“Veró, how was training?” asks Heather O’Reilly, USA legend, to Verónica Boquete, Spain legend.

“It was good, a good day,” Boquete replies, and for a fleeting second there’s a temptation to just let these two legends of the game chat it out between them, lost in the legend both carry behind their respective illustrious careers.

But here we are here to talk about the present day, and while it’s hard to wrap your head around the fact these two icons of the women’s game are currently working together in the second division of Italian football, that’s because Como 1907 is one of the most ambitious projects in football right now, male or female.

For those who don’t know the story, it’s less than a decade since the club was declared bankrupt for a second time and demoted to Serie D, the fourth tier of Italian football, before a takeover by the Hartono brothers sparked a revival.

Now, the men are back in Serie A, managed by ex-Spain legend Cesc Fàbregas, and the women’s team have equally lofty aspirations, going from the fifth tier to the cusp of promotion to Serie A for the first time in just a couple of seasons.

More on how they’ve done it later, but appointing O’Reilly - with 231 caps, a World Cup and three Olympic gold medals behind her - 18 months ago as Head of Women’s Football helped not only put Como 1907 on the right track for the future, but showed a huge statement of intent that it was going to follow through with its plans.

“I’m thrilled with where we are now,” she says, going onto explain how she came to get involved with the Italian outfit. “How I got to know Como is an interesting one. They came to play in the TST in North Carolina and we played against them. I’d thrown a USWNT alumni side into the tournament, we were the only women’s team, and we got paired up with Como, and that was super cool for me because I knew abut Cesc going in as a player-coach, so even then I was interested in the Como story.

“We got our butts kicked, which we knew, but what sort of made it a beautiful relationship was I organised a pasta party after the game. I reached out to the comms people and was like, ‘Hey, let’s have a little meal, get the Aperol Spritz flowing’, it was a nice, relaxed social. I met the Como folks, spoke with Cesc, then fast forward a year later on and they’d remembered me, what I was able to get going at TST, plus the influence of women’s soccer in the USA, and they called me up.”

“This was the Italian version of Wrexham I guess…”

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“Oooh, that’s the FA Cup” comes the intrigued whisper from a multitude of people either entering or exiting the David Ross Sports Village on the University of Nottingham campus.

Tucked away in a corner of said entrance is indeed the Adobe Women’s FA Cup, on show for people to have a photograph with should they want one.

But there’s a reason it’s found its way to a university campus, and that’s because the University of the Nottingham is in the first-round proper itself of the competition this Sunday.

While others, such as the i2i International Soccer Academy, are linked with a university, as well as Loughborough Lightning whose team represents Loughborough University, this is the only team to share the exact name of the campus it represents at this stage, playing way down in Tier 7 of the pyramid.

“I think it’s crazy that it’s here,” smiles Amelia Penfold, one of the team’s players. “I don’t believe it’s here, but seeing people walk in and take photos, it’s so cool.

“The whole experience…I can’t believe we’re playing on Sunday against a Tier 4 team, here at our home with so many fans, friends, families, it’s going to be awesome.”

Team captain, Ruby Murphy, admits she’s “not allowed” to touch the trophy, but says it’s an “insane” feeling as the team prepares to host Cambridge United.

“I don’t think I can put it into words,” she says. “A lot of semi-professional clubs enter the FA Cup, and for us we’ve entered it to push ourselves. We’re a lower tier club and I’m so proud of all the girls, the community sense we have is very different to higher up the tiers, and I think that’s really helped us.”

Murphy and Penfold share a lot in common, besides their football team. They’re both studying sports rehabilitation, though Penfold is only in her second year compared to Murphy’s final year as she studied nursing for a year before switching courses.

But their differences lay bare how unique this setup is, with Murphy relatively local as a north west native compared to Penfold who was born and raised in New Zealand.

Like many, she came here after spells living and playing in the USA and Dubai to study and play football side-by-side, choosing the University of Nottingham as her home for her four-year stay.

“I didn’t think the programme would be as good as it is, but the standard of everything has been amazing,” Penfold says.

“It was a big reason I came here. I like the education side too, but then knowing I could play football in a country where everyone knows football is amazing…yeah. I initially came for the campus, but the football was an amazing plus!”

The fact she has a British dad also means it hasn’t taken Penfold too long to get up to speed with just what the FA Cup means between these four shores.

“My dad is a [Crystal] Palace fan. When I kind of told him we were in the FA Cup, he was like, ‘THE FA Cup?!’ So yeah, I know about it!

“Watching the draw was amazing. We were all at training and asked Jake to stop for 15 minutes, we all just huddled around one laptop. The adrenaline was amazing, it was crazy seeing our name in there. I’d like to be able to do that again!”

The Jake in question is Jake Poole, Head of Women’s Football at the university, and has been for some time.

After spells working at Leicester City and Huddersfield Town, Poole took up his current role five years ago, helping to build the programme from the bottom up.

“It’s been a long-term project with a vision in place for a few years now,” he says. “We wanted to take the success we’ve had in the BUCS league on a Wednesday and it’s really important we show that nationally now.

“We’ve entered a team in Step 7 and the opportunity to now compete in the FA Cup is an exciting prospect for everyone.”

With local neighbours Loughborough Lightning have worked their way up to Tier 3 and the FA Women’s National League, beyond that Nottingham is a rare example of a university which has enjoyed this much success.

It begs the question, why them?

“We’re fortunate firstly from an academic perspective it’s a really strong university, and that’s why many are here. They’re studying for degrees but get to train here in top class facilities and I think that’s a really interesting and unique pathway, and the quality we have here is hopefully showing in this FA Cup run.”

Murphy adds, “100% a lot of work behind the scenes. Jake has a plethora of experience, and he knows the environment he wants to have here.

“We have American scholars, we have local girls, and it’s just having a good recruitment process and trying to create that work hard, play hard environment.”

That environment includes a training schedule not dissimilar to what some teams leagues way above them will enjoy.

The team trains on a Monday, has meetings on a Tuesday before BUCS league games on a Wednesday. The team then trains again on Friday before matches on a Sunday, which at times entails players representing other clubs as well as now league games for the university.

“We’re a university programme, so we’ve had success winning the National Championship two years ago, but traditionally we have girls who go and play for other clubs, and now we’re trying to get them to buy into the idea they can do it for us and play for us on a Sunday and do everything in house.

“It’s a pathway which excites the girls. They spend a lot of time together and we’re on a step-by-step journey, not just through the rounds, but the leagues too.”

Both Penfold and Murphy have seen that development rate up close given both are now in their third seasons playing for the university.

“I think so, for sure,” says the New Zealand native. “Football has definitely grown so much. I think a lot of universities will start doing this, some already are. The women’s game is improving so there’s so much opportunity.

“It’s getting so much bigger. The Lionesses have been so influential and inspirational, and for us, we’re in the FA Cup, one of the biggest competitions in the world.”

For Murphy, it’s even more special given her first two years have been blighted by injuries, with the captain suffering an ACL injury in both her knees on separate occasions.

“I didn’t play my first year and only played towards the end of last year,” she recalls. “I’ve kept myself involved enough to be the captain, and every year I think it’s the best team and I’ll say it again this year. The intensity the American scholars bring in drives the standard massively, their athleticism is mad.”

Murphy is a good example of someone who has chosen to take a step back to combine football with education, and perhaps a prime reason why the university is enjoying such success, given she played as high as Tier 3 with Plymouth Argyle when she was just 16.

“I’ve sat on the bench in the FA Cup, and I always wanted to play in it, and now I’ve done it with my closest friends when nobody expected us to. Selfishly, I’m absolutely buzzing!”

She adds, “I almost went to the USA too, but when I chatted to Jake, I realised it’s not the only place to go. It used to be, but the game here has developed so much and it’s no longer the worst idea in the world to stay here, play in the lower tiers and build up through the pathway.”

Poole admits the recruitment process is always ongoing, pointing to the fact they kept an eye on Murphy for two years, but unlike most clubs his transfer windows are relatively quiet, with everyone tied to the university programme.

“For three years, they’re locked in, and that gives us a chance to really develop them, players from PGA pathways or FA WNL pathways, plus the girls from the States and the NCAA.

“We spend a lot of time on it, but it is a unique model in that we’re not going to lose them and can work with them in a full-time environment.”

It does though mean team bonding is a must, with these players living in each other’s pockets every day, not just in football.

“I think the older players set a standard,” says Murphy. “I’ve tried to do that this year. When you join a club, you just get on with it, but university is a new life for people.

“Like you say, you get what you get, we don’t go out and sign players. Everyone here is within a four-year age gap, so we all understand each other, all going through the same things, but the recruitment drive we have here is massive.”

With three teams linked to university programmes in the first round, it begs the question, can it catch on a successful model?

“It’s a good question,” says Poole. “The first thing is the challenge we face in that we can’t ask Tier 3 or 4 players to play in Tier 7. We’ve tried to get the team to a point we can introduce some of those higher end players within the Sunday league games.

“You look at Loughborough in Tier 3 and I do genuinely believe the level of player here is Tier 3 or 4 level. We’d love to reach the point of being in the FA WNL, that’s the aim in the long-term, the next three to five years.”

Whatever happens on Sunday when Tier 4 side Cambridge United come to town, it’s an experience which has already left its mark on everyone involved.

“I’m just lost for words,” chuckles Penfold. “Honestly, I’m excited, I’m nervous, I think we all are, but I love this team. We’re like sisters, Jake’s an amazing coach, we’re one team and whatever happens we do it together. I’m looking forward to the before, the during, the after, I’m just excited.

“I’ve had the photo with the trophy. I sent it to my dad, that was his one request..!”

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There are a few things distinctly out of the ordinary walking out onto the pitch at Northumbia University’s sport campus, sandwiched between the two training grounds of Newcastle United’s men’s and women’s teams respectively.

One is there are more players taking part in the session than you might usually see at most training sessions, and the other is a member of staff squirting people daring to walk by with a toy water pistol.

The first one can be explained in depth.

This is the i2i International Soccer Academy, a place for international students to come and live and breathe both sport and education combined for the duration of their stay, gaining from a schedule which comparable to those of top Barclays Women’s Super League sides, with five days a week of training, S&C, analysis, media etc.

The second is because it’s ‘anything but a water bottle day’.

So, what’s so special about this array of unfamiliar US accents congealed onto one single 3G pitch in the north east of England?

The i2i International Soccer Academy has made the first round of the Adobe Women’s FA Cup for the first time, and at the first time of asking to boot.

A 3-0 win over higher ranked Bradford City just over two weeks ago has sent a team completely unique to any of its competitors into uncharted waters, and the international flavour is evident even by the ‘anything but a water bottle day’ competition.

One flask has Los Angeles stickers all over it, while another has brought a bottle of Luna Cruz wine from South America (others brought a Blender and a tea pot, among other inventive items that are absolutely not a water bottle).

The only English accents on the pitch are those of the coaches. Head coach Chris Fairless previously worked in Middlesbrough’s academy, while assistant Lauren Robson still plays for the north east side, and formerly played for neighbours Newcastle United.

Fairless has his hands full, with over 30 girls registered to the i2i programme, but with league matches combined with BUCS University fixtures, multiple local cup competitions, and now an FA Cup run, he needs all the players he can get.

“The first year we had 18, I think,” he says. “Then it jumped to about 27, now we have other 30.”

The model is fascinating, and as close to anything remotely resembling the successful USA college system we see to date in England.

Most have come from across the pond, but some have heritage in Australia, one even has heritage in Pakistan, but the American accents are palpable over Fairless’ more familiar north east accent.

Just recently, i2i has expanded out to Leeds Beckett University where another women’s team has just been launched, but in its fifth year since inception, Northumbria is where the football team is thriving ahead of a first round clash this weekend with Mancunian Unity, who themselves enjoyed a famous cup run two years ago which ended with a clash with Newcastle United.

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“We have ID clinics,” Fairless continues. “The recruitment team here are full-time, and Corey [Roper, Head of Recruitment] focuses solely on the girls now. Every year roughly now we’ll bring 10 here and 10 to Leeds.

“They can come over at 15/16 and be with us for a month or 10 days and see what it’s like. I was on the east coast in January…New York, Boston. I met a girl there; she came over in March and she’s committed to come over next summer.

“Another girl committed in January, so there’s different methods and timelines, but now we’re in a position where we can tailor what we want and who we want around what we already have, rather than just trying to build the numbers.”

It does mean his transfer windows are quiet, as no players come in from other clubs, just from overseas on their education programmes.

All the players train five days a week, more than some top-tier clubs will, mainly in the afternoons after lectures in the morning, with the schedules specifically tailored around their studies.

Three of them, Hannah Collins, Taylor Donaldson and team captain Dani Nanga, have all been here sometime now, and have fallen in love with the opportunity to come to the UK and play football alongside gaining their education.

“This is my fifth year in the programme,” says Collins, who has also just joined the staff group. “I came when the programme started. I didn’t know much about it, but I didn’t have any options out of high school.

“Joining the staff has been a completely different experience. My first year I’d joke with Chris about coming back as a staff member, but it’s testament to the programme itself they’ve allowed me to do that.”

On her own journey, she continues, “I’d had double knee surgery in my junior year at 18, so it was really my only option to continue playing after university. I thought, ‘Why not?!’ Come over and have a different experience and worst-case scenario I just go back home, but I absolutely fell in love with it.

“The first year was kind of crazy. We struggled for numbers, we had two keepers playing, so to go from that to the first round of the FA Cup is insane.”

