is heading in terms of its status among the world’s best and its ability to attract the world’s best.
Fresh off the back of a third successive NWSL Golden Boot, Kerr picked out the WSL as the league in which she could make the next step in her career.
“For me, it was just time for a change,” she said upon arrival.
“I’m a creature of habit but I also like to challenge myself a little bit and speaking to Emma [Hayes, Chelsea manager], it just seemed like it was the right fit for me.”
With Caitlin Foord seemingly on her way to the Gunners too and Hayley Raso having joined Everton, the league is now attractive enough, both in quality and what it offers professionally, for top class players to break their NWSL to W-League cycle and choose the WSL.
Right when @ChelseaFCW needed her, @Bethany_Eng15 produced yet again today ✨
— Barclays FA Women's Super League (@BarclaysFAWSL) October 13, 2019
In front of 4149 supporters at Kingsmeadow 👏 pic.twitter.com/6veRuu3SbB
Kerr also adds another element to what already promises to be a spectacle on Sunday.
Arsenal boss, and compatriot, Joe Montemurro has tried to play down any focus on the opponent’s new signing, insisting “Chelsea have a number of very, very good players”.
He knows that very well, given the Blues stunned the Gunners when they last met back in October.
Leading 1-0 early in the game, things were suddenly turned on their head in the second half when Hayes’ side bounced back to a 2-1 win.
“This is a really tricky one because I don’t want to tell you how I did it, because the manager is then going to read those comments and make sure he doesn’t do it again,” she said after the game.
“But I did something. That’s for you to analyse.”
That will have been Montemurro’s job for the past week. Chelsea are the only team that have taken points from the Gunners this season and, by that count, are the team many are tipping to stop them from retaining their title.
“Tactically, we need to be smart,” he said this week, keeping his cards close to his chest.
“We need to be intelligent both in the phase of attacking and defending.”
Sunday’s game is a massive one for both teams. Chelsea need to win, or at least avoid defeat, if they want to hold any hope of snatching the title back this year.
Arsenal are in the driving seat and know a win will create a seven-point gap to the Blues. However, defeat, given Chelsea have a game in hand over them, blows the title race – which also includes second-placed Manchester City – wide open.
But Sunday’s game is also a celebration of just how good this WSL season is turning out to be.
It’s a celebration of world class players, the quality still coming into the league as we speak, the dramatic twists and turns at both ends of the table that are turning the division into arguably the world’s very best.
“I think it’s great that players from the American league, which is a great league, are linked to Europe because you want the best players playing in your league,” Arsenal captain Kim Little said earlier this season.
On Sunday, she’ll lead out some of the very best in the world against more of the very best in the world for the biggest game of the season so far, a game that will be beamed out to every corner of the world.
That’s progress - and that’s exciting.
