“I remember we got the call to say Iman had done her ACL in the car coming back from a holiday in Egypt,” recalls Roméo Beney, older brother of Manchester City forward Iman Beney.

“It was three days before going to the World Cup. I saw my mum cry; my dad had the tears in his eyes. After this, I thought it was going to be a long journey, but she’d come back stronger, and she’s come back even stronger than I thought possible.”

Two years on from a devastating injury which ruled the then 17-year-old out of a first major tournament, teenager Beney has since represented Switzerland at a home European Championships and joined the Barclays Women’s Super League giants, all in the same summer.

It has, as Roméo alludes to, been a difficult journey, but for a brother just 18 months older than his little sister, there’s an immense pride.

“When I heard about Manchester City, that she would be there after the Euros, I was just really proud. Proud of her journey, she deserves everything that she has.”

Despite being just 19, you have to go back 15 years to chart Beney’s full journey in football, and when you realise just how much football she grew up around, it’s no shock she followed the path she did.

While Roméo is also a professional footballer and like his sister left home for the first time this summer to join Portuguese side Famalicão, the pair’s father, Nicolas, also played domestically in Switzerland, as well as for the youth national teams.

Even more relevant to her journey is the fact her aunt, Noémie, played for the Swiss national team herself, meaning the name Beney has returned to the red jersey for a second time.

The Beney’s are, in reality, one of the biggest footballing families you will come across.

“Her younger brother is a ballet dancer, so one of them tried something different,” laughs Noémie, who now works for the Swiss Football Federation as a talent manager, and has seen her niece’s journey up close.

“Her mum wanted her to dance, but she just wanted to play football. I imagine she was probably inspired by her dad, her brother, and myself.”

The football family tree stretches back even further, as Noémie talks about the fact both her parents played football, as well as her three of her brothers.

“It really is a football family,” she continues. “My two sisters didn’t, and Iman’s mum didn’t, but many others were footballers. It must just be in our blood!”

Noémie played 43 times for the Swiss national as a defender in the late 2000s, spending most of her club career with Yverdon , as well as a spell in Germany with 1. FC Saarbrücken.

Nicolas also started his career with Yverdon in 1997, going on to play for recognisable names in the Swiss game, such as Sion, Vaduz and Aarau, among others, as well as the Switzerland Under 21s national team.

“I stopped playing in 2010 when Iman was just four years old,” he recalls. “The family was always football. My wife is Brazilian and loves football, so it’s always been a big part of our lives, and obviously my sister played.

“When I stopped, I never went back into the industry because I wanted to spend time with the family and support them. At that time, the biggest motivation for Iman was her brother, because they wanted to play all the time. In the house, outside the house, in the living room, in the park, it didn’t matter.

“She would fight hard with him, but he was always really nice with her. She just wanted to take the ball from him!”

Roméo adds, “Yeah, we did! I think for me it was obvious to go with football because I always had football in my life, ever since I was born. My sister did try dance and a few other things, but then we put her on the football field and saw quickly that’s what she was going to enjoy, so we were happy for her when we saw that.

“I support her like I support her brother, like she supports me, how we all support each other.”

It didn’t take long for them to realise Iman had a fledgling talent, despite a limited pathway for young girls in Switzerland at the time compared to Roméo.

“I think once she began to play on the field it was obvious, but she was a goalkeeper when she was younger. When I saw her play outfield, I could see the talent directly because she played with the boys and even with the boys, she was one of the best. It was obvious to me she could have a long journey in football.”

For Nicolas, it was a dream to see not just one, but two of his children follow the path he took and pursue becoming professional footballers.

For them both now to be fulfilling those dreams is a feeling he describes as “really special”.

“Yeah, it’s hard to describe,” he chuckles. “They grew up with us and we supported their development the best we could, so it’s amazing. We don’t realise back then that Iman would play at the Etihad, at Anfield, this is an incredible feeling to know both our son and daughter are in the right places to play football, both at the same time.

“As a parent, you have a lot to do, but now it’s different. Now you are thinking, ‘Can I see my son? Can I see my daughter?’ We will go to Portugal, then England, or my wife might go to Manchester, I might go to Porto, so we have to organise a lot now to see our kids, but we’re very proud, even if it means we can’t just jump in a car anymore.”

Leaving home is not a completely unfamiliar concept to Beney, as her dad recalls when she first moved out as a 12-year-old to go and play at the Swiss Football Academy, which was a two-hour drive away from Savièse.

Beney’s journey eventually took her to one of the country’s biggest clubs – BSC Young Boys.

In 2022, she broke into the first team, scoring six goals in 16 league games and earning a surprise first senior call-up for a friendly right before the World Cup, eventually named in the squad itself, despite being uncapped at the time.

The youngest member of the squad, Beney debuted in a pre-tournament friendly against Zambia, but just a couple of days before flying out to Oceania, disaster struck when the teenager tore her ACL in a training session.

“The build-up was special for me because I was co-commentating on my niece making her international debut,” recalls Noémie. “Her attitude, the way she plays, she got the fans on her side. She played 45 minutes, got an assist, she created something with the fans.

“On the Monday, she was in the squad. On the Tuesday, she got injured and in the next friendly I remember the amount of cameras on her sat behind the dugout was crazy, it was like she had been known about for 10 years. She’s always smiling, she gives it her all and I think she really captured the public, so the fact she got to come back and play here in the summer was amazing.”

Noémie now helps support groups of Switzerland’s most talented youngsters at the SFA, with Iman being one of them.

“It’s quite cool that part of my job is to take care of my niece,” she laughs.

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Beney missed the whole 2023-24 season, but bounced back with eight goals last season, not only earning a swift return to the Switzerland squad for her home European Championships, but a pre-tournament move to Manchester City.

“I have goosebumps hearing you say that,” says Noemie. “It happened so quickly. The injury was so hard for everyone in the family, but she’s emotionally very mature. We spoke, one season off, no need to stress, then after a year back on the pitch and get ready for the Euros.

“I was with the staff and the team during the tournament, so it was extra special to share it with her, but the first matchday I received a picture of someone in with the fans, someone who wasn’t a family member. They had a men’s name on the back, but they’d covered it with tape and wrote ‘Beney’ over the top. I was like, ‘Wow’.”