She points to Dani, referencing seeing her goal on TV that was filmed by the club’s social media team, the opener in the last round against Bradford City which put them on their way to the first round proper.

“We did a little watch party when the draw was on and that moment was so surreal,” says Nanga. “Seeing them talking about all these different teams, big clubs you know about, and then hearing our name, it was just like, ‘Oh my gosh’. The clip of the goal and the celebration – I couldn’t feel my legs!”

Donaldson adds, “Seeing those recognisable names we’re alongside and having a run where we could be part of that. I think it’s starting to dawn on everyone what we’re doing.”

It may seem odd that it wouldn’t have dawned on them already, but cup football isn’t anywhere near as big back home in the US as it is in the UK, but it hasn’t taken long for Fairless and the rest of the staff to imprint on them what the FA Cup represents.

“We’re not going to win it,” he admits. “I said to them in this analysis room, winning it for us is getting to the first round proper. We have a slide in our presentations of Wembley, with all the round dates around the side of the picture. When we played Bradford, I put it in the group chat and said, ‘How many more times will we see this slide?’

“The draw was the best moment. Up to this stage you just get the draws by email. I’m a Newcastle fan, so I’ve sat and watched draws for years, but watching it with a team I coach in was just completely surreal.”

While he admits he knows they are more fortunate than most of their Tier 6 rivals in terms of their set up, he doesn’t allow them to get carried away, with respect at the heart of what they’re trying to achieve, and it’s clear just sat watching one training session how well bonded this group is, and how grateful they are for what they have.

“We’ll rock up on a branded minibus, loads of kit, loads of footballs, brand new tracksuit every season, but I push us to be humble because some clubs at this level have nothing.”

The challenge comes in gelling everything together. Collins, Donaldson and Nanga all came to England from the USA, but even within that the split in journeys is like nothing you would get in the much more compact United Kingdom.

Collins is from New Hampshire, while Donaldson is from Georgia, and Nanga from further south in Texas, and their different experiences are laid bare by what any good conversation about England entails – the weather.

“It took me about…two and a half years?” Nanga laughs, more used to the burning hot sun of the south.

“Not too different for me,” chuckles Collins.

“My first year was so bad,” chimes back Nanga. “I was always freezing; I didn’t even want to come to training!”

All three are now coming towards the back end of their education at Northumbria, with Collins now taking a Masters in Sport Analysis, the same degree in which Donaldson is set to complete, while Nanga is now studying for a Masters in Nutritional Sciences.

The three of them have known each other for some time and form part of a five-player leadership group Fairless has put in place.

“It seems cheesy, but i2i has this tagline, ‘One big family’, and it does feel like that,” smiles Collins. “We live together, go to university together, we’re around each other literally 24/7, but fight like sisters!

“It’s not always all rainbows and lollipops, but we are all going through the same things and the older ones can take the younger ones under their wing through all the things we went through, the homesickness etc. We’re so lucky to have a family so far away from our families.”

It has also offered them opportunities where others weren’t forthcoming. Many of the older players were seeking somewhere to play when COVID-19 took its grip on the world, with restrictions on travel within America strict.

“My recruiting year was the COVID-19 year,” recalls Donaldson, adding, “Everyone just shut their doors. I thought about going abroad but never thought it would be possible, but like Hannah said, why not? I’ve done four years and come back for my Masters, that’s testament to how much I’ve enjoyed it here.”

She adds, “I found i2i myself. I just Googled it one day, just for fun. I started talking to them and what took off as a dream eventually become reality. I remember calling my parents and they were like, ‘Oh, you’re absolutely not doing that!’ she laughs, “Eight months later, here I was!”

Nanga meanwhile was actually set on a NCAA D2 side in Iowa before she received a message about i2i, and unlike the others actually attended one of their clinics put on in Texas just to see what happened.

“I’d never even been out of the country, and here we are!

“The first few weeks I wanted to go home, I was homesick badly, but I soon realised this was my best option and I was taking it for granted. I’m so grateful I didn’t go back because every year has been a stepping stone to something better.”

A stepping stone is something of an understatement.

They are back-to-back BUCS Cup champions, reigning County Cup winners, and have always won the North Football Youth League, among other accolades.

Now, there’s more emphasis on the league system too, with Fairless keen to see the team move through the leagues, hoping one day they can reach the FA Women’s National League system.

“Last season we were disappointed, finishing second in the league, and I said to the girls as much as I’ve enjoyed the FA Cup, I’d give it all up if we were promised promotion. The only cap we have is visa restrictions in terms of what level these players can go to, but I don’t see any restriction on what we can do.

“I think we should be winning Tier 6. We beat Bradford 3-0 who are in Tier 5, and we beat several Tier 5 teams to win the County Cup. The higher we go, the better we can recruit and offer a higher level to prospective players, it would change everything.”

The stereotypical US mentality of ‘win at all costs’ is evident on the training pitch, as during a small game of quickfire goals there’s plenty of screaming and cheering on their teammates, desperate to put one over on the other team.

It is though a big tick in the manager’s box for how he moves the team forward.

“100%. We drew 1-1 on Sunday and it felt like a loss. Last season was the first time we’d felt that bit of adversity because we didn’t win, we were 11 points off Thornaby. We drew that game on Sunday, and it was like the end of the world, and I love that in the team, it drives them forward.”

It also begs an intriguing question; can this model catch on in the UK? Others are trying, in South Shields and Macclesfield in particular, while the University of Nottingham itself has also reached the first round proper, but with a mixture of homegrown and international talent.

I2i is the closest thing the English football pyramid has to the successful US model, so could it catch on?

“I could talk about this all day,” admits Collins. “I’m a huge advocate. Believe it or not, I think the opportunities are so much greater here. In the US, you leave college and unless you’re drafted to a select number of teams there’s really nothing for you.

“Over here, if you graduate and can’t play Tier 1 or 2, there’s five or six more tiers with multiple divisions, people aren’t falling through the cracks. The US system is flawed like that.”

Donaldson and Nanga both echo the sentiment.

“Here, the connection between tiers, everyone knows everyone,” says the latter. “If you’re playing in Tier 6, people in Tier 3 and 4 are watching you, there’s a lot of word of mouth.”

Donaldson adds, “There’s that aspect of coming over as an international student too. That’s a big thing because it forces you to grow not only as a player, but as a person. I’ve learned so much being here, and it’s made me a million times better player than if I’d stayed in the USA.”

As the players depart, Fairless is sat in the corner, listening in, quipping ‘Can you keep that in?’ when Collins tells me he’s the best coach she’s ever worked with.

“Do we get to stay and listen to you now?” asks Collins.

“No, goodbye,” laughs Fairless in response.

“I was here from the start with Hannah when we were in the Sunday leagues, and we didn’t have enough players…”

It’s clear there is a bond here that goes beyond just football, a comfort and ease between not just players and players, but players and staff, and I can’t help but think it’s not the easiest thing in the world to manufacture when welcoming in so many new faces every summer, particularly from all different backgrounds and cultures.

“We did a lot in the summer. We went to the Lake District, went padel boarding, gone for a few meals. I took the girls for a training day at Allendale where I’m from. Last season, they all presented a photograph to the group, the most important picture of their lives.

“This year we’re doing random questions for them to answer. It can be tough for me, we went on a hike last year and one girl said she’d never done anything like it in her life, and for me being from the countryside it was so normal! But the leadership group are brilliant, the three you had in here and two others, all I do is facilitate it.”

Now, as he prepares his team for their biggest day yet, he’s in a reflective mood, echoing the sentiment of what Collins said about the team’s inception five years ago.

“I was here from the start with Hannah when we were in the Sunday leagues, and we didn’t have enough players. Second season, we just played youth league and university league, it was only in our third year we got into the league system.”

Until now, the team has supported its players representing other clubs higher up the period.

Collins and Nanga for example have both played for York City alongside i2i, while Collins has also represented Durham Cestria and Nanga Norton & Stockton, all established sides in the FA Women’s National League pyramid.

“We supported it because for their development it was the right thing to do, but last season we finished second, and on a Sunday our best players were playing elsewhere. We train Monday to Friday and had a big decision to make because we really want to prioritise going through the pyramid the best we can.

“We entered the FA Cup last year and had to pull out because we didn’t have enough players, so this year we came back earlier, and it’s starting to get there now.”

I’m also intrigued by how he marries up first team football vs academy development. With a want to win but also 32 players at his disposal, how as a coach does he balance yearning for success vs making sure every player gets the development they’re paying thousands of pounds for as part of their university studies?

“That’s where our depth comes in. We have the BUCS league on a Wednesday. The first group we ever had did the donkey work. I remember we won a game 32-0 because some BUCS teams are social while we are five days a week.

“We’re Tier 6 in the league but Tier 3 in university football, so those not involved on a Sunday still get competitive football on a Wednesday. We beat Durham University 3-0 this week and made 10 changes, but the FA Cup has given everyone a goal to want to play in these kinds of games.”

The run has also ensured a good chunk of prize money is coming their way. With almost £10,000 so far for their run to the first round proper, a win on Sunday would guarantee them another £6,000.

While he’s aware of how fortunate i2i are compared to some of their divisional rivals when it comes to equipment and facilities, the money is still valuable, and the support of the directors means the players will get to enjoy the full share of their rewards.

“To be fair to the FA it’s fantastic,” he admits. “The girls pay to be here, and I wasn’t sure what the directors would say because each squad at i2i gets an allocated budget for social events etc, but before the first game they said all the money we got could be diverted back into the girls, so they’re already talking about what they want to do with it!”

He is putting no firm targets on where this model can take them, but there’s a twinkle which suggests he believes i2i can one day reach the FA Women’s National League, a potential first for a model like this one.

“For us, I don’t think there’s a limit, and that’s what’s exciting.”

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August 2020, the month Athlone Town played its first match as a senior women’s team in the League of Ireland, a debut delayed five months by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Exactly five years on, the team is embarking on the Netherlands for a Champions League second round qualifier after coming through the first round on home soil last month.

For a club based in a town with a population of just 22,000 people, it’s a remarkable rise, but a story which stretches beyond just football.

Athlone Town has become about its community, about those inside its walls who have been captured by the success of a team which only won its inaugural cup in 2023 and followed that up with a first league title at the end of 2024.

Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting with Icelandic side Breiðablik and a potential meeting with Dutch giants FC Twente, the story is encapsulated by two players with very different histories at the club.

Roisin Molloy, a homegrown star who was influential in their first-round success, has been at the club since pretty much day one, while former American college player Hannah Waesch is a recent addition from across the pond.

Yet both understand equally what this means to not just Athlone Town, but Athlone as a town itself.

“The town is so deeply embedded within this club,” says Waesch, who was born in Texas, but grew up in a similarly small town called The Colony.

It means while she comes from one of the USA’s biggest states, she felt an immediate bond with Athlone when arriving out of the University of Texas.

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Dijon FCO have just secured a top four finish in the Première Ligue, the top division of French women’s football, for the first time in their history. And, with it, earned an opportunity to fight for the overall title, alongside France’s elite trio of Olympique Lyonnais, Paris Saint-Germain and Paris FC.

The odds will be heavily stacked against a side battling relegation only a few years ago, with a men’s team currently languishing in the lower leagues, against the might of France’s crème de la crème in Lyon, plus the two Parisian heavy hitters.

But in reality, that all matters little, because for Dijon to be here at all is an outstanding achievement, yet one the man at the head of it all has already masterminded once before.

Sylvain Carric, the club’s Head of Women’s Football, previously led player recruitment at another of France’s perennial overachievers in FC Fleury 91. He firstly guided the team to promotion from the second division as FCF Val d’Orge, before attaching to Fleury and overseeing a steady rise up the table across multiple season, culminating in a top-four finish come the end of the 2021/22 season.

Carric’s success saw him targeted by Dijon in the summer of 2022 for a more senior Head of Women’s Football role, as the Club sought to develop the professionalisation of their women’s section. After fighting to stay in the top division for much of the 2022/23 season, the Cote-d’Or side would eventually finish 10^th but in just two years has gone from battling relegation to reaching the league’s championship play-offs.

“This season for us has been an amazing season,” says Carric, speaking before the 0-0 draw against Montpellier HSC, which combined with Fleury’s loss to Paris FC would confirm Dijon’s place in the top four.

“It’s the first time for Dijon and with two games to go we were still fighting for the Champions League, so it’s an amazing season for us, our project, and our work.”

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So, what’s changed?

Behind the scenes, plenty. Dijon ranks eighth in the league for average player salaries, so are very much punching above their respective weight, but have invested smartly away from the pitch in both facilities and recruitment.

A new state-of-the-art training ground was opened in 2022 in which the women’s team have a dedicated section, while they were one of just six teams (alongside the French elite of Lyon, PSG, Paris FC, Fleury and Montpellier) to open a bespoke women’s academy section last summer, which currently includes eight players across various youth national teams.

The recruitment has been smart too, with an emphasis on bringing in foreign players from developing countries, such as Denmark, Poland, New Zealand, China and many others.

“It is a lot of work, but we need to know what is the advantage for our club if we compare to other clubs in the league?

“We needed to develop firstly the staff, that’s very important because when I signed here three years ago, it was not a very professional set up, I had only a head coach. I didn’t have a goalkeeper coach, I didn’t have an assistant coach, I didn’t have a physio, I didn’t have a strength and conditioning coach.

“So, I had to recruit very good staff - and also staff with experience in the women’s game, which is very important. After that, for sure the most important thing was to develop the team and the players. When I arrived, the level of the team was not competitive. Now, after two summers we have changed around 85% of the team and we work with young players because as you mentioned our budget is one of the lowest.”

