I have to admit that I am not a huge sports fan and not particularly British in my indifference to football. But I was very curious to read this as women’s football and the Lionesses is something that has pierced even my brain. For the last 11 years or so, I have pricked up my ears at the mention of women’s football as I kept hearing about Lucy Bronze from her (very proud) grandmother and others in her family. Through the years I’ve heard how she loved football and how she was playing as much as she could. Then I got to hear how she was able to go professional and then I started to see Lucy in the news and of course in the publicized tournaments. When I read the book I was blown away by the unfairness of what women have had to suffer in sport and how they have had to fight so hard to be able to do something they enjoy. The work that was done by the early pioneers is incredible and while women’s sport is not up with the men’s yet, it has at least accelerated over the last 15 years.
It struck me that the women are just as competitive as the men, but there seems to be a huge team effort going on and an underlying respect and maybe even friendliness with rival teams that I am not sure is seen with the men’s teams.

I am very glad that I did read this and think that it serves as an excellent reminder to girls that they can play football if they want to and that indeed they can do anything they want to. They are at least as good as the boys and with the same chances will probably surpass them.. After all, the lads have not won a major tournament for a long time. It was the Lionesses, the girls who brought football home to England in 2022!

The Rise of the Lionesses is an excellent, energetic introduction to the history of English women's football. Starting from the the founding of the British Ladies' Football Club in 1894 (a time when women still wore corsets, and were afraid of the repercussions of publicly being seen playing football!), to the Lionesses' major events in the last decade (including the London 2012 Olympics and the 2019 Women's World Cup), the reader is taken on a journey across more than a century of women's football and acquainted with the amazing women who have paved the way for women's equality in football and made the Lionesses the strong team it is today. The final chapters focus on the Lionesses' spectacular Women's Euro 2022 performance and take a deeper look at the players who propelled the team to its historic victory.

This book is an inspirational and informative must-read for football enthusiasts of all ages, especially young girls with athletic aspirations (and their parents and coaches, of course). Flo Lloyd-Hughes does a fantastic job of shining the spotlight on the rise of women's football and the the Lionesses' path to their well-deserved Euro 2022 victory. This book could not have been published at a better time, with the 2023 Women's World Cup coming up in July-August of this year, when the eyes of the nation will be on the Lionesses once again.