For all of them, to see the Beney name on a Swiss shirt again is a special experience, especially in front of thousands of her own supporters.

“We live in a small town, 8,000 people,” says Nicolas, “But everyone says, ‘Iman, great’. They have her shirt, and they appreciate her because she is an achievement for Savièse and they’re proud to say they love Iman.

“She is showing who she is and people like who she is. A lot of young girls in Savièse here say their favourite player is Iman, and that’s just incredible for us.”

On the Euros, he adds, “We cannot expect so much emotion. She had everything packed to go to the World Cup, it’s difficult to understand why that happened. Injuries are part of the sport, but it was good for her to have the Euros in view. She had two years; she wasn’t stressed about it. At the opening game, you could only do one thing, to be grateful she was here…and also to cry, because you cannot explain how you feel!”

For Noémie, someone who was a trailblazer in Swiss women’s football years previous, there’s a particularly special moment which stands out.

“Maybe the moment before the opening match. I was stood at the side of the pitch with all the staff, seeing this full stadium, which was absolutely crazy.

“When they lined up, seeing Iman stood there signing the anthem, that was very emotional. When I saw her, I was like, ‘I need to not look at her because I will cry so much’. Excuse my language, but I was like, ‘F***’, it’s so hard to find the words. It’s just in your blood, literally with Iman.”

Roméo adds, “She deserves it, that’s important to remember. She was injured a long time, but she came back even stronger. I didn’t even think that was possible, but she worked a lot, I saw the work she put in, even though it wasn’t easy for her or any of us, especially my parents.”

He’s keen to stress there’s no competition either, and as their careers split into different countries, they regularly keep in touch.

“For us, it’s great because we can support each other but we can push each other also. There will never be a competition between us, we want the best because we know the qualities of each other. We have a playing style which is pretty similar, and it’s great having a sister where we can talk football all the time, and I can watch her games more now with her playing in England.

“I don’t know if she sees my games, but I think so. I watch every game of hers when I can, and I have time. I try to give her advice and she gives me advice too. We push each other every day, we speak a lot, two or three times a week.”

At Manchester City, she has taken the next step, and during the couple of weeks speaking to Iman’s family, she has scored the winning goal against Arsenal and followed it up with another crucial goal at Anfield against Liverpool, one of Europe’s most historic stadiums.

While she is now as far away from Savièse as she’s ever been, the sense of pride is palpable.

“We had a lot of discussions with her dad,” says Noémie. “The next step after Switzerland was always the big question. Which club? Which country? The question was whether to take a smaller step or go straight to a huge club, but with Iman maybe the difference is she has a capacity to adapt to the level she is at so quickly.

“She could have done the smaller step, but my feeling is within six months she’d have wanted the next step. City was the club showing real interest, they’d followed her for a while, scouted her a lot. The discussions gave Iman a good feeling and it’s often about good feelings and trusting the people you’re moving to work with. They had a plan for her, not too many expectations, giving her time to adapt, it was natural for her that City became her club.”

For dad Nicolas, it’s still surreal to see her in the famous blue shirt.

“How can I say? We appreciate a lot she can be a part of this club and be happy. It’s just incredible at 19 years old.

“To realise she is a part of Manchester City, it is…wow.”

It’s left to brother Roméo to have the final word, reflecting on the new-found fame his sister has found, and the impact the Beney name is now having on Swiss football once again.

“Before the Euros, it was, ‘This is the sister of Roméo’, now it’s, ‘This is the brother of Iman’” he laughs. “It’s so special for me, it’s not common to hear that, but I’m really proud, it’s been a crazy journey.”

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Very few at this summer’s European Championships have enjoyed a rapid rise quite like the one Netherlands defender Veerle Buurman has experienced over the past two years.

The 19-year-old could even start her side’s first game against Wales on Saturday evening, which is incredible when you consider she was still playing boys’ football in her hometown of Bemmel just over two years ago.

Since then, she’s represented one of the Netherlands’ biggest clubs in PSV Eindhoven, quickly earning a move to Chelsea who she will join properly after the tournament, spending last season back at PSV on loan.

The town of Bemmel holds a population of just over 12,000, but Buurman was seemingly always destined for a career on the pitch, with both her older and younger brothers also fledgling young footballers.

For those who both played with her and coached her in the town’s local club, SC Bemmel, her rise is amazing, but also not a surprise.

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“I coached the Under 17s team and spent both those two years with Veerle,” recalls Marco Wientjes. “She played two years with us and then moved on to PSV, which was a great move for her.”

When Buurman first joined PSV though, she duelled her first full year with the club still training and playing with SC Bemmel, meaning she played with boys until 2023, just two years out from heading to her first major women’s tournament.

“I was happy she stayed with us when she first went to PSV. There was a discussion that she was absolutely too good to lose, so we did our best that she could stay with us while she was with PSV’s team.

“She was always one of the best players among the guys. In the first year we played at a very high level, we were the champions, second year we went to a higher league, and you saw she also started to physically improve and could still match it. Without any problems, she could hold her own.”

One of her oldest friends, Cas Steenbergen, always grew up in Bemmel and played for the same team as Buurman stretching back eight years and was part of the same Under 17s team as the defender, also playing under Wientjes.

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Poland take their first steps into major tournament football on Friday night and couldn’t have asked for a tougher task in the shape of the European Championships’ most dominant side – Germany.

But it’s a well-earned spot and several of Poland’s players in fact play their domestic in the German Bundesliga, such has been the development of the women’s game in Poland in recent years, allowing key names to work their way into some of the continent’s strongest domestic leagues.

The main one, striker Ewa Pajor, passed through the Bundesliga, starring at Wolfsburg to such extent Barcelona signed her last summer, a true marker now of being a top player.

But within the Poland it is not just the more established Pajor currently playing their football with the Catalan club, but her prodigy is lesser-known right now, primarily playing her football for the club’s ‘B’ team.

That player is Emilia Szymczak.

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Szymczak only turned 19 last month but has become well established since making her senior Poland debut at the end of 2023, currently holding 11 senior caps for her country, plus many more at youth level.