Carric, previously an assistant coach himself for eight years at Val d’Orge/Fleury before stepping into his recruitment role behind the scenes, earned his UEFA A Licence in 2019, so is well-versed himself into where the best young talent is, and set about bringing them to Dijon.

Across the past couple of years, some established names have represented the club, such as Danish duo Stine Larsen and Rikke Sevecke, as well as Sweden’s Julia Spetsmark and Michelle De Jong.

Currently, the multi-national element stretches to Finnish goalkeeper Katriina Talaslahti, USA’s Tegan McGrady, Austrian forward Viktoria Pinther, Chinese duo Wang Yanwen and Wu Chengshu, plus New Zealand’s Kate Taylor, among others.

Closer to home, Lena Goetsch and Alice Pinguet are France Under 23 internationals, while Lina Gay is a regular for the Under 19s.

“We search for very good young players in France in both the first and second divisions,” admits Carric. “But we look abroad to find very good young talent and now the team is made up of half French players and half foreign players, bringing very good energy to the team with this nice mix., I think we have nine or ten different nationalities in the first team squad now.”

Continuing, Carric admits he “doesn’t have a scouting team”, meaning he does a lot of the recruitment himself, in conjunction with head coach Sebastien Joseph.

“I’m alone!” he laughs. “I don’t have the budget yet to develop this part of the club, so I watch a lot of games, all the time, every day., I watch a lot of games in Scandinavia, in Europe, in Asia, in the USA, everywhere.

“I use Wyscout, I travel around France to look for players, it’s very important for me to see them play in person because I need to also understand the mentality of the player, how the player works in a team or, if they’re in the youth national teams, both during the game but also during training sessions and even in the warm-up.

“For me, the mentality is very, very important, especially if they are coming from abroad and will need to adapt to the French level and also the French lifestyle. So, I try to travel and find the best players both on the pitch and off the pitch because it’s very important for us to have a great atmosphere in the group. But yes, I work alone, so it’s a lot of work!”

While his previous work at Fleury, a Club he grew with over a decade, suggests Carric’s success at Dijon is not a mere coincidence, I’m intrigued to see if he adapted his processes coming into a new job with a fresh start, or did he turn to tried and tested methods?

“I use the same process. It’s my process so I do the same things, but the difference between here and Fleury is it’s two different clubs. In Fleury, I had a bigger budget and if I compare that to Dijon, that was top four in budget behind the big three, whereas here we have a bottom half budget., but what we have here is top-quality facilities.”

On the new training centre, he adds, “It is so beautiful! We also play every game in our main stadium (which is shared with the men’s team) so when I recruit, I try to show them it is a good project for the player. When you come into Dijon…how do you say it? It’s not just to play, it’s for the club, for the city, for the facilities, for the staff.

“I try to develop everything; it is not just about on the pitch. In Dijon, we have very good facilities and a very good stadium. So, for sporting development, it’s easier than Fleury. The process is the same, but I adapted to the project.”

With a low budget, Carric at first prioritised building his staff, going as far as using buses to get around the country rather than the national trains used at FC Fleury 91, to ensure money was saved to pay staff and players a fair wage.

“The most important thing is to give the budget to the players so we can sign very good players and also very good young players. It’s important to me, it’s a priority to use the budget to build the staff and also the playing squad.”

Dijon’s qualification for the end-of-season play-offs comes at an interesting time, because this is the first season since the top two divisions of the French women’s game were professionalised, with a whole range of changes across the board to ensure France continues to keep up with some of its European rivals, and clubs like Lyon and PSG can continue to both win and challenge for the Champions League.

But with bigger clubs lurking in both the top division and ready for promotion from the second division, such as RC Lens and Marseille, is there a concern this might be one of the last times we see a club such as Dijon, able to mix it with the bigger teams, throwing out comparisons to England and clubs such as Birmingham City and Reading, who used to finish in the top four of the Women’s Super League.

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“Yes, for sure,” he admits, when asked if it’s a concern. “For the moment it’s hard for us because we are a professional club, but we are no longer a big club on the men’s side, so it’s difficult and for me we have two or three big areas to think about.

“The first is the development of the professional league and with this development we earn more money because we have access to new contracts with sponsors now, for example for things like GPS, so with the professional league we can develop our project even further. But for the future of women’s football, we have two solutions.”

He continues, “The first is to see the arrival of a big club like Marseille, who has a big men’s club with a big budget. The second solution is to find owners just for the women’s game and to develop the business model of the women’s teams.

“We’re speaking with a lot of potential owners, to try and find a new partner for the women’s section, which would allow us to continue developing our project and competing to finish in the top four or five every season.”

It does mean the club’s academy could be key to any future success, with Dijon currently developing multiple players across various youth national teams.

Safe in the knowledge Lyon, PSG and Paris FC above them all have sizeable budgets and may well soon be sniffing around some of the club’s prized young talent, selling players on for lucrative fees could become a profit centre for the club in the coming years.

“For sure. We opened the academy and it’s very important in our project because we don’t have a lot of money, so to go out and recruit the top players is not easy. The solution is to develop the young players in the academy and for them to progress into the first team.

“But in my opinion, if we don’t find a new owner, one day we won’t stay in the top division. The academy is ok for one, two, three years, but if we don’t find the new owner to develop the club further, it will be so difficult for us to stay in the top five and even in the first division.”

It’s a stark remark given the club’s current position, but shows there is a concern the top division may go the way of the WSL, where the aforementioned Birmingham City are in the second division and Reading suffered even further, financial ruin dropping the team all the way down to the fifth tier, with the club now running on an amateur basis, left behind by the financial powertrain the WSL has quickly become.

“We try to develop everything without money, and we will continue to try and develop,” Carric states. “But when we see the development everywhere in Europe and in the NWSL, in England, in Spain, in Germany, when you look at the clubs in our position in the league, it’s Manchester United or Manchester City in England, it’s Atletico Madrid in Spain, it’s Inter or AC Milan in Italy, it is always a big club, so for us it’s amazing to be in this position, but for the future we need more, we need a new solution to compete.”

Carric is however generally happy with the development of French women’s football at the moment, pointing to coaches going abroad, such as Jocelyn Precheur, Amandine Miquel and Sonia Bompastor, all now coaching in England, the latter close to sealing a debut WSL title with Chelsea.

“Every year in the French league, we see the best players do stay here because Lyon and PSG are big clubs to be at, but further down the league it is harder for teams to keep hold of people.

“For Amandine, I’m sure she’s happy in Leicester now because she works in a very professional setup at a club with big motivations to develop women’s football. In France, some clubs don’t have the same motivation, so it’s difficult for a few clubs in the league. So, I understand the players, the coaches, even the sporting directors like me, who look elsewhere.

“When these people want to try and go abroad, I see it as normal because when I watch the English league you always have people in the stadiums, you have good facilities, you have big marketing projects and in France right now we are behind on this part of the game.”

It begs the question, what next for Carric? And could we see him follow his compatriots and take what is clearly a successful set of processes to England himself, or elsewhere in the sport?

“Yes, for sure. For me, I’ve worked in the French league for 15 years and I know it very well. I would like to try a new league and try something different.

“I need to develop my English, of course, but I think it’s a good opportunit for anybody to experience a new culture, a new system, a new football., a new life.”

But, for now, the focus remains firmly on the challenge at hand - a warm-up in the league’s final gameday vs. Paris FC, before Dijon set their sights on delivering what would be the pièce de résistance of Carric’s career, the ultimate upset of perennial champions Lyon.

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How do you go from being the General Manager of a Women’s Super League bound team to the owner of your very own football club?

That is the question I put to Nicole Allison, formerly General Manager of Tottenham Hotspur during their promotion campaign back in 2018/19, and now the owner and chairwoman of Worcester City Women, a club just three years old but already competing in the FA Women’s National League pyramid.

Allison, who has worked in sport most of her life and an advocate for women in sport in general, is a Worcester native, and made it her aim to bring professional women’s football to the city after she left Tottenham in 2019.

The answer she gives when I ask what is admittedly a very open-ended question is as in-depth as it is insightful and interesting, to hear the story of how it all came about, and the deep-rooted passion behind the motives.

“It wasn’t particularly by huge design,” Allison laughs. “I said to people, I was never at Tottenham thinking I wanted to own my own club or back when I grew up here in Worcester. I didn’t know women could even play football and I certainly didn’t know a woman could own a club or even work in one.

“As I’ve grown up, did my masters in London, worked in men’s football for eight years before Spurs. Spurs was the eye opener to the potential women’s football had, but also the work which needed to be done. The structure, the resources, the understanding of why the women’s game is different and needs to be treated differently. I loved my time at Spurs, always been a massive Spurs fan, but it was tough knowing there was a limit to how much I could do, and I felt personally after being promoted to the WSL I needed to step away, take that knowledge and impact more people and more organisations.”

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In 2019, Allison set her up own consultancy firm which she admits was her “main aim”, having worked in similar market research roles with both the EFL and YouGov before joining Tottenham in September 2017.

“I did a lot of fan experience and engagement work, that was always a huge part of my upbringing and working at the EFL, so that, but with a focus on women’s football. I worked in education, me writing a lot of the women’s football modules and teaching that, and I teach that at Worcester University where those were the key strands.

“I also fell into being an agent and that wasn’t by design at all, but a lot of Tottenham players didn’t have agents then and came to me for advice on their contracts, whether it was to stay or to move on or just didn’t understand the details, and I just wanted to help them. I registered to become an intermediary, joined an agency which I felt aligned with my values, supporting the under-represented areas of women’s football, and I developed some good relationships. I represented Jayne Ludlow when she was Wales head coach, then COVID-19 hit, and it was a bit of a watershed moment.

“I noticed after the first few months the disparity. Men’s football continued and the women’s game stopped, and a lot of players were questioning what was going to happen to their pay. There was so much stress and anxiety around the game at that time and it felt really unfair on everyone, then even further down the pyramid seeing clubs just folding because they were so heavily dependent on men’s clubs, and they couldn’t afford to put it into the men’s. I could see the pyramid was built on sand, I was living in St Albans and I looked at clubs in those areas. How could I help a club like Luton Town who weren’t even really associated with the club, then I looked at Worcester because I still have family here.

“They were in Tier 5, but no real information on the website. I had conversations because they were fan-owned, speaking about the women, me coming in and taking over and under my ownership so I could run it in my own way.”

In March 2021, Allison moved home and created Worcester City Women as a legal entity, “entirely separate” from any men’s team, as she puts it.

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10 years ago, Reading’s women’s team was beginning a season which would ultimately end with a first ever promotion to the Women’s Super League 1, as it was known at the time.

It was a halcyon year all round for the Royals under then new head coach Kelly Chambers, including having a player represent England at the 2015 World Cup in the form of Fran Kirby, despite their WSL 2 status, before she was sold to Chelsea.

Under Chambers, Reading went on to become mainstays in the top division, regularly finishing in the top half and playing home to household names such as England’s most-capped player, Fara Williams, fellow internationals Jade Moore and Jo Potter, as well as Wales legend Jess Fishlock.

But like many before them, Reading is a prime example of a club left behind by the sport as women’s football develops at exponential pace.

After relegation from the Women’s Super League in 2023, the team reverted to part-time status back in the rebranded Championship last season, hindered by the financial issues strangling the whole club, scraping by and surviving a second straight relegation by the skin of their teeth last season.

But with no more money in the pot, the Royals voluntarily demoted themselves from the Championship down another three divisions into the Southern Region Women’s Football League.

Almost 12 months on, the team, now unrecognisable from a year ago and with a group of players either recruited regionally or from the club’s academy, have just three wins from 13 games, but should survive based on the fact the bottom duo of Badshot Lea and Selsey haven’t won a league game between them this season, with Reading beating both in their last two games to move clear of the drop.

The primary duo left to pick up the pieces were already part of the club’s furniture, with former Emerging Talent Lead Emma Hopkins now Head of Women’s Football, while Pedro Bruno is the team’s head coach, previously working as the club’s Under 16s assistant head coach, juggling his role with his full-time job as a tutor at Newbury Precision Football Academy.

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Hopkins takes up the story.

“The summer just gone was obviously a really tricky time to try and navigate for the women’s and girls’ pathway,” she admits. “There was a big chance in terms of how the club sits under the umbrella of the Community Trust now. We had to find sponsorship and a financial stream to keep the women’s team going on a lower pathway.

“We still have Under 13s and Under 15s academy teams, that was important for me coming from my previous role to ensure we had a pathway which continued, not just a first team. I’ve been at the club nine years and the majority of my work has been there, and the club has always had a fantastic reputation for producing excellent young players, so it was important we made sure girls in the area could still come through.”

Despite now being under the Community Trust, the team is still supported as much as it can be by the club as a whole, still in the midst of various takeover talks in the hope of a brighter future.

Select Car Leasing, the primary sponsor of the team and stadium in the past, has remained on board, with Hopkins practically the only full-time member of staff working on a day-to-day plan to keep the club going.

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Accrington Stanley Women enter the second round of the Adobe Women’s FA Cup for the first time on Sunday, hosting Huddersfield Town at the club’s main 5,450-capacity Wham Stadium.

Not the usual home of the club of the same name, with no official link with Accrington Stanley, the two have a close working relationship and often share resources, including allowing the opportunity for the women to play in Accrington itself this weekend.

The team currently play in Tier 6, Division One of the North West Regional Women’s League. In all competitions, the team founded just five years ago have won 14 games out of 14, but with just six of those in the league, they trail both Penrith and Bolton Wanderers, the latter of whom have nine wins from nine after investing heavily, in all relativity for the level, in the summer.

It is though a relatively new dawn, with a group of players largely recruited in the summer, a head coach who only joined in July and a chairperson who took on the role just 18 months ago, so their rise has been mighty as they look for a place in the third round.

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“We’re a separate club, but we have a really strong working relationship,” says chairperson, Samantha Smitson. “We are completely independent right now, but the teams have a close relationship, we work together as close as we can, but we are Accrington Stanley Women.

“Accrington is the badge and for them to host the game this weekend is brilliant. It’s a chance for the girls to play in front of a good crowd and run out on a big pitch in a big stadium for what they’re used to. In true Accrington style, we’ve had a good downpour, but fingers crossed it all comes off.”

Smithson took the role in March 2023 after the previous chairperson became a director, and like everybody else involved with the Tier 6 side, does it on a voluntary basis.

But there is an attachment there, with Smithson herself having played for the original Accrington side almost 30 years ago, as well as Blackburn Rovers, while her niece was one of the original players for the new Stanley side and is still part of the squad this season.

Smithson was in the military before going into the sporting world six years ago, and now wants to give back to her local community through Stanley Women.

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It’s 7:30am at Celtic Park. The sun is starting to glimmer through the morning Glasgow mist and as many around the Scottish city are probably still climbing out of bed or popping the kettle on, Celtic head coach Elena Sadiku is already in her office, tucked away at the end of the players’ tunnel.

Right now, her only company is performance analyst Niko, who joined her when she moved from coaching Everton’s youth team at the start of 2024, but soon the room – filled with comfy sofas, desks, the traditional whiteboards covering everything from training plans and match schedule, and a fridge including the traditional collection of Irn Bru cans – is filled with the rest of her coaching staff who roll in one by one for a morning meeting at 8:30am.

Sadiku has granted me complete access to her day, including the 8:30am meeting, to get a grasp on not just what makes the 30-year-old one of the most highly rated young coaches in Europe, but also where the new Scottish champions are at and what they’re planning for the future.

It’s a good time to visit, the Friday before the team enters a hectic period of seven games in just 21 days, including big games against title rivals Rangers and Glasgow City, sandwiched either side of a double-header against Barclays Women’s Super League champions Chelsea in the Champions League, the first of which will take place inside the 60,000 capacity Celtic Park.

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The Swede takes me out onto the pitch, and while I’ve seen the stadium many times on TV, the size and depth of the stands takes a momentary breath away, despite the fact all is calm and quiet right now.

A first glimpse into Sadiku’s psyche comes as she talks about the challenge of the schedule ahead of them in November, dotted out day by day on the whiteboard, and one she is going to hammer home to her players in a meeting before training to help prepare for their coming Sunday SWPL clash at Motherwell.

“For me, everything that is a challenge, you can always define or not,” she says. “You can always choose how you want to face it. Either you get excited, you get thrilled, you get happy, or you see it as tough, you look at it the hard way.

“For me, everything in life you always have two choices, you embrace it, or you find excuses and you feel sorry for yourself. If you want to be successful, you already know which option to choose.”

Sadiku jokes it feels like she has been at Celtic “two years already” because there has been so much to do and so much happened, but in reality, it has not been even a year since she joined in January and instantly guided the club to a dramatic first league title, sealed with a 90^th-minute goal from Amy Gallacher at Celtic Park back in May.

Since then, they’ve progressed through two tough qualifiers to become the first Scottish side to make the new Champions League group stage, where they have already faced FC Twente and Real Madrid, ahead of their two meetings with Chelsea coming up later this month.

As we chat away, she is enthused by what she saw in both games so far, despite 2-0 and 4-0 defeats respectively, pointing to the A4 sheet of paper stuck on the wall on her desk where she stares straight at it every day with everybody’s fitness scores, emphasising the increase since she joined, but it’s not yet enough to get them competing with Europe’s elite.

“As long as I’m their coach here, you have to want to be here because you want to be the best in Scotland…”

She’s realistic about that, but is under no illusions about what she wants to achieve in the long-term at the club.

“There are many successes we’ve already achieved, but I think when you look at the whole picture…we’re not close enough to creating that mindset and environment. When people talk about Celtic, us really dominating.

“The team to beat domestically, we haven’t earned that yet because we are a bit too inconsistent. Our highest performance is very high, but our lowest is not the best. When we came back in the summer, I said fitness wise we can’t just compare to teams in Scotland, we have to compare to teams in Europe.

“When it comes to Champions League, that’s not where we are right now and that’s going to take some time. That’s the physical aspect, but also how many times can we do the maximum over time? When it gets intense you get tired quicker, then the mental part of it is learning how to handle pressure.

“We’re the champions, we’re being chased and that’s something they’re not used to. We want to embrace that pressure, see it as a good thing, be confident about it. ‘You want to beat me, so I have to be better than you’, and I don’t think we’re there yet. 24/7 being a professional, I don’t think we are there yet. What is professional? What we do inside, what we do outside. This is a work environment, you have to want to be here, to love it, it’s not about coming in and getting out fast, it’s everything to be the best player you can be, and that mindset isn’t there yet.

“If you play under me, I need that passion and that determination. As long as I’m their coach here, you have to want to be here because you want to be the best in Scotland. We can do more when it comes to how dominant we can be, but before I leave, I want to make sure that’s where I leave them.”

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It’s a huge opening round clash and one which demands the full attention, with live production from Manchester, rather than back in the DAZN HQ in down the M62 in Leeds.

It’s also one which they’d have loved more time to plan, but logistically is actually something of a nightmare for DAZN, with the draw having been made just 12 days before, and the fixtures only confirmed a day later, meaning the production team has had less than two weeks to plan for eight games in completely separate parts of the continent, from Manchester to Rome to Stockholm, and a second round of games just a week away, including a match in Turkey.

DAZN have for a night allowed me full access to their production, which on this evening is live from Manchester given it is an English team against the defending champions, but for most rounds the production will be remote from their HQ, where tonight Jemma Archer, Senior Producer of Women’s Football, is leading the production of the overall evening, with three other games ongoing, including Arsenal’s early evening encounter with Bayern Munich in Germany.

The crew of around 35 people is already well in place by the time I arrive at 4pm, four hours before kick-off, and many will have been outside the Joie Stadium main car park eight hours by the time the game even gets under way, ensuring everything is where it needs to be come 8pm.

There are four trucks and two vans parked up in a designated corner of the car park reserved for DAZN’s production, with the main two where the magic happens. The first truck, split into two sections, is where the Director for the evening will be sat, while a smaller section at the back has another set of screens for the graphics department who are there to put up stats, scores from elsewhere, yellow cards etc, as well as DAZN’s own advertisement graphics.

The other trucks and vans are for practical use, such as broadcast signal, power supply and one solely to carry around the hundreds and hundreds of wires, plugs, sockets etc needed just to produce the game remotely from a stadium.

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Courtney Pascaud, DAZN’s Production Manager, is there to meet me and immediately takes me on a tour inside the stadium itself to show me their set up.

Soon, commentators Chris Sharples and Courtney Sweetman-Kirk will arrive to start their preparation, as will presenters Siobhan Aherne and Emma Byrne, all part of the strong DAZN numbers on the ground in Manchester.

As we walk around the pitch, Pascaud explains the camera set up and what they’re all for, of which I’ll get a more detailed explanation for back in the production truck in an hour or so, but it’s an interesting insight nonetheless as to what each camera is for and its purpose on the evening.

This game is a five-camera set up, with another five dedicated to things such as interviews, press positions and the gantry, and all of this it’s worth remembering has had to be planned, arranged and executed at just 10 days’ notice of finding out the first round of games would throw up an English side against the European champions.

As we walk back around outside of the stadium and back into the compound, the autumn sun is beginning to set, and, annoyingly for the crew, the rain is starting to come down.

They’re well prepared for any sort of power outage though, with back-up generators and the like all on hand if needed, but the stature of the setup means that is rarely ever required, if at all.

At 5:30pm, things start to speed up, as in the Director’s truck they begin to go through their pre-match rundown. They are compiling various clips and highlights for the pre-show, which includes the goals from Barcelona’s triumph against Lyon in last season’s final, some stats on Ewa Pajor’s start to the season with her new club since arriving from Wolfsburg, while they also test out the team news graphics based on the last starting elevens for both sides.

They test out all the cameras, and this is where it’s explained to be what each one will offer on the night.

“There’s a few more cameras in the Women’s Super League, but when we get to the final there could be as many as 20,” one of the production crew explains. “The Director will be sat at the end; they’ll be looking at the screens and calling the shots.

“These are some of our preview monitors, to show the next shot we’re going to show on the live programme. Camera one is the main wide angle from the gantry, two is a close-up from pitch side, three is not rigged up but is our press position for post-match interviews. There’s a reporter camera by the tunnel and camera five is down behind the goal. It’s all very under control at a place like this because it’s set up amazingly well.”

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Ossett is your classic northern market town, and I say that from a well-qualified position as the place is on my doorstep, hence why on Sunday I made the short walk from my front door to their ground at Ingfield to watch Ossett United take on Chester-Le-Street in the third qualifying round of the Adobe Women’s FA Cup.

It’s a stadium with a certain amount of stereotypical non-league charm, and one I’ve walked past many times in life, but only occasionally frequented in a social aspect, and never before for work purposes.

It has all the kind of quirks you’d expect, situated right on the side of one of the main roads through the town, it’s both a 30-second walk to the bus station across the road or the Londis next door, which also is the front of shirt sponsor for the team.

It has built up porter cabins galore for hospitality, a supporter’s bar or the lower floor ‘Kelly’s Function Room’, completed with outside picnic tables, where fans congregate en-mass on a matchday – 700 were in attendance at the men’s game the day before.

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No leafy suburban stadium in the middle of nowhere for Ossett!

Like many non-league grounds, this is a welcome throwback to what many consider ‘proper’ football, or at least a simpler social event away from the ever-increasing demands of top-level football.

Oddly, for a town of just over 21,000 people, Ossett used to have two football clubs, Ossett Town and Ossett Albion, before the two merged in 2018 into Ossett United, moving to Town’s home stadium and using Albion’s facilities for their women and academy training for a period of time.

Ryan Horsman, the General Manager, greets me at the gate to give me the tour. The club, like most at this level, is reliant on volunteers who come and run the turnstiles, sell programmes or get behind the bar pulling pints for the locals.

Horsman is a landscaper working in the property surveying business, and while it would be easy to make a joke about getting him involved in doing up the stadium, it’s actually remarkably impressive for the Tier 6 level Ossett United find themselves at.

The changing room area has had a recent renovation and is both clean and spacious as their jet blue kits hang from pegs ready for the players to arrive, while there are two match official changing rooms, rare at this level, and separate rooms for physios and even a dedicated office for the manager.

That in itself also shows where the club is at right now, because their current head coach is no standard run-of-the-mill manager, but Tony Walmsley, who just a few years ago was head coach of Central Coast Mariners in the Australian A-League.

The Manchester-born 58-year-old though is back home and around a busy life outside of football which has seen him only just return from trips to Barcelona and Saudi Arabia in time for the game, Horsman says he’s got involved with Ossett for the pure love of the game, which is about all that gets people involved at a level where there is no promise of a wage.

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What would be important would be the £4,000 on offer to reach the first round proper, but former FA Women’s National League side Chester-Le-Street stand in their way, and while Ossett top their league table currently, so do their own opponents in the division above, looking for an immediate return to Tier 4.

The recent increase in prize money means they have claimed £4,800 from the first two rounds alone, and are guaranteed another £1,000 even if their day ends in defeat.

“These players don’t get paid, so hopefully the plan is we can give them the prize money to cover various costs,” says Horsman. “We’ve given them the money from the second round and obviously a win today would help even more.

“It just helps with various things. You only get travel assistance in the fourth round proper when teams like Chelsea and Arsenal join. The draws are regional but Chester-Le-Street is still pretty far away and a long journey for them.”

Horsman has just returned from watching his two-year-old daughter kicking a ball about herself, and while the visitors rock up on their team coach at 12:30pm bang on, Ossett players drift in in their various dribs and drabs, some less than an hour before kick-off depending on their circumstances.

For some, it’s even later. As Horsman and team captain Rowan Treagus await the swapping of teamsheets, the referee hasn’t yet arrived, sparking panic among the two officials who are in attendance, with contingency plans in place just in case, before they receive a text to say he’ll be here by 1:30pm.

At this level, this can be the second game they have officiated in the same day alone.

It does present an opportunity for a quick chat with Treagus who is in her fourth season at the club, but her first as the captain.

“Really exciting,” she describes the feeling as. “We’ve got a lot of support today and we get a lot of support from our little mascots. It’s been up and down, but hopefully on the way up now.”

She too is enthused about the investment from the club over the summer which has seen their facilities improved.

“It’s really good. We have this stadium, the facilities here compared to other teams in this league, I think we’re at the top.

“We want a professional environment, the girls take it seriously, we’ve all played at a good level and it’s nice to have it here.”

Treagus is originally from further south and played in Hampshire, but now up north has a 9am-5pm job as she puts it, like many of her teammates, so their two nights a week of training on a Tuesday and Thursday works neatly.

“9am-5pm. Full-time work, a mix of home working and out and about, so I’m quite lucky with that. We have quite a few teachers, shift workers, a few students.”