The midfielder actually joined Barcelona 12 months prior to her national team captain from Polish Ekstraliga side Górnik Łęczna, three-time Polish champions.

Coached at the time by Robert Makarewicz, he recalls clearly the first time he set eyes on her during a youth camp while she was playing for Zaki Szczecin.

“The first time I saw her was during a training event at the Polish Football Association where I was a co-coach,” recalls Makarewicz. “She showed herself as a sincere, open and knowledge-hungry player who was already playing at a higher level than her colleagues in the same age group.

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It’s rare you see someone make their senior international debut having already turned 30, but it’s rarer still you see it for the current number one ranked team in the world and the current world champions.

With a roster filled with world class attacking talent, in the past 12 months Spain have embraced now 32-year-old striker Cristina Martin-Prieto, ironically gaining her first call-up after leaving home for the first time to cross the border in order to play for Portuguese giants Benfica last summer.

It’s a move which has paid huge dividends, with Martin-Prieto’s 19 goals in 22 games both helping Benfica to another domestic title, and herself to the league’s Golden Boot award.

Now, she’s ready to help her country on the biggest continental stage, and potentially announce herself and her qualities to a wider audience for the first time.

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“Her attributes are quite unique,” says Benfica assistant head coach, André Vale. “She’s different, very strong physically, but she was in a league where that was noticeable. She was able to show herself, and what I loved was even at 31 she was a player who wanted to keep developing, keep being humble, always listening to you, her age was never a limitation to her dream of going to the national team squad and the Euros.

“People might think she’s on the downside of the curve, but she was like, ‘No, I will keep working, working and working’ to fulfil her dreams. It didn’t…I’d say surprise me, no, but what I loved about her is how she adapted to us. She was used to Tenerife and Sevilla where the play was low block and counter attack, whereas we are very much on the ball, dominate the ball and attack a lot.

“But there was not a moment she complained about something new, she wanted to understand what we do. It was not about us adapting to her, she wanted to adapt to us, a more possession-based game of football which at that time was not natural to her.”

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It’s less than a year ago since the name Glódís Perla Viggósdóttir first popped up on a Ballon d’Or list, but for many it was a milestone which was long overdue.

Hailing from a town of just 40,000 people in Iceland, Viggósdóttir has made her way gradually to the top, and as she turns 30 just a week out from the 2025 European Championships in Switzerland, she has finally been adorned with some of the recognition she deserves.

But the commanding centre-back has never been short of such acclaim in her homeland where she’s been named Icelandic Women’s Footballer of the Year in three successive years now, going as far as being named the countries Sportsperson of the Year outright in last year.

Much of it has been down to finally getting an opportunity in the ‘mainstream’, with Iceland still irregular faces at major tournaments, but her move to German giants Bayern Munich has exposed her to more regular Champions League knockout football and therefore the eyes of more fans, and only now is the name Viggósdóttir being more revered around Europe to those less familiar with her game.

It is though already 13 years since she made her senior national team debut, but her early days were spent playing between Iceland’s and Denmark’s domestic leagues, before her big break came in 2015 when she earned a move to Sweden, first with Eskilstuna United, and then with the legendary FC Rosengård.

Those who have worked with over years, spanning right back to the days she was a fledgling teenager in her hometown, are not surprised Viggósdóttir is now known as one of the best defenders in the women’s game…

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“When she was coming through with us at HK, she was probably just 13 or 14 years old,” recalls Guðmundur Óskar Pálsson, the team’s head coach at the time.

HK, otherwise known by its full name of Handknattleiksfélag Kópavogs, was Viggósdóttir’s local team in her birthplace of Kópavogur, the place her pathway to where is today began.

“She started training with us back then,” Pálsson continues. “Everybody could see we had a special player there. She was just 14, started her first game in August or something like that, against Selfoss I think, but the coaches and senior players could see straight away we had quite a special talent on our hands.”

Pálsson only joined HK that season, with Viggósdóttir already embedded in the club’s youth teams, but when her soon-to-be head coach went looking for the best young talent in the academy, it wasn’t long before the defender’s name came up.

“I asked the youth coaches who had the ability or were good enough to go and train with the first team. We had a few, and Glódís was the youngest to come up and train with us. We had a young team all that season, but in the first training session I could see she was a little bit better than the others because she bossed the senior sessions.

“I remember talking to the senior players I knew and saying we obviously had a really special young player on our hands. I asked the youth coaches if we could move her up, I remember that was a conversation I had to have them with them, but with her and with her dad too, about moving her up in a healthy manner to the senior team.”

Despite being just 14, there were no doubts about her physical readiness to go and play senior football.

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Brighton & Hove Albion currently sit fifth in the Barclays Women’s Super League, halfway through the new season, well clear of the relegation battle they once looked like getting sucked into last time around.

Despite a recent dip in form, the Seagulls still sit best of the rest behind the ‘big four’ and three points better off than their next best challenger in Tottenham Hotspur.

So many summers have promised so much for what on the face of it is an ambitious club. The men have enjoyed a rapid rise over the years, known for playing attractive football, taking risks on young, raw head coaches, while the women have generally stumbled along during their WSL days, going from head coach to head coach, and transfer windows filled with potential, but which from materialised little.

Whether it was the three-month tenure of former Bayern Munich boss Jens Scheuer or the somewhat surprise dismissal last season of Mel Phillips, Brighton just haven’t quite made it click, until now.

It should be no surprise that the club which has just broken a Premier League record in making German Fabian Hürzuler the league’s youngest ever manager, took a punt on Yugoslavian-born Australian international, Dario Vidošić, after just two years as a senior head coach with Melbourne City.

But Vidošić has wasted no time in making an impact, following up on the promise of a transfer window which saw the likes of Fran Kirby, Bruna Vilamala Jelena Čanković, Kiko Seike and Michelle Agyemang land on the south coast, and when you speak to people back home who have worked with Vidosic, they are unsurprised a man who is just 37 years old has already shown what he’s all about.