Horsman adds, “The balance here is pretty good,” before adding, regarding the impact the prize money on offer would make to the women’s team. “£4000 if we win today…it would help us build the club. Little old Ossett! If the dream is to have 200-300 come to watch us, then so be it.”

Treagus admits it’s a “massive game” but knows it will be tough, before she heads off to get ready for the warm-ups for a pitch while in ok condition, has seen better days after a week of generally heavy rain and a men’s game on it the day before, but it may prove a leveller against higher up opposition.

“I know some of their girls from playing futsal. It’s a good team, it will be difficult, but it will be a good test for us. I think we need it; we’ve been doing pretty well so it will be good to play a team from the league above.”

Even watching the warm-ups, there is a true lower division feeling to it, and what makes these games and stages of the FA Cup all the more special.

The Ossett goalkeeper coach is kitted out in oversized tracksuit bottoms, a casual hoodie and a cap, while manager Walmsley watches on from the sidelines.

On the sidelines, families of the players both stand and sit, socialising over the weekly goings on. Unsurprisingly, there is a community feel to it, many consuming snacks and drinks from the function room, many have even brought their dogs down and it becomes a social event for them as much as it does the families in attendance!

As the game begins, the volunteer woman behind the bar jokes “have we scored yet?” inside the first 30 seconds, and despite a fast start from the visitors, it is not too long before her quip becomes reality.

Chester-Le-Street have dominated so far, but it’s Ossett who take the lead as a corner into the box is scrambled home.

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In the second half, it’s all change, as the greater quality and arguably fitness of the visitors takes over, and they score twice without reply, the second a superb strike from range.

A couple of last-minute corners sees poor goalkeeper Ella Jacobs have to do two full runs up the pitch and back to add an extra body to the chaos, but a foul on the second effectively ends the match before the referee brings proceedings to a climax.

All too quickly, the excitement dissipates, but there are smiles on faces as the teams make their way off the pitch, with the Ossett players rightly proud of their efforts against an opposition who just a few months ago were two divisions above them.

As Walmsley makes his way straight into the function rooms to chat away with some of those in attendance, for Horsman and the rest of the volunteers it’s quickly shoving equipment, balls, cones etc into the backs of cars and off back to the real world for a week before the action resumes against next Sunday, their cup run over for another season, but a valuable £4,800 in the bank which at this level at least will make a huge amount of difference, while Chester-Le-Street head back to their coach still parked outside on the road to look forward to the first round proper.

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“When we won the league three months ago, we thought we’d just be happy to be in the Champions League,” says Jessica Davis, sporting director of Danish side FC Nordsjælland.

“Now it’s like ‘nope, not enough!’ It’s incredible how quick the mindset shifts. We want to make an impact, we want to progress. It’s never ending.”

USA-born Davis, a former player of FC Nordsjælland’s women’s team, is speaking about the club’s recent defeat in the opening round of Champions League qualifiers to Portuguese champions – and last season’s quarter-finalists – Benfica.

For the Danish side based in Farum, it was always going to be a tough ask. Heading into their first European campaign off the back of a first domestic title, the women’s branch of the club is a mere seven years old, but the story goes way deeper.

In 2015, the club was purchased by Tom Vernon, the founder of Ghana-based football academy, Right to Dream, whose aim is to develop the best young players in all corners of the globe, and in the subsequent years has set up academies or purchased teams in Egypt and the USA, as well as FC Nordsjælland.

Vernon, a former scout for Manchester United, has enjoyed great success with the first academy he set up in Ghana, and has seen players skip between clubs and academies, as well as going onto represent some of the world’s top clubs.

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It means while FC Nordsjælland have quickly risen to the top and are already champions of Denmark, they are doing it with a squad based predominantly around academy players, such as Princess Marfo who arrived at the club from the Right to Dream academy in Ghana, and has now secured a move to NWSL expansion side Bay FC.

“This is my fifth season with the club, my second as sporting director,” says Davis, who previously played in Australia and Sweden, among other nations.

“Things have just changed so much. I was at training this morning watching all the staff and thinking back to when I got here and we had one full-time member of staff. The way we’ve progressed is incredible. Being in the Champions League, it’s easy to forget where we came from, but because I saw the growing pains I can appreciate the position we’ve come from and where we are now.”

When Davis arrived as a player in August 2020, the team had just finished third in its first season in the top division after earning promotion at the first time of asking, and the journey since has been about both adapting to the Right to Dream model while trying to create success on the pitch at the stadium now named after Right to Dream.

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There are few teams in Europe who have enjoyed as big a turnaround in fortunes during 2024 as Swedish side FC Rosengård.

It should be no surprise to see the 13-times Damallsvenskan champions at the top of the league, but the club who were once a regular feature in the latter stages of the Champions League endured a torrid 2023, finishing seventh in the bottom half and trailing title winners Hammarby by 14 points.

Flip forward almost 12 months and FC Rosengård sit nine points clear of last year’s champions with a game in hand and have incredibly won all 17 games so far this season, already beating their points tally from 2023 with nine games still to go.

It’s all the more remarkable given last year looked like the start of a worrying pattern for the titans of Swedish football, overtaken by clubs such as both Hammarby and BK Häcken, clubs linked with big men’s teams at the top end of the Allsvenskan, while FC Rosengård’s men’s team play in the lower divisions and is not a club with the financial might of its women’s equivalents.

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“It’s been a lot,” says sporting director Therese Sjögran, with a little chuckle, as she reflects on their incredible season so far during the mid-season break, adding, “But the football is going well, so I can’t complain!”

To say it’s going well is somewhat of an understatement. On top of their incredible run of 17 wins, they have 75 goals and conceded just five, the closest result to dropping points a 1-0 win away at nearest rivals Hammarby.

Even Sjögran, a former player for the team, over 200 caps for Sweden and over five years as the club’s sporting director, isn’t quite sure just how it’s gone from so bad to so good in such a short space of time.

“It’s crazy,” she says. “Last season…that was really, really bad. We almost have the same team, we haven’t changed a lot. We have changed how we train, otherwise? I genuinely don’t know.

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“They don’t need any help, ref” shouts Halifax FC head coach Rob Mitchell in jest as the referee awards their opening day opposition a free-kick which leads to the opening goal of the 2024-25 FA Women’s National League North season.

Within the sarcasm though there is an air of sincerity. It would be the first of 10 goals to go past a Halifax FC team on the day which included several teenagers, a squad with only three substitutes, and no names on the back of the shirts.

And this was not a now full-time Nottingham Forest or even a Newcastle United who have been promoted to the Barclays Women’s Championship, but Rugby Borough, another club still growing into a new identity.

Just over 12 months ago, these two clubs would have been known as Brighouse FC and Coventry United respectively, the latter relegated from the second division and cutting away from its long-term home to take up sanctuary 11 miles up the road, while Brighouse became Halifax, yet spent the 2023-24 season searching for a permanent home, both metaphorically and literally.

Last Sunday, after a solid first season which saw them avoid relegation by a convincing distance, they played in their permanent new home at Bradford’s Horsfall Stadium, nine miles away from Halifax.

Mitchell’s team has been decimated. Some fellow Tier 3 sides have taken his best players, while the lure of bigger names such as Huddersfield Town and Leeds United have even seen some drop down a level to Tier 4.

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Even within one sole division and between two independent clubs, the disparity on the day is alarming, as Rugby bag their final three more goals in the last five minutes, egged on by a bench who know 10 will put them top of the league after Burnley’s 9-0 win over Hull City, and a young Halifax side thrown together on a shoestring budget can do little about it.

“There’s a massive disparity between top and bottom at the minute,” admits Mitchell after the game. “Their budget is huge, mine is £10,000, it’s expenses only, so it’s really tough.

“You can tell they train four times a week, they want to bounce back up. You see Burnley score nine and Hull aren’t even a bad team, so for them to score nine is ridiculous.”

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Once upon a time, Umeå IK and Malmö FF were the great rivals of women’s football in Sweden.

Multiple domestic titles between them, as well as a couple of European Cups for Umeå, both played home many international superstars between them, including the legendary Marta.

Since then, both their fortunes have changed for the worse and they’ve converged down very different paths, now brought back together in the search of rekindling their former successes.

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Malmö became the team everyone knows today as FC Rosengård, the most successful club in the history of Swedish women’s football, while Umeå remains the same entity it was during it’s double European Cup winning days of 2003 and 2004, but has suffered multiple ups and downs since 2008, including near bankruptcy and several relegations.

While the former champions of the continent have bounced between the divisions, Malmö has reincarnated itself since 2019 and worked its way back up through the leagues, now back in the second tier and hot on the heels of its former rivals.

With 11 games gone in the current Elitettan season, Umeå sit second on 27 points and inside the automatic promotion spots, with Malmö just two points behind and chasing them down.

It’s not inconceivable both could be back in the Damallsvenskan in 2025, but between them lessons have been learned the hard way of how tough it is in the current landscape to get back to the top, safe in the knowledge different approaches will be needed for two teams who despite similar success and almost identical league positions, have very different resources to fall back on.

Malmö, the most successful men’s team in Sweden, with 23 league titles and 16 cup wins – as well as a European final – decided to bring back its own women’s team in 2019, with Daniel Andersson named as Sporting Director.

Andersson is a club legend, making over 300 appearances, as well as 74 Sweden caps, and has been tasked with returning the Malmö name to the Damallsvenskan, something they are closing in on.

“We got a team together from scratch and started playing,” says Andersson. “We had applications, trials, we build a team from that.”

So far, Malmö has been promoted in every season of its existence since 2019, but the final step will be toughest, though their aims are as lofty as their male equivalents.

“The aim is the same as we have with the men’s team – to be the best in Sweden,” he says, bullishly. “Then we want to go and compete in Europe as well, so that’s the aim. These years so far have been very, very successful, but we kind of counted on going up in every league, even if it’s still gone even better than expected because the results have been amazing.

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Six years ago, Benfica’s women’s team hadn’t even so much as kicked a ball in anger while Lyon, giants of European football, were in the business end of a campaign which would end in a third consecutive Champions League title.

On Tuesday, they face-off in a historic European quarter-final, for one side at least. For the French giants, this stage of the competition is par for the course, but for The Eagles it’s brand new territory and only emphasises the speed of their journey over the past half a decade.

“We are really pleased, because as a project we are still a baby,” smiles the club’s Vice President, Fernando Tavares.

Tavares has been influential in Benfica’s journey from the start when the team was announced on 12^th December 2007, with an aim to start in the second division of the Portuguese pyramid for the 2018-19 campaign.

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“This is season six, but we started from zero,” he says. “We thought about purchasing the sporting rights of a first division club but we decided to start at zero.

“There was a lot of pressure. We had girls who had been in our youth schools for six years and what was happening was they’d go through our system but because we had no older categories they went to Sporting, we were losing assets.

“The Portuguese Federation also made a political approach to Benfica to sell the idea of going into the game because it would be good for the competition.”

Six years on, they are ready to host eight-time champions Lyon as they prepare for a first ever knockout game in the Champions League, having made it out of the group stage at the third time of asking.

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When Alen Stajcic made a return to the women’s international game just over 18 months ahead of the 2023 World Cup in his home country of Australia – and New Zealand – he described the decision to become head coach of the Philippines as “like starting from ground zero”.

Despite being the 13^th most populated nation in the world, with just over 117m inhabitants, the Philippines has never hit it off where football is concerned, with the likes of basketball and volleyball the dominant sports in the country.

When the former Matildas head coach took the reins, he inherited a squad of players who largely weren’t professional. Many were USA college students with Filipino heritage, some were at lower league clubs dotted around the world/.

Some didn’t have a club full stop.

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Captain and most capped player, Hali Long, was one of several who played in the underdeveloped domestic league and even played 7-a-side to keep her ticking over, while the nation had never been close to a World Cup, which is what was tasked of Stajcic with the backing of benefactor Jefferson Cheng, a Filipino businessman.

When Stajcic officially joined from his role as Central Coast Mariners manager in the Australian A-League, it was just three months out from the 2022 Asian Cup, to be held in January, which would serve as qualifiers for the World Cup.

After not qualifying at all in 2006, 2008, 2010 or 2014, and finishing just sixth in 2018, the Philippines were up against it, with only a semi-final spot guaranteeing a spot in the World Cup without the prospect of facing the inter-continental play-offs.

Drawn into a group with Asian giants Australia, and a Thailand side who had been at the World Cup in 2019, their prospects were up against the wall already, and Stajcic called on trusted cohorts to help him in his quest to take the team of unknowns to the world stage, firstly in his trusted assistant from Central Coast Mariners, fellow Aussie Nahuel Arrarte.

“You have to have a vision in mind for what it looks like at the end and ours was to get to the World Cup…”

“I was there from pretty much day one,” says Arrarte. “Once Staj got offered the job, he pretty much asked me straight away if I wanted to be a part of it and we took it on board.”

With the tournament a mere months away, Arrarte admits the early process was “pretty full-on”, as the pair headed straight out to the US for camps to analyse potential players they could bring into the squad.

They also had, as Arrarte puts it, “limited staff and limited resources”, but they were soon joined by another of their former colleagues, strength and conditioning coach, Luca Tonetti.

After an eight-week camp in California, they went straight to the Asia Cup in India, knowing full well their preparation had been less than ideal, and the team had been put together like a jigsaw puzzle at short notice.

The World Cup felt a long way away.

“With me and Staj, we’ve never been afraid of hard work and take on a challenge people might think is out of reach,” chuckles Arrarte. “I worked with Staj with the Matildas and the Mariners and I think it was one of those things, him having been in football a long time, and me the NPL and A-League academies, you’re still going into the unknown, but a little better prepared.

“You have to have a vision in mind for what it looks like at the end and ours was to get to the World Cup. Having been in a professional set up, you know what it has to come close to looking like, but you still come up against daily challenges you have to deal with.

“The players and staff were very driven to make that dream come true for the nation. It was hard, but very rewarding to go into battle with people who had that mindset to overcome obstacles.”

Tonetti, who joined after a meeting with Stajcic in a café back home in Australia, was tasked with bringing a squad where fitness had to be brought up to scratch was a priority, especially if they were going to get through the Asia Cup and into a position to qualify for the World Cup.

“We planned what to do,” says Tonetti. “In the first training it was like ‘Oh God, we cannot do this!’. It was so hard, players were getting injured, they were not used to anything we wanted to do.

“The quality wasn’t great. We had to build up really, really slowly. We saw individually some people had something, but there was some friction. Half the team was American, half were Filipino, some couldn’t come with us because of visa issues, so we just tried to unify the group from day one.

“From my position, I’m lucky because I don’t have to make decisions on who does and doesn’t play, I could become more of a friend for them and we built some great relationships.”

Tonetti jokes that conditioning was his “second job – my first was to keep them happy!” as the staff scrambled to make the squad gel together ahead of the crunch opening match against Thailand, which would go a long way to decide who qualified behind heavy group favourites, Australia.

“I told the girls ‘If we make the World Cup, just shave my hair…”

“I had to learn how to listen, because I’d worked a lot with men, and they had different needs and wants,” Tonetti admits. “The communication for me was massive, trying to understand what they all needed.

“Alen is really talented and had a lot of experience, so he could understand early which were important players to talk with to try and get inside their mindset and what they needed. By that point, most of us were men. We had a physiotherapist who was a woman, but the players didn’t have a female figure in the staff, so I took that role [confidant] on a little bit.

“India made things even tougher with the COVID-19 situation. When we got there India got locked down because of the pandemic, so we were so careful about it because we couldn’t afford to lose time.”

The Philippines won the first game 1-0, through a Chandler McDaniel strike, one half of a sister-duo in the squad alongside goalkeeper Olivia, who would go on to prove a crucial figure in their qualification hopes.

Tonetti admits that first win helped to “unify the team” and created a “strong bond” within the squad as suddenly belief grew of what they could potentially achieve.

A not overly unexpected 4-0 defeat to Australia followed, but with just lowly Indonesia left to play, they were well-placed to get to the quarter-finals, which would put them just one game from an historic achievement.

“I think just after the second game I told the girls ‘If we make the World Cup, just shave my hair,” Tonetti laughs.

Arrarte offers a further insight into how they set about putting into place all they could in such a short period before the Asia Cup kicked off.

“The players already had an abundance of self-belief, it was about channelling that energy into the technical, tactical, physical components required at that level,” he says.

“When you have people who are like-minded and willing to sacrifice towards their goal, it doesn’t matter what walk of life you come from if you pull together.

“The one message we constantly asked of players, staff and even the federation was we needed a collective buy in to make that dream a reality. We worked very, very hard from a tactical perspective to make sure we were able to compete and give ourselves the maximum opportunity to compete.

“Like I said, having been at the Olympics as a staff, we had an idea what that looked like, and the girls had that self-belief, that sacrifice to make it happen. It was a collective buy-in and that was constantly driven, that not any one person would get us through on their own.”

In the quarter-finals, the Philippines would face Chinese Taipei, with the winner guaranteed a spot at the World Cup.

After Quinley Quezada put them in the lead, a late equaliser subsequently sent the game to penalties, and after both Long and Jessica Miclat failed to convert, Chinese Taipei had the chance to win it, but were denied by the exploits of goalkeeper McDaniel, who then subsequently scored a penalty herself.

Three failed penalties in a row from their opposition left the Philippines to celebrate hysterically at what they’d achieved, just three months after Stajcic and co took over the team.

“When we did it, I went on the pitch with the clippers, but they didn’t do it!” laughs Tonetti.

With 18 months until the tournament, the staff set about preparing the team the best they could for what laid ahead.

Another coach who was familiar to Stajcic, former Future Matildas and U20s assistant coach Stevan Antonic, joined as a performance analyst, to help assist preparations for the tournament in March 2022.

“Wycout, InStat, they had nothing on these girls. Very few even played football…”

“It all happened through Naz [Nahuel Arrarte], who I’ve known since I was a kid,” says Antonic. “We always kept in touch through football and he was the one who put me in touch with the Philippines.

“Staj had put the Future Matildas programme I was working in together, so when he got in touch saying they needed an analyst the simple answer was ‘yes’.”

They’re reputation and stature as a rank outsider though made life tough for Antonic. Still ranked outside the world’s top 50, he admits there was very little footage of the team to watch, bar the Asian Cup games which had just preceeded his appointment.

“Wycout, InStat, they had nothing on these girls. Very few even played football, it was USA college or local schools. For us, it became about finding girls who had Filippino heritage and could get a passport.

“We sat down and watched anything we could of players. YouTube, Twitter, speaking to the right people within the Philippines to try and get some of these players their passports. We went to Europe, to the US, we went everywhere to find people and I think the longest one was Angela Beard, who we all actually knew, and she was an Aussie, but it took a while until get she got her passport.”

Having been another to work alongside Stajcic for a period at Central Coast Mariners, Antonic admits he had a head starting in knowing the coach’s philosophy and style of play, and set about putting together clips and highlights of opponents, their key players, how they could exploit their weaknesses and which of their strengths could hurt their team.

Keeping the team together regularly was vital too, and they set about a rigorous programme of camps and games to build up to the tournament, and were backed by Cheng and the federation when they laid out what they wanted to do.

“We had a couple of months after the Asia Cup where we didn’t really know how it would go,” admits Tonetti. “Alen created what brought us to the World Cup. Enough budget, finances to invest in what we needed. Everyone worked really hard in the preparation camps, monitoring people 24/7, because we had players all around the world in different time zones.

“I was sending training programmes out to them because most players didn’t even have a team, a lot were just doing individual training sessions and running. We could monitor via Strava, they had an app to log their gym programmes and slowly, slowly behind the scenes Alen and Nahuel did a lot of scouting to find any new player in every corner of the world who could help us.”

He adds, “In the Philippines, it was 40 degrees, 90% humidity. They were running on concrete, you couldn’t do it, but the programmes paid off, we got a lot of fitter and ready for the World Cup.

“Anything they needed, we were giving it to them, whoever it was on the staff, whatever they needed we gave it. They had no excuses. Adidas came in to do the kit launches and they started to feel like professional footballers.

“They began to help each other and their culture started to trickle into the US players too. They did everything together, they would even go to church together. We had a good preparation, we did a pre-season camp if you like and we worked harder and harder, even if they were tired. If you weren’t fit, I’m sorry, you go home.”

Tonetti admits almost every camp “we had new players coming in”, and in July 2022 – 12 months out from the tournament – the team made more history by becoming AFF Champions for the first time, a tournament for South East Asian sides which saw them beat Thailand in the final, in a tournament which included fellow World Cup debutants Vietnam, as well as Australia’s U23s.

Success though brought new challengers, as the Philippines as a nation started to stand up and take notice of their new heroes, who had not only won the tournament, but done it home soil in front of their home fans who were only now being introduced to the potential of their women’s football team, in a nation where football is not even close to the dominant sport.

“I think it was then they started believing they could win, but that’s when they started to feel the pressure,” says Tonetti. “The fans supported us from day one, but when we lost games the players started reading the comments from fans.

“People were taking more interest, asking why people weren’t playing, that was all new to us. Players would cry, consistently, because it was all new to them.”

Tonetti recalls when things came to a head when the team went to Chile at the end of 2022 for two friendly matches, and the combination of their new-found status, as well as the knowledge the tournament and a decision of who would and wouldn’t be selected was getting ever closer, took its toll.

“When we played in Chile, we had some issues,” he admits. “When we got there, I remember speaking to players at the camp because the vibe wasn’t good and it was when people started getting cut and players were feeling the pressure. From media, from fans, but also within the group.

“There was seven months left to the World Cup and everything was ramping up, they knew if they didn’t perform they’d be cut. We lost against Chile and players were getting stressed, every single player was crying, not for the result, but for the pressure.

“Straight after we had another game and performed really well. That was our first taste of what to expect, then players asked for more, they wanted more training, even those in professional teams in Europe and in Australia. ‘Luca, give us a programme, don’t tell anyone, we just want to do everything we can’.”

In January 2023, Stajcic and Arrarte took over the running of the newly launched U17s and U20s squads to try and nurture the future talent they were also unearthing, keen to continue the legacy and create an even better squad in the future, filled with players who had been properly trained and developed, rather than cherry-picked from around the world.

Their schedule was brutal. Stajcic spent time in England on holiday with family, but he was also working, scouting potential talent, before flying straight to Spain for the Pinatar Cup which saw the first team face European opposition in Wales, Scotland and Iceland.

From there, there were more camps in the USA and then it was to Guam for a youth tournament, the schedule was gruelling for any coach, but this was the commitment they were willing to put in to have a successful World Cup.

“The preparation leading into it, to travel to different continents and expose the players to different types of football, that was invaluable,” says Arrarte. “We started moving up the rankings, started getting exposure to South American football, European football, because we didn’t know who our group would be.

“We played AFF, we played the Southeast Asian Games, there was a lot of opportunity to play games and understand what would be required to compete.”

The Philippines lost only by a one-goal margin to each of Wales and Scotland in Spain, before competing in 2024 Olympic qualifiers which saw them win all three of their round one games, and that was followed by the Southeast Asian Games Arrarte mentions, which put a dent in their preparations for the World Cup, just two months out from the tournament.

“When we did the final call, there were a lot of tears, a lot of relief…”

The team finished third in their group, behind Vietnam and Myanmar and didn’t make the semi-finals. Just months out from facing established world class opposition like Norway, along with Switzerland and New Zealand, which made up their World Cup group, it was a blow to confidence ahead of a tournament they’d been approaching in buoyant mood.

“Before you knew it, teams could scout us and that was difficult for us,” admits Antonic. “We could scout teams better than before, but we knew we were going into games where teams hadn’t seen us, but after the Southeast Asian Games and Asia Cup etc, that changed, which made life a little bit difficult.”

Another element added into the equation was it was time to cut down the squad from the initial provisional list to the final 23, something none of the staff was looking forward to, such was the journey everyone involved had been on together in just under 18 months.

“When we did the final call, there were a lot of tears, a lot of relief,” says Tonetti. “It was hard when we had to start cutting the team down, people had been together a while by then, so that was tough.

“Myself and the physiotherapist spent a lot of time speaking to those who got cut about having a chance to make it back to the team, but they were young and not used to that situation, fighting to get their spot back wasn’t really the mentality. That was a bit challenging in managing the group as it evolved.”

When the team arrived at their base camp in New Zealand, they’d planned to prepare by facing the best, and they did so by arranging two friendlies, one with defending world champions USA, and bronze medallists Sweden.

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They lost both, but weren’t embarrassed in either, and headed into their opening game against European side Switzerland full of hope and determination, knowing they could fall back on their underdog tag.

There was though an unpleasant twist, as they opened their hotel room curtains to a scene of lockdown after a mass shooting had taken place that same morning in Auckland, with teams locked in their bases until further notice.

When they were released, and the game beckoned, there were scenes of tears of joy and emotion on the Philippines bench, as a dream which for a time felt only that, became a reality.

“I know it’s clichéd, but we wanted to win,” chuckles Antonic. “The whole preparation, travelling to Central America, Europe, the USA, the teams we played, the idea was to get out of the group.

“We were under no illusions it would be super, super difficult, but we’d played New Zealand the year before and we were leading before we gave away a penalty. We lost 2-1, but we were missing a few players and we knew that could be a key game for us.

“Norway have some of the best players in the world, Switzerland have plenty of key players. The mindset in the first game was don’t lose, and we were unfortunate. I don’t think anybody gave us any chance in that tournament, but there were moments in that first game we didn’t capitalise on and then gave away a penalty.”

Arrarte adds “I think the mindset was always preparing ourselves to try and win games. The tactical component might differ, I think we were underdogs in every game, that was nothing new having that underdog tag on us.

“We knew we had some girls still not even in clubs, who were now competing against Champions League players. That was always going to be difficult, but the girls had been exposed to these types of countries. We’d played USA, Sweden etc, and we’d also played New Zealand.

“We had an idea of what that could look like. We tried to utilise or make a positive connection with the emotions in everything, the atmosphere. We had a lot of Filipinos there, our girls engaged with the crowd and used that to their advantage. The girls rode that atmosphere really well and turned it into positive energy. The mentality was to set ourselves up for a chance to win, the tactics might vary during the games.”

Tonetti adds “We were 62^nd in the FIFA rankings, Switzerland was in the top 30 and we were upset we didn’t win, that was our mentality.”

After a 2-0 defeat to Switzerland, the game against the co-hosts on their home soil was pivotal to their qualification hopes.

New Zealand had stunned Norway in the opening game, but had been in bad form themselves coming into the tournament, and with none of the eight debutant nations registering a win in the first round of games, it was also a chance to make history.

“The New Zealand game…it was stay in it as long as we could,” admits Antonic. “We knew we could last 90 minutes, we had players who could last 90 minutes and we just needed to nick a goal, which we did. The save from Olivia at the end to give us our first win, that was unbelievable.”