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“He wants to dominate possession, but possession with a purpose,” says Michael Petrillo, Director of Football at Melbourne City. “There’s an objective to his methodology and within the City Group style. His attention to detail is second to none, he knows his players really well, what type of player he both wants and needs.

“He picks up strengths and weaknesses very early, I think that’s one of his big positives, knowing what he’s going to get from players and how to adjust accordingly.”

Petrillo and Vidošić go way back, over a decade in fact, to when Petrillo was Head of Football at Adelaide United and Vidošić was a promising 24-year-old midfielder approaching his peak, two years on from making his senior Australia debut, an international career which would span 23 caps and the 2010 World Cup.

Even as a player, Petrillo saw the signs early on of someone who was obsessed with being a coach one day.

“He was very similar [to now]. We were both mad Barcelona fans, Johann Cruyff fans, he’s sort of followed that coaching methodology all his life.

“In Adelaide, he was already thinking about strategies, methodology, philosophies and tactics. We talked constantly about Barcelona, what Pep [Guardiola] was doing, what Cruyff had instilled in football in general.

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It’s fair to say Olivia Smith has not taken the conventional route to the top. The word ‘top’ in itself is all relative given Smith is still just 20 years old, but her fledgling talent means she’s been on the radar for much longer than many her own age.

A girl who switched colleges, eventually forgoing her remaining eligibility after one year to go professional in Portugal and is now already playing in England for Liverpool, Canadian superstar Smith is someone who has always known what she’s wanted, to be the best, and has gone her own way to fulfil her promise.

In 2024 alone, she was named the Liga BPI Young Player of the Season after just one year with Sporting CP, and the same award in the CONCACAF Gold Cup after shining for her country.

Growing up in Ontario, her journey began close to home after working her way through various youth clubs before she joined North Toronto Soccer Club when she was just 12 years old.

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“I just remember one moment I came into work,” recalls Chris Vickers, who became Head Coach of the Women’s Programme in March 2016, around the same time Smith started playing for the youth club.

“I was walking around the pitches, and bearing mind she was playing two years up, she pushed through two centre-backs, literally her arms on their shoulders, whipped them out of the way and just leathered the ball into the back of the net.

“I was like ‘holy shit!’ That was abnormal for this country and Toronto, our players don’t usually have that physical presence, but she was absurd, she was explosive.”

Marko Milanovic, who had been the Academy Director at North Toronto SC since 2011 was coaching the group of girls born in 2002, two years prior to Smith, when he first came up against her.

“We played against her and she was absolutely incredible,” recalls Milanovic, who has just been named inaugural head coach of AFC Toronto in the Northern Super League. “I couldn’t believe when they said she was two years younger. We were an Under 14s group and she was 12 years old.

“The following season, she came across and played two years up with my girls for three years and dominated the league. It was the highest league in the Ontario state, she was scoring two goals a game!”

Her physical state and strength is a common topic of focus among all those who speak about Smith and why she stood out so much coming through the ranks in Ontario, and it wasn’t long before her talent was being noticed elsewhere, her attributes almost unique compared to many coming through the system at the same time.

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“When I saw her for the first time, I saw something there I’d not seen anywhere else in Sweden,” says Lasse Öberg, the former head coach of Forsby FF in Köping.

Öberg is speaking about Johanna Rytting Kaneryd, the Swedish star who is currently in the form of her life for Chelsea, but it’s Öberg who was one of the first in the remote part of the countryside she grew up in to spot her fledgling talent.

While right now the flying winger is in some of the best form of her career for Chelsea, winning multiple domestic titles, starting the new season in superb style and approaching a 50^th cap for her country, it hasn’t always been this simple.

Too often, fate appeared to conspire against Rytting Kaneryd, whether it be her two ACL injuries or joining one of Europe’s elite clubs just as they went bankrupt.

But almost 20 years ago, her journey began just a mile from her hometown of Kolsva, where Öberg was working as a coach in a local skills school when he came across a 10-year-old Rytting Kaneryd.

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“When I first met her, she was about 10 years old,” recalls Öberg. “She was so skilful; she could make the guys look amateur. Her father and I worked as carpenters together for 15 years. I only started coaching Forsby to have something to do, it was really fun, a group with a lot of talented young girls.

“By the time she came to Forsby, Johanna was 13, I picked her up in the first team and people said, ‘you cannot do that’. I said, ‘I don’t go after age, I go after skill’, and to be honest she was probably too skilful for us.”

It didn’t take long for Rytting Kaneryd to start appearing on the radars of Sweden’s top clubs.

After a first call-up for Sweden’s Under 15s in 2012, some of Sweden’s biggest and best spent the subsequent couple of years courting her talent, before she joined the mighty Tyresö FF at the start of 2014, with its array of stars from Marta to Christen Press, Veronica Boquete to Caroline Seger.

“She had to go, she was too good for our team,” admits Oberg. “We were playing third division football. I used to say, ‘you should have a toolbox as big as you can’ and growing up I had a tool called lazy! Johanna doesn’t have that.

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Wednesday night isn’t quite a homecoming by the literal sense of the word for Chelsea’s Erin Cuthbert, but it’s about as close as it gets.

The Scotland international was born in Irvine, 30 miles south west of Glasgow on the Scottish coastline, and while Celtic Park is very much not where the self-confessed Rangers fan called home growing up, it is a return to the city synonymous with her upbringing, development and rise to stardom.

On Wednesday night, she may well represent the English champions against the Scottish champions, embarking on their first ever Champions League campaign, while Cuthbert and Chelsea are looking for a much-wanted inaugural European title.

Cuthbert quickly became a star, one very much on the radar across Glasgow from an early age, and as she prepares to return this week, this is the story of how that fledgling talent turned into one of Europe’s best midfielders, through the voices of those who helped get her there…

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“Erin’s dad and I worked together,” recalls John Clark. “We both had kids. I had a wee boy, Lewis, and Steve had Erin. Both of them were kicking balls around from a very early age, driving people mental kicking a ball around the garden all day!

“Steve and I didn’t know each other then, but we both took our kids along to Girdle Toll, a local team, we were both looking to get our kids into one of the teams there. That’s the first time I came across Steve and Erin. The guy running it said ‘yeah, no problem’, they got them both in for a few nights to get an idea of the sort of level they’re at, and that’s how it started really.”

That was 2002, when Cuthbert was just four years old, and across the next few years her talent was already more than evident.

“They were both more than competent with their technique. This was a boys team, but Erin stood out, there wasn’t much precedent for girls teams back then, but she was at a level. There’s no filter at that age, they’re so innocent, but a lot of them were decent enough.”

Cutbert “fitted in fine” according to Clark and got on well with all the other kids, going onto play 7-a-side in the Central Ayshire Youth Football League for six months, training once a week at a local school.

“Erin had boys looking at her thinking ‘there’s a wee lassie playing for us’, but it was quickly evident it wasn’t going to be a weakness for the team, she was more than capable, and as time progressed she was a lot better than most of the boys.

“Erin dealt with it. If someone caught her, she’d catch them back!”

After a period of time, both Clark and Cuthbert’s dad got “sucked into getting more involved”, because both Erin and Lewis were both very keen on football and “ate, slept and breathed” it according to Clark.

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Eventually, they both became coaches at Girdle Toll, with Clark working directly with a young Erin.

“Steve and I knew how passionate they both were about football,” he says. “We’d stay around and watch training, we were interested in how they got on because they were interested. They watched football on TV, they went to watch games, they wanted to be footballers.

“Initially, we joined as first aiders, we went through the classes and then took it further, I think they wanted Steve a bit more involved with there being a girl in the team. We stayed quite close, so Erin and Lewis became quite pally, and at that stage we were putting them into development community schemes during the summer, people were already asking if they were playing for clubs.

“In a short space of time we became quite aware most clubs had a professional youth team and scouts were out and about. I had Erin’s team for about a season and a half, she was always at every session on time and because we knew each other so well we arranged extra training. We’d go to Kilwinning Sports Centre and take the two of them onto the astroturf and lay on a little session for just the two of them.

Kilwinning Sports Centre is another place which became synonymous with Cuthbert’s upbringing, as she continued to follow the passion and desire she had for the game.

“They were begging for more! You could see the marked increase in ability when they went to the community courses and were getting a football at their feet for a prolonged period. When we went to Rangers, there was a guy who had a saying, ‘unleash the beast’, and during the course he’d egg them on.

“Dare I say Erin was attracting attention at that time because there were hardly any girls in boys teams around us, she’s the only one I can remember.”

When Erin was eight years old, training at the Kilwinning, a chance meeting put her on the radar one of Scotland’s greats.

“They went to 11 v 11 football and I remember one occasion at Kilwinning the Scotland national team were training there. There was Julie Fleeting, she noticed Erin doing some keepie uppies, I think that was when her name came into prominence with some people.”

After a period and some structural changes Girdle Toll, both Erin and Lewis were looking to move on and take the next steps in their careers.

“Steve and I both gave them the ability to choose where they wanted to go, and they both chose the same team. It was the team we struggled most against and played good football like we did, not just lump it up the park.

“They moved to Crosshouse when they were eight or nine and were coached by Brian Garrick and his dad for a bit.”

Garrick picks up the story.

“Erin’s dad and John had her at Girdle Toll and when we came up against her for the first time, she played us into the ground,” he recalls. “We had some great players and Erin ran over the top of them. I thought, ‘this isn’t meant to happen!’

“When Girdle Toll disbanded and she wanted to come to Crosshouse, they phoned and I just said ‘absolutely!’ Girls playing boys football at that time was frowned upon, but Erin played five years with us and she was our best player in the age group, all the way to when she went to Rangers.

“She was just amazing. She plays the exact same way today, that determination on the ball, different class. Nothing phases her, she’s playing lads a foot taller, she got stuck in and the boys got stuck into her.”

Erin wasn’t even 10 at this point, so what stood about her which made anyone who worked with her she was potentially going to the very top?

“Vision alone,” says Garrick. “She reminded me a little of Barry Ferguson, the ball was always coming to her, she knew exactly what she was going to do next. It wasn’t ‘let’s get the ball and see what happens’, she knew what she was going to do. There are senior players now who couldn’t do what Erin could do then. She got the ball, used her vision, moved it on. She had everything at that age. She was small, but could pack a good shot, she scored a lot of goals for us.”

He adds, “There wasn’t a lot for us to coach, she was that talented. We ended up being one of the best teams in Scotland because we had Erin. We just got her on the ball and she made things happen. We had a few coaches, but she was just a class above everyone else. Her dad and John have said before, we just built the midfield and core of the team around Erin.”

It was here again that Erin and Scotland legend Fleeting crossed paths, with the forward often returning to Crosshouse where she had also played to offer advice and help coach some of the youngsters.

“You look at the accolades of someone like Julie, she turned around and said ‘this girl will go a lot further than I ever did’, and she had an amazing career!

“Shortly after, Erin signed for Rangers and one of the stipulations was she could come back to Crosshouse for two seasons, but by the last season you could see the boys were getting a lot bigger and stronger, but Erin still gave her best!”

Erin signed for the club her and her dad supported avidly when she was just 12, but alongside her time in the youth teams kept playing at Kilwinning Sports Centre, where she was coached by up and coming young coach himself, Jamie Beattie, who is the next to take up the story.

“Since you got in touch it’s nice to have actually reflected on working with Erin and I’m very proud to have played a part in her career,” says Beattie.

“I always reference it, ‘I coached Erin Cuthbert!’ I first came into contact with her and her dad around 2007, maybe 2008. They were looking for coaches and I was doing work experience. I considered Steve a mentor from the beginning, he played a pivotal role in my coaching journey.

“I was with the Under 13s and Erin always played up, she was probably 10 or 11 when she first came in, maybe even younger. From the first session I knew she was special, it’s rare to find that. She was so small, that’s one of my earliest memories, but the things she could do, body movements, both footed, passing awareness, she could do keepie uppies for fun!

“She was just a phenomenally talented young girl. She always wanted to learn, always asking questions. Steve had to take the ball off her at times! She’d dribble into training and dribble out of training.”

Aside from her clear technical ability, Beattie identifies other elements to Cuthbert’s game, more her determination which is still evident in how she plays today, as what stood out even at such a young age.