As Stajcic tried to remain calm on the touchline, the scenes were among the most joyful the tournament saw as Sarina Bolden’s sole goal, combined the stunning aforementioned save from McDaniel at the death, sealed a first ever win at a World Cup at just their second attempt, for a nation which had pieced its squad together piece by piece over the preceding 18 months.

“The stars aligned against New Zealand,” reflects Tonetti. “When Sarina scored, it was amazing. Playing the co-hosts in New Zealand, VAR cancels their goal near the end, Olivia makes a massive save.

“I had a close relationship with Olivia but if someone would tell me I wouldn’t bet $1 she would save that, it was just too hard, it was amazing. That was the Philippines, Sarina at one end, Olivia at the other.”

“Olivia saved a penalty in the Asia Cup and Sarina scored the last penalty, to get us to the World Cup, then at the World Cup it was the other way around. That was written. At that point, it felt our story had come full circle.”

Arrarte adds “To win a game in a World Cup when you’ve got nations who have been to a few, to do that in our second game was very special. That group had an amazing journey just to get there, a lot of the staff as well, from the games to the logistics to everything that needs to be done behind the scenes, it was very special.

“It’s like a drug, you want more of that emotion, it’s a very surreal experience when you attach to it the journey that took us there.”

It gave them a chance to do the unthinkable against Norway in the final round of group games, with all four nations still able to progress, but the quality of the likes of Barcelona’s Caroline Graham Hansen told, in an emphatic 6-0 win which was no slight on the minnows of the tournament, who went home with heads held high.

“The last game, I don’t know if we ran out of legs,” says Antonic. “We knew we could get a result, but to get out of the group? I think realistically we just didn’t want to get embarrassed, and just perform to a level which would shock the world, and I honestly think we did that. They moved to 38^th in the world and that’s unbelievable, in two years to move up 30 plus spots.

Tonetti adds “You want to go through the group, but against Norway they were just better than us, we couldn’t deny that. But we still had heart, even at half-time we believed if we scored next we could make their lives hard.

“When it finished 6-0, but you still see all these Filippino fans cheering for us, the players in tears, I was the happiest person in the world. I didn’t care about the result, these girls showed the world they were hungry to work hard and if you do that, you can achieve anything.

“When everything finished the day after, I couldn’t even cry. I was happy, but sad, we didn’t know what was going to happen.”

It looked as though post-tournament there was at least a clear blueprint for future success, with Cheng still at the helm, but soon after the World Cup ended came the bombshell Stajcic would be moving on, returning to Australia and a return to the A-League with Perth Glory.

Many have once again gone with him, such is their loyalty to their group work, but all look back fondly on what was a brief, but brilliant time spent with the Philippines team who became national heroes.

“I’d always say to Staj I’d back him,” says Antonic. “If he was there, I’d be there, if he wasn’t, I’d be done.

“We didn’t really know. In the last week of the World Cup we had a bit of a do with some delegates, had a good dinner and chat and the next day we all flew off. A few phone calls were made, Staj got the job in Perth and asked if I wanted to come and I said yes.

“It was bittersweet because we were building something special, we already had. Dave, Naz, myself, we all had the mindset to kick on, but we came in for Staj and my mindset was wherever Staj went, I went. We left on really good terms, and you never say never. We still talk to Jeff and all the staff there, catch up when we can, but it wasn’t planned.”

And whatever happens, the tournament has left behind incredible moments for all of them they will never forget, as well as creating a new legacy for women’s football in the country to grow in the future.

“That game, the Norway game, at Eden Park, and 75-80% of the crowd Filippino, I still get goose bumps talking about it. You never believe in your wildest dreams you can touch a nation as much as we did in a sport which had no interest.

“Volleyball players have more followers on social media than the Kardashians. None of it makes sense, but it was unbelievable. Their tour rolls on, there are girls who are celebrities now. Hali hasn’t played official football for however long, she played 7-a-side football with the boys, the college girls hadn’t played at all, the ones in Europe weren’t starters. Sarina and Quinley played a combined 200 minutes in Japan all season.

“To achieve what they did, I don’t think that will be replicated again in a long time.”

Tonetti adds “We went our separate ways. I’m still really close with the assistant strength and conditioning coach, now she’s the main person there, she was like my sister.

“The relationships in the staff were amazing, it was just amazing. That was tough for a couple of months to come out of, but we still catch up and have a chat together, still chat to the players. But it was the pinnacle of my career, not just the football experience, but just incredible people. All my Instagram friends are now Filippino, I open it up and I’m like ‘who is this person?!’ That’s my story.

Arrarte too moved on, once again taking on the role of Stajcic’s assistant in Perth, but he hopes between their work with both the senior teams and creating the new youth programme, they have left behind a foundation for the sport to continue to both grow and thrive in the future, and become regulars at World Cups.

“We joked about calling it ‘The Beatles Tour’ because the girls were everywhere…”

“We spent a lot of time unearthing those youngsters who could help, and to see some of them now come through was very important. It’s important to see a continuous impact, to make sure they continue to believe they can progress and hopefully get additional funding to assist the local programmes there to grow the game.

“Basketball is the number one sport there and it’s a constant battle against that there, but we showed that with some structure, belief and investment why can’t it continue? And hopefully they see that and continue to invest and assist the game, especially at grassroots.

“They touched the hearts of a lot of people and it has to be the beginning, not the end. We played our part, not just at senior level, but trying to grow the youth teams too.”

While a lot has changed, there is some familiarity in that they’ve been replaced at the helm by another Aussie, one familiar to several of the former staff members, in Mark Torcaso.

Torcaso guided Western United to the A-League Grand Final in their first season as a franchise team in the league before being appointed at the end of the season.

The Philippines won’t be at the Olympics, but now attentions turn to the next World Cup and a new foundation to be built for future success, with the nation now ranked well within the FIFA top 50.

“Mark is a good guy, we know him through the league here and we caught up with him when they played Olympic qualifiers in Perth,” says Antonic. “There was never a billboard who had a women’s footballer on, or even a footballer in general. Even the men don’t get the publicity we do now. When we won the AFF it was ridiculous at home, they were everywhere.

“We joked about calling it ‘The Beatles Tour’ because the girls were everywhere, they went to celebrities overnight. There’s such a big diaspora of Filippinos across the world, we went to Spain for the Pinatar Cup and we had fans there.

“We touched a nation, no matter where we were, they followed and if they tap into the youth and get a few more players from abroad of a certain level, the U17s and U20s who I worked with, the U17s in particular have a really good group. I think the future looks bright if it’s nurtured right, it could be a really good generation coming through.”

The legacy goes beyond that too, and even now close to home where the majority of the staff have come together again on the west coast of Australia.

Where the team train is shared with Perth Glory’s women’s team, and the staff have managed to use their contacts to find new homes for both Jessica Cowart and Quinley Quezada, who have joined the club, and they all still see each other regularly.

Legacies that widespread and far-reaching are hard to come by, and even harder to sustain, and the story of the Philippines is one of the most heart-warming the women’s game will see.

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Liverpool Feds is like no other club remaining in the FA Women’s National League North.

While big names such as Newcastle United, who are full-time, came into the league via promotion this season, and other stalwarts such as Nottingham Forest have even moved to a hybrid model, the Feds don’t even pay their players.

Yet behind the ‘big four’ of Newcastle, Forest, Burnley and Wolves, they are currently best of the rest and sit nicely in the top half of the table.

With an array of players from the area who are looking for something outside the ever-growing world of professionalism and a mix of young players on dual registrations from local giants such as Liverpool and Manchester United, the Feds are thriving this season, and on Sunday have a chance to reach the third round of the Adobe Women’s FA Cup when they host fourth-tier Durham Cestria.

A win would guarantee them £23,000 in prize money for this season even if they lost in the third round, and considering General Manager Abby Pope – who also plays for the club – tells me the Leisure United facility we sit in on a chilly Thursday evening before training costs them £15,000 a year to use, it shows how far that prize money could go.

It’s not just Pope who also duals her playing role at the club with work behind the scenes. Captain Chantelle Thompson, who joins us later in the evening to chat, also helps out as the club’s Media Officer, while forward Emily Douglas is the Club Treasurer.

Situated south of Liverpool, the sports centre is a hive of activity in the evening as Feds players trickle through the door into the canteen to wait for training to start.

Despite their status, there are familiar names among the ranks. Ellie Stewart was a regular in the second tier in years gone by for Everton, Sunderland and Blackburn Rovers, while Ellie Fletcher, formerly of Manchester United’s youth team, Liverpool and Sheffield United, also plays alongside her NHS role.

Even manager Leanne Duffy, who joins for a sit down, formerly played for both Liverpool and Everton just before the FA Women’s Super League era began, winning two FA Cups, and they have certainly utilised their geographical location situated between two major football cities.

“I think it’s a constant battle, a moving target, to keep the gap where the gap is…”

“We know our lane, we know what lane we sit in,” says Duffy. “We know what brings us success and with our limitations, that drives our success in a way. I’d go as far to say every game we’ve played this season the club we’ve played against is paying their players, and we’re not. But that becomes part of your identity, it’s not all bad.”

Pope meanwhile has been at the club eight years and says she “wouldn’t want to be anywhere else”, and has the privilege of running the off-field affairs too as GM. She admits the prize money would be “big for us”, but is also wary of clubs across the tiers becoming too reliant on the FA Cup to fund their seasons.

She is also realistic about where Feds are at, and is keen to ensure they establish themselves as a successful Tier 3 side before thinking about life above that, having only been promoted in 2022.

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“I put together a five-year plan at the start of the season and I put five key words to it,” she says. “The ambition was to dream, that was next to the Barclays Women’s Championship logo. I’m not saying in five years we’ll be ready for that. Right now, we look at that and go ‘nah’. I’ve sat in webinars with clubs who want to apply for it just to sit and observe what the process is and I came off one evening and I just went ‘wow’.

“For us, success is looking away from that, success for us is Tier 3. There’s some strong teams in here right now but I think they will reach the Championship, this is a good level for us, the highest we can be at without being professional. I played in Tier 3 12 years ago as a 16-year-old and 16-year-old Abby does not get in Tier 3 now, it’s a different level and will only continue improving.

Pope says being so reliant on FA Cup prize money is a “horrible situation”, while Duffy says the extra funding over the past two seasons is “brilliant, but wrong at the same time”, in regards to how much it influences a club’s season at this level.

“You’re getting a taste of the men’s non-league game pressures, it’s almost becoming more important [than the league] and I’d have never ever said that before,” says the head coach.

They are though utilising what they do have to sustain themselves. Founded in 1991, originally as Liverpool Institute of Higher Education, Feds have become a well-known name in the women’s game and still offer a throwback for supporters looking for a relaxed, community environment on a Sunday afternoon at their Jericho Lane base.

Being solely independent, they can find their own sponsors, and on the day I visit them they’ve just announced a new sponsorship deal with TaP [A Talent Management company], along with their primary sponsor Douglas White Financial Planning. The daughter of Managing Director Chris Douglas is also in the club’s academy ranks.

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Staring solely at a list of names, it’s easy to get sucked in solely by the uniqueness of what Tier 3 side Newcastle United face this weekend in the first round of the FA Cup.

It is, after all, the magic of the cup. But for a side with aspirations of reaching the second division at the first time of asking come May, it is not Manchester who stand in their way, but Mancunian. Not United, but Unity.

Mancunian Unity, currently of sixth-tier regional north west league. As I said, the name stands out, but beyond the name is a much broader, heart-warming story which their journey from nowhere to what faces them this Sunday in just four short years only tells a small part of.

Set up by current manager Phil Burke - who has guided them through three enthralling qualifying rounds which included a 6-5 and a 5-3 score line - as recent as 2019, the odds were already stacked against a side with no major benefactor, even more so when you consider the COVID-19 pandemic hit just months after their start to life.

“I just thought ‘let’s do this’ and make a club into what I think is right, create a safe space…”

It means, incredibly, the team has only completed two full seasons, with the 2019-20 and 2020-21 campaigns curtailed due to the pandemic, but they have been promoted in both of them, and are already top of their league again this season as they look to move just one division away from a step into the FA Women’s National League.

To many, the term Unity may be somewhat of a cliché, but it doesn’t take too much time speaking to those at the club to realise this is one of those places where it is not just a cliché, but the actual foundation of the club’s creation.

“I was working at another football club in the community and girls sector,” tells Burke, just before taking the final session before the match against Newcastle on Sunday. “I knew a few people who played for the team and I used to go and watch as a fan really. It got to a point where one came to me and just burst into tears. She said she didn’t want to play football and she wanted to quit.

“What happened was a select few were getting bullied, made to feel they weren’t wanted and they didn’t want to play football anymore. For myself, I had the ambition to be a professional coach and I just thought ‘let’s do this’ and make a club into what I think is right, create a safe space, an enjoyable environment for women and girls and to develop people to drive them to be the best they can be and climb that pyramid.”

In the earliest days, he relied on those he knew best. His current captain, Jess Bamber, was a close primary school and high school friend, and after giving up the game she’d fallen out of love with, Bamber got back involved only because it was Burke on the other end of a phone call, and now four years on she’s preparing to lead her side out against a side linked with a Premier League giant.

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“No, never,” she smiles, when I ask if she ever imagined it would come to this. “We’ve worked hard and I don’t think anyone deserves it more than we do. We train for about four hours all week. Behind the scenes, the work from the coaches and staff is incredible, we just go out and win the games for them. This is all mind-blowing, but we’re buzzing and we can’t wait for it.”