"Absolutely, that's what has made her so successful, that drive to get to where she wants to be. She's had a very successful career, played and scored in major tournaments, Champions League final, won numerous WSL titles, yet she still wants to get better. For someone at that age, it's a common factor she's had her whole career.”

He adds, "From a playing perspective, technically she was fantastic on both feet. She scored some unbelievable goals; some you really couldn't believe. Good goals, important goals. I remember our Scottish Cup final in 2009, we were the first local girls club to make it to that final, we'd played Kilmarnock, Dundee United, Celtic, we were just grassroots, she scored the winner in the last minute.

“From a personality point of view, she was motivated, driven, worked incredibly hard, always asking questions. She took feedback really well, some players can be unreceptive and think they know better, but she was keen to take it on, she was a sponge, she'd retain so much information. She just is and always has been a phenomenal talent.”

The youngster, still not even a teenager, was playing at Kilwinning when Rangers came calling, and Beattie encouraged her to take the opportunity, knowing it was the team she loved and a place she would continue to develop alongside her other playing commitments.

"From the moment I saw her I knew she'd hit the big stage, and when Rangers came calling…she'd supported them all her life and we actively encouraged her to took it because you always outgrow your local team and she outgrew us pretty quickly.

“We were actually surprised how long we kept hold of her. Her career has kicked on tenfold since then.”

While at Rangers, Cuthbert also played for the Scottish Schools programme, part of a partnership with the Scotland Football Association where players are nominated by their schools and play for their region, with Scotland having six regions, and gaining access to more specialised coaching.

Players such as Kim Little and Caroline Weir have come through the same programme, and a promising young Cuthbert was next to follow in the footsteps of many top Scottish talents.

It’s here she worked with David Thomson, assistant manager at that point for the Under 15s Scottish Schols team where Erin played in Ayrshire.

“She first came to our attention when she was a first-year kid, she came in for trials for Under 15s but she was two years too young,” Thomson recalls. “She wasn’t picked as a first year, she went to final trials, but she was a little too small at that time playing against third-year girls.

“Technically, without a doubt she was there, but she’d have been a bit brushed aside. In 2012 as a second year, a year after I’d first seen her, she was playing and I went down to watch her on a cold, wet Saturday morning in a Rangers vs Celtic game and she just dominated, she was outstanding. Sat in the middle of the park and did everything you’d want a midfielder to do. I went back and told them we had to pick her, she had to be there or thereabouts, but that in my opinion she’d be an international football player.

“She got into the team as a second year, we played home nations like Wales and Northern Ireland, she played in those through 2013, came back to play in an Under 18s game against Australia. We played England a couple of times; we were actually the first team to play on the indoor 3G at St. George’s Park and against Georgia Stanway.”

Thomson echoes the sentiments of others regarding Cuthbert’s desire to improve and the attributes which suggested he too believed she was going right to the very top.

“You can tell, an old head on young shoulders, if that's the right phrase? She wanted to learn, wanted to talk about football all the time, played with a smile on her face. She wanted to be the best and she always took the right step, went to Rangers and then Glasgow City.

"The desire was abundantly clear, there was a want to get better. She wanted to win; she likes winning! I've got some lovely photographs of her, up to the shoulders of the other kids, but a bigger kid.”

Cuthbert would go on to represent the Rangers first team, as well as then Glasgow City and earn her first senior caps for Scotland in in 2016, the same year she joined Chelsea when Emma Hayes spotted her talent, and she’s remained there ever since, taking on a prominent role, winning multiple major trophies and now has over 70 caps for the Scotland senior team.

While nobody could have perhaps predicted her exact rise given the rapid acceleration and interest in the women’s game alongside the development of individuals such as Cuthbert, none are overly surprised to see her where she is now, and there is a sense of pride within each of those who worked with her along the way.

"Erin's done the best out of anyone,” says Clark, who remains a family friend to this day, and whose son Lewis still plays non-league after a spell in Kilmarnock’s academy.

“There's sometimes not a lot you have to do. You just watch her play, she's the same as she was then. Not fazed at all, not afraid of making a challenge. She could see a pass, could run at players, and she's flying at Chelsea. I think Emma at one time had her playing right-back and she still did a great job!”

Beattie adds, "100%. I knew she would go on to where she has. She went to Glasgow at the right time, she played against Chelsea in the Champions League, so when they came calling it was no surprise to me. To see her kick on, win WSLs, FA Cups, she is probably one of the leaders of that group now, even at 26. I'd love to see her captain Scotland, I'd love to see her take that on, a dream come true for her and amazing to see for me.

"In terms of my own pride, it's not just her impact on players she's played with, it's the wider message. A lot of girls here look at her and think they can be the next Erin. I don't think she had that bar Julie Fleeting who she looked up to and played with.

“When I was at Glasgow City, during COVID she did a Zoom with our academy players. It shows what kind of person she is, she came on for an hour and gave her time to talk to the girls. That for me goes beyond the impact she has on the pitch, it's the wider community she's had an impact on. You see Cuthbert 22 and 8 shirts, that says to me more than anything."

Thomson very much echoes the sentiments.

“Of course, it's wonderful seeing how well they've done, whatever level. But when you see them run out at Hampden Park, it gives you a sense of pride. You recognised that an early age that this young lady had something special. It's a pleasure to see how well she's done. Steve's a good guy, he'll speak to the parents of the current Scottish Schools girls, he'll talk to them and explain that's where Erin started.

"When we ask the previous players to put a little video together or something just to send the kids some good luck, she'll always do it and make a little message for them. These are the kind of people they are, ‘where you're sitting now is where Erin sat or Kim or Caroline’, that’s what we tell them, they all started here."

For Garrick, Cuthbert’s rise and return to Glasgow is particularly poignant.

“My father helped me run the team and he sadly passed away last year, but he adored Erin. He was chief scout at Ayr United and was involved in various pro teams through his whole life.

“He said for pure ability, vision, she had everything. He brought Billy Dodds through until he went to Chelsea, he put her up there and it was nice she went to Chelsea like he did. Dad is probably more up on tactics than me and if he was here he’d let you know, but it’s phenomenal to see how far she’s come. I’m really proud to have had five years with her, we had a few good players, but she’s the one that lasted.”

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“For me, Rosa is someone I as a 40-year-old-plus man looks up to. It’s difficult for me explain what she means for the future of Swedish girls.”

Big words, but the words of Diyar Dawod, a former youth team coach at AIK in Sweden where new Arsenal signing Rosa Kafaji spent the majority of her teenage years, joining the academy in 2015 and leaving in 2021 for BK Häcken, putting her on the road to North London.

They are not the only big words used by Dawod, who has a particularly special bond with the just turned 21-year-old, given he is both a self-confessed Gunners fan and also from Iraq, therefore sharing a heritage with Kafaji who was born in Sweden but whose parents are both from the middle eastern nation.

“Rosa stood out because she wasn’t naturally Swedish,” Dawod says. “Her heritage is Iraq, like mine. She had a different mindset. She played in the schoolyard outside her training sessions. She played outside her front door, she played on the way to school, on the way from school, she just had a football at her feet all the time.”

Born in Solna close to the capital city of Stockholm, Kafaji played for Kallhälls FF and Bele Barkaby FF before joining the AIK academy in 2015 as a mere 11-year-old, where Dawod and eventual first team head coach at the time, Robert Lison Svanström, first set eyes on the prodigious talent.

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“At the time, I was coaching in the youth academy,” recalls Svanström, who was Under 19s head coach before becoming first team head coach in 2018 alongside Caroline Sjöblom.

“I saw Rosa for the first time when she was 13, because a friend of mine was coaching in her youth team, so of course I heard about her and she was something to have an eye on for us in the future.”

That friend was Dawod, who was goalkeeper coach for the Under 19s, but was helping out with Rosa’s age group because they had a talented goalkeeper among the squad who the club wanted Dawod to nurture.

“I remember watching the pitch on the other side and there’s this little girl who could do whatever she wanted to,” he recalls. “Literally, whatever she wanted to. I was just like ‘wow, she’s good’.

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Cristian Aleza Garcés can remember two moments he knew he was dealing with a prodigious talent, shortly after taking over as Real Zaragoza head coach in 2018.

One was in pre-season, when his side took up a top division opponent and the player in questions performance was “outstanding” and “left everyone fascinated.

The other came a short amount of time later, with Zaragoza losing a league game, before the striker scored four goals herself without reply in 45 minutes to win her team the match.

The player in question?

Future Barcelona and Spain forward, Salma Paralluelo.

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That was six years ago, when Garcés swapped CE Europa for Zaragoza. Six years on, Paralluelo is still just 20, yet a multiple Liga F winner, multiple Champions League winner, and even a World Cup winner.

Now, she’s three games from being an Olympic gold medallist, taking on the starting role as Spain’s number nine after largely being a super sub 12 months ago on the way to glory in Australia.

She is, in every sense, an intriguing story.

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It’s been quite a journey for Racheal Kundananj to get to where she is now.

From not even having an academy to play in back home in Zambia, less than two decades later the 24-year-old is currently the most expensive women’s football player in the world, having joined new NWSL franchise Bay FC for £625,000 at the start of 2024.

A lightning quick striker with a keen eye for goal, Kundananji ended up in Spain via Kazakhstan, earning a move eventually to Madrid CFF where she ended 2023 as the league’s second top scorer in her first season, bringing to an end Barcelona’s incredible unbeaten run in the process, before heading Stateside last year.

Alongside fellow NWSL recruit Barbra Banda, the two have become the shining beacons of hope for women’s football in Zambia ahead of the Paris Olympics where both will hope to star for their country again, one year on from a World Cup which emphasised the team’s weaknesses and didn’t allow either of their world class strikers to make an impact until the final game against Costa Rica.

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Kundananji has admitted things were so basic back home growing up as a child her and her friends used “plants for goal posts” in a nation which was not well developed in football, either male or female, and endured a tough journey to even become one of the few who got noticed enough to make it to Europe, while others were left behind.

By 2018, she was playing for Zambia’s biggest club, Indeni Roses, and her 21 goals from just 18 games should have put her on the map, but with few eyes on the African continent and particularly Zambia, it was by pure chance Kundananji ended up in Kazakhstan and on the pathway to where she is today.

“I remember in 2018 we beat Barcelona at home in the Champions League,” recalls Kaloyan Petkov, former manager of Kazakhstan’s top side, BIIK Kazygurt. “We were very solid at the back but we didn’t have much attacking strength, and we started looking at Africa as a good potential marketplace for a good player or two.

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Say the name Clive Charles to anyone in the UK involved in the women’s game and the responses may be mixed, particularly to modern day followers of the game.

But mention the name of the man born in Dagenham, Essex, in 1951 to almost anyone with any vested interest in the sport in the USA and the response will likely be significant different.

Backwards, perhaps? For a boyhood West Ham United fan who grew up off the back of England winning the 1966 World Cup and played with two of its heroes – captain Bobby Moore and hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst – for the Hammers, before a lack of game time saw him head off to Cardiff City, to be better known in the USA than he is back home.

Charles was the youngest of nine children who grew up playing street football in a working-class family. His brother, John, became the first black player to play for a first division West Ham side and an England youth team, and Clive wasn’t far behind.

To discover why he is remembered as a legend across the pond is to chart the journey the “player’s coach” went on after heading stateside to represent the Portland Timbers in the late 1970s, the place he would call home until his death before time in 2003.

Portland and Clive Charles became intertwined.

After an initial spell playing in Canada, on loan from West Ham, he met his wife Clarena who was a flight attendant on the regular route he took from home in London and back, and the pair settled with their children on the west coast of the USA when Charles joined the Timbers.

In 1982, he started coaching at Reynolds High School in the same state, where he remained until an opportunity came up to coach the men’s team at the University of Portland in 1986, not long after he’d set up his own youth team – F.C. Portland – nearby.

“He just said ‘we’re here for you’, that was the thing which truly set him apart from others…”

Charles remained at the University of Portland until shortly before his death, but that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of both what he achieved, and the legacy he has left behind.

The fact the stadium on the site is now named the Clive Charles Soccer Complex offers a first clue, but it was in 1989 when Charles also took on the head coach role of the University’s women’s team that he set off on a journey which would cement the legacy he is remembered for today.

A small programme compared to the giants of the likes of University of North Carolina or Notre Dame, the Portland Pilots, the name given to the soccer team, was a programme which didn’t ordinarily challenge the business end of the NCAA tournaments, until Charles took over that is.

In his 17 years at the helm, Portland won 13 Regional Conference titles, went to 20 NCAA tournaments between men and women combined, making seven appearances in the final four.

On the men’s side, he coached the likes of future USA internationals Steve Cherundolo and Kasey Keller, while on the women’s team players with an even greater international stature, like Tiffeny Milbrett and Shannon Mac Millan, and later future Canada legend Christine Sinclair.

“He was somebody you could go to,” says Bill Irwin, a Northern Irishman who played with Charles in Cardiff, and would become his assistant in Portland for his whole 17-year tenure.

“The door was always open if people had issues, he would talk to them. He would listen and give advice. They knew on the field it was serious, but there were moments during a training session he would make everyone laugh.

“He was a great person to work for and a great person to be around. He knew when to lay down the law and knew when to lighten it up.”

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It paints the early brushes on a picture emerging of what exactly made Charles special.

Speak to any number of players and nobody has a bad word to say about him, which is incredibly rare in the world of coaching.

Future USA international Mac Millan – who would go on to amass 170 caps – was one of the earliest to feel the full effect of what Charles could do, and who he was as a person.

The midfielder was recruited in 1992 and would graduate in 1995, a year before her international career took off on the global stage at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, but that was a long way from reality when she came to Portland a different person to one who left.

“He was just amazing,” she smiles. “My first interaction with him was actually on my recruitment trip. I was kind of a late bloomer, so I was in my junior year when my club team went all the way to the national championships, and Clive’s assistant at the time saw me and reached out.

“You get promised all this stuff, ‘we’re going to make you a star, get you on the national team, you’ll score all these goals’ and as a 17-year-old you’re just like ‘alright!’ I didn’t even know we had a national team!”

Of all the people who worked with Charles over the years, Mac Millan was one of the ones he had a profound effect on.

She admits she was not a confident person when she arrived in the northwest, but Charles set her on the path to where she eventually reached and believes she wouldn’t have ever been the player she became without him.

“Clive called me out of the blue,” she recalls. “I thought I was going somewhere else, but he wanted me to come and check out Portland. It was my last trip out of the five you were allowed.

“I sat down in his office and he said, ‘we’ve watched you and think you’d be a good fit’. Portland hadn’t even made the play-offs. I said, ‘am I going to play?’ He just shrugged his shoulders and said ‘I don’t know’. I kind of looked around like is this a joke or something?! But he said I would get an opportunity and he would make sure I got the best opportunity and it was up to me to decide what I did with it.

“Something within me just resonated with that, but I bit my tongue from purely saying ‘I’m in’. I flew home, sat on it, but I felt in my gut it was right because this guy was just amazing.”

After moving her entire life away from where she’d grown up in San Diego, Mac Millan’s life in Portland got off to the worst possible start when she lost her best friends.

“I didn’t know anyone and a week into pre-season my best friend passed away training at her college,” she recalls. “I came home, and I was a hot mess. Before I met Clive, I had no sense of confidence or direction, then to lose my best friend…Clive told me if I never played again he would honour my scholarship, but he said ‘I think getting out there again is the best thing for you’.

“He just said ‘we’re here for you’, that was the thing which truly set him apart from others. He knew how to connect, whether it was the men or the women, he could connect with people individually and as a collective unit. He created an environment of trust. He set us up to succeed.”

It begs the question of how? What was it specifically which set this man apart from everyone else?

It’s a common theme across everybody who was spoken to for this piece. All credit him with the same traits, but to put your finger on what makes all of them at times have to speak through the broken voice or the tears in their eyes is difficult, because such an impact is so rare, especially two decades on.

“When he recruited me, I didn’t look anywhere else, he had so much integrity and such knowledge of the game…”

“His wife Clarena, they grounded each other,” says Mac Millan. “He would have the team over for dinner and we all knew Clarena was the backbone of the family that allowed Clive to be Clive.

“As soon as we got there, he’d run in the kitchen, throw some flour on something and be like ‘Oh I’ve been cooking all day for you guys’ and Clarena would just sit there and roll her eyes!

“They were an amazing team because for Clive coaching both teams took a lot, but he had a solid support system letting him live his dream and she was a mother figure to us all as well.

“He was just genuine and honest. He left Tiffeny Milbrett at the campus because she was late. He just pulled away! What he said he meant, no one was bigger than the team, he instilled that in us. He said all the time he’d rather have 22 hardworking teammates than a couple of stars.”

A year after Mac Millan, another future USA international in Justi Baumgardt was recruited to the programme, and between them and Milbrett the pair helped build the backbone of a team which would go to a first National Championship final in 1995, a moment which put Portland’s programme on the map and opened up the chance for future successes.

Baumgardt was a local, growing up in Renton on the outskirts of Seattle in the same state, but her relationship with Charles went back even further than joining the Pilots.

“I actually met him when I was about 10 years old,” she recalls. “He started the FC Seattle academy; he’d go up on Sundays and train who were considered the top young players.

“Even then, there was just something about him I knew was different and was special. When he recruited me, I didn’t look anywhere else, he had so much integrity and such knowledge of the game. His ability to connect with players…he was a fantastic human being.”

She laughs and says it’s “pretty remarkable” when I again bring up the fact nobody has a bad word to say about Charles, and too offers a glimpse into just why he was so loved by everyone.

“He had a sense of humour but was serious when needed. He had this ability to relate to the players, he knew players so well. Different personalities, right? But he knew how to treat every single individual as humans.”

Baumgardt recalls one of many regular practical jokes he would become famous for among those who played for him.

“In my first year, as an uncomfortable freshman, I remember walking out the first day of training and he asked me if I could hold something for him. I’m like ‘sure!’, and he puts this chewed gum in my hand!

“I’m like ‘Clive