On how she got involved with Unity, Bamber adds “Phil rang me one day and said ‘I’m starting my own club’. I was about 25, 26 and I said ‘I think I’m past it now Phil, I’m knackered’, but he said to come down and give it a shot. It took me a few months, I was a bit of an ‘as and when’ at first, but I fell back in love with it. He’s my best mate and doing this with him is completely different, that’s why I’m here.”

Bamber played at local amateur level for Middleton Athletic but had quickly fallen out of love with the game through a constant streak of injuries and niggles, as she puts it, but in her first match for Unity she scored a last-minute winner in a cup match and it re-lit the match inside of her.

“What you get here you don’t get anywhere else. It’s not just training and games, we have a life outside of this. We go out together, we socialise together, it is a unity. Everyone loves each other, it’s great to be involved in it.”

“I went to training once and absolutely loved it, I’ve never loved being in a team so much in my life…”

It’s a sentiment also echoed by vice-captain Molly Etchells, who only joined the club in 2022 and as Burke puts it took a “huge gamble” by dropping two divisions to join the club after spells in both the USA at college and then Salford City back home.

Etchells admits there is “some nerves” ahead of their biggest occasion yet on Sunday, but she too has bought into what this club is all about.

“I’ve got so much respect for Phil for bringing us where we are,” says Etchells. “I came down two tiers because I bought into it. I went to training once and absolutely loved it, I’ve never loved being in a team so much in my life and I’m playing the best I’ve ever played.

“I’ve made best friends for life and the things Phil has done for this club is ridiculous. It’s amazing what he’s done, the fact we’re getting recognition now, it will put is on the map. We’re not just a little club, we’re a unity.”

There is a reality to it all too. While Burke believed these days will come and he is aiming for much more, as high as the Barclays Women’s Super League, he knows the challenges they face, but even to bring them as far as he has in four years is a huge achievement.

Relevant Read: FA Cup prize money is having a profound effect on those at the bottom

The players all pay to play, rather than the other way around, and they are reliant solely on sponsors, as is evident by local company Couture Cat Sitting Services branded on the bespoke black and yellow training gear they’re all wearing.

Within the circular logo which brandishes the club name is a bee, a symbol closely linked to Manchester after the devastating Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, another sign of what closely links this club to the local community, based at the Heywood Sports Village just outside Rochdale, a few miles from the city.

“It’s all a little bit surreal, but from the second we started…” Burke pauses, reflecting on the journey, and adds “Look, we had no badge, no name, no kit, no money, nothing. People were very quick to jump at the opinion that we’d fail and fold within a month, especially when the pandemic hit, but four years and two full seasons later here we are in the FA Cup first round against Newcastle United.”

One sponsor, Harvey Supplies, has paid £4,000 and that allows them to keep their stadium in Oldham where they’ll host the Magpies this weekend, while the FA Cup prize money increase has been life-changing for the club, with even defeat on Sunday ensuring they would take home £10,300 for their three qualifying round wins and a first round encounter.

“I can’t even explain how important it’s been. We have the ambition to get to a point where the players don’t have to pay, we want to take that barrier away from them. We want to keep our stadium, but things like that and our kits and what not cost a lot of money and every season that resets. We know the further we go up the more money we will need behind us and we will need to get better at everything we do, but the prize money has meant the world.”

Etchells adds “That’s what we do, we play for the love of the game. Whatever we do get, we appreciate so much and the money we get from this will be huge. People don’t appreciate how much we appreciate it. We had nothing, so it will go so far to help us out.”

Burke believes “we can cause a shock”, but is realistic about what they face up to on Sunday, a side currently unbeaten in a league three tiers and a financial world above them.

But, their own success shows their talent, and Etchells is adamant there are several within the squad who could play at National League and don’t because of work/life circumstances only.

“There’s no pressure on us, we’re completely the underdogs, but they’ll be shocked,” says the vice-captain. “We’ve got a few players who are unreal and could be playing at that level. If we’re on it, Liz, Maya, Ella are unreal players, it’s a great test for everyone.”

“We always say it. We’re little Unity, just little Unity…”

For all of them, the football and work balance remains, while for Newcastle’s players it’s a distant memory after the club committed to a professional full-time programme after promotion last season.

Etchells, along with several others in the squad, is a police officer and cannot always commit to training and games, while Bamber is a customer service team leader at a local bedding company.

Striker Kaitland Harter, who joined back in 2020, works in events including music festivals, and spent the summer in countries like Portugal working at festivals, so unsurprisingly admits she’s taken on the role of team DJ, but her own story is extrinsically linked to that of Burke’s.

Her and Burke worked together in the same sports coaching company and for 18 months owned a business called ‘Sports by Unity’ together, before Harter moved on to pursue her passion in events, but she too has dropped down the divisions to play under her current manager.

“He was talking about his football team all the time and I told him I played football and would come down, and I’ve been here ever since!” says Harter. “I’ve never, ever been at a better team.

“A lot of it is the girls we play with. It’s such a good group of girls, everyone gets along. I’ve been at teams higher up where the standard is better, but you train, jump straight in your car and go home. That’s it, you don’t speak again until training. Here, we have our group chat, we have nights out, everyone really gets along.”

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Harter was in Tier 6 when she persuaded to drop down to then Tier 8 in Unity’s second season, and now she’s back where it all began and like everyone else is only looking upwards, with the Newcastle clash symptomatic of the club’s wider plans to ensure these are not just one-offs, but regular fixtures in years to come.

“We always say it. We’re little Unity, just little Unity,” says Harter, as it becomes clear somewhat of a siege mentality has been created among the doubts over them as an entity. “We’ve been promoted twice in a row but we’ll have people messaging saying ‘you’re going to get battered this season’ and every year we’re like ‘Look at little Unity, we’ve done it again’.

“Look at us now, we’ve drawn Newcastle United.”

Bamber echoes it “We call ourselves ‘Little old Unity’. Phil’s done it himself from bare bones, his own pocket and I’ve got so much respect for him for that. We don’t have the backing of anyone else, we rely on our sponsors and whatever else comes in, that’s why we’ve worked so hard because this money keeps us afloat.”

Burke himself knows it too and admits “people do say we’re crazy” when he talks about one day wanting to reach the WSL, but the reality is what they face this Sunday was also once a pipedream, given less than five years Unity didn’t even exist.

More realistically, he is at least targeting the National League which would mean two more promotions from where they are now, but won’t go back on the club’s ethos, knowing that is until now what has helped get them to where they are.

“We take the meaning of the world Unity very seriously,” he says. “We try and drive a togetherness on and off the field, we’re so passionate about our identity and what we want to project to people and what we want to become.

“Newcastle United is surreal, it’s incredible, it was a dream but it’s a dream we’ve seen become real. We said we wanted Newcastle, we wanted it away in case it would be at St James’ Park, but there’s something magical about hosting them too.”

“It’s not just this weekend, leading them out every week is a privilege for me…”

For Bamber, she will be the one who gets to lead the team out on Sunday and it will continue an incredibly affinity with the club given she never expected to play football again.

Playing under the man she has known and been best friends with for two decades, Bamber has already lifted seven trophies with the Unity, including two league titles and now back-to-back treble winning seasons through local cup competitions.

“It’s not just this weekend, leading them out every week is a privilege for me,” she smiles. “The love everyone has for each other, the respect we have for Phil and the staff. Hopefully the crowd will be big and we can enjoy the moment.

“You look at Newcastle, they do it every day and get paid for it. Most of us work 9-5, we have a couple of police officers, midwives, we still have to go to work and we don’t get paid, we do it for the sheer enjoyment. We love it and that’s why we do it and we’ve been rewarded.”

Thankfully, vice-captain Etchells has managed to ensure her work won’t clash with this weekend’s game and she’ll definitely be available on Sunday, but while the game grows at the top-level, the realities of a work/balance remain for Unity and many others.

“Whether I can get to both is a very low chance!” she laughs. “I work night shifts, afternoon shifts, early shifts. Sometimes I can train and not play, sometimes I play but don’t train, so I appreciate every moment I play football now because I can’t play all the time.

“There’s a few others who are police offers too, but Phil is so understanding, he knows I’m not missing it because I don’t want to be here. Luckily, I’m off this weekend and playing Newcastle makes everything worthwhile. It’s what you work for and what you live for.”

While the first round of the FA Cup isn’t yet the televised event of the latter rounds, more so waiting for an email or refreshing the tournament’s social media accounts, the reality of what they wanted soon hit home.

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Burke was sat in his car frantically refreshing the page the day after their 5-3 win over Penrith which saw them into the hat for the first round when his assistant rang him to say they’d drawn Newcastle.

Bamber found out through her dad and word soon spread to the rest of the squad, and while they know the task will be an almost impossible one, they are looking forward to having the chance to put Unity on the football map.

“We’re very close-knit,” says Etchells. “We don’t have much, but we have 40 or 50 fans who follow us everywhere, and a good few who come to home games, so hopefully there’s plenty there. From parents to people who don’t even know us, they come and watch. It’s a family, we’re a small club, but we’re going to get bigger.

“It’s an unusual name, not one people are used to seeing. People will soon realise we’re not just a name, we can actually play football. We won’t get bullied.”

Harter adds “It’s very rare you get an experience like this. We’ve said that, we’re here to give them a good game, but this is a chance we would never usually get and never had before.

“It means a lot to us girls, especially in terms of our families too. My family all watch football themselves, they come and watch me and to be able to watch one of their family members in a game like this, I can see the pride in them.”

As for Burke, he was the one who founded Unity, took on the role of manager as well as everything behind the scenes, and he’ll be the one in the home dugout looking to cause the shock of all shocks come Sunday.

“I just genuinely believe every single person at the club deserves this, deserves this moment. Hopefully everyone will just have a great day come Sunday.”

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Union Berlin, as a club, is flying right now. The rise of their men’s team has been rapid, from promotion to the Bundesliga in 2019, to Champions League group stages in 2023.

They lost just 1-0 to a stoppage time goal against European giants Real Madrid, and now play home to the likes of Leonardo Bonucci, as well as a variety of well-known names from the European game.

While the men are preparing for another giant trip to Italian champions Napoli tonight, the women will be hosting Berlin rivals Türkiyemspor in front of a modest crowd in Germany’s third division on Sunday.

While it may seem on paper a world away, there is quiet confidence among those working hard behind the scenes they could replicate the quickfire success of the men who went from the second division to facing Europe’s elite in the space of four years.

“It was very traditional and that’s still a lot of what’s at the heart of the club…”

They finished second last season, meaning they just missed out on the promotion play-offs, but this year have won nine games from nine, scored 52 goals, conceded just one and sit six points clear of main rivals Viktoria 1889 Berlin who won the Regional league last season.

A sold-out crowd of 1,500 watched them beat their rivals at their Fritz Lesch Sportplatz home 1-0 earlier this season, and they have fought to build a following of loyal fans who also support the men’s team.

Because this club is somewhat different and is owned by almost 50,000 members, all of whom have a say in how the club is run. When the club’s main stadium, the Stadion An der Alten Försterei – used occasionally by the women – was redeveloped a few years ago, 2,300 Union Berlin members helped out first hand with the work.

“Is it a ‘hipster’ club? I don’t know,” says defender Marie Becker, formerly a Germany youth team international who joined Union Berlin two years ago, of the opinion Union’s rise to fame in the men’s game and the resultant cult-following makes them a favourite for fans now outside of Germany too.

“It’s probably not doing it justice, because it used to be this real worker’s club. It was very traditional and that’s still a lot of what’s at the heart of the club. The fans will come out no matter what and if we have an important game they’ll show up for us just like they would the men.”

Becker, who spent time in the USA at college before walking away from the game for three years, describes a “special culture” around the club.

“Everything is shared. Every member has a say, they’ll come together and discuss key issues. They have held Christmas Carols every year in the stadium to bring the community together, the community is a big part of this club.”

The stadium also held the famous World Cup Living Room during the 2014 World Cup when 800 sofas were placed on the pitch for fans to enjoy the tournament on the big screen, and the event won an award a year later for its fan experience.

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While there is a long way to go to make it to the top division, they are making big moves behind the scenes to put everything in place and get people involved who know what it takes.

They’ve attracted some good signings in the last 12 months, including former Turbine Potsdam and Rangers forward Dina Orschmann, but their biggest signing earlier this year was Sporting Director, Jennifer Zietz.

Previously, head coach Ailien Poese was working both roles, so the club decided to bring in a dedicated sporting director to allow Poese to concentrate on coaching, particularly as the club move closer to a professional model this season despite their third-tier status.

Zietz is a former Germany international who won the European Championships in 2009. In her 17 years with former giants Potsdam, she captained the side and won the UEFA Champions League in 2010, as well as six Bundesliga titles.

To have someone of Zietz’s top-level experience now running the show will provide invaluable for Union’s hopes of replicating the success she enjoyed as a player herself.

“I have to work on the professional conditions for the first team,” says Zietz. “We want to take the next step into the second league. It’s about scouting, talking to players, talking to agents, talking with our coaches and with our members around the club. That’s just part of what I have to do.”

Zietz points to the fact that over the years the club as a whole was perhaps not in a strong enough position to focus as much as it does now on women’s football, but now with Bundesliga money and the added bonus of Champions League money flowing into the club, there is now extra investment trickling down.

“So now they say ‘ok, we want to push women’s football’. Women’s football at Union Berlin is traditional, when I played I played against Union Berlin, but now they are getting that extra support and money from the club.

“If we have a problem, we can talk to them, any problem we can talk to them. If we have injuries, we can call their doctors and physios, so there’s no big gap here between men and women, we’re very close.”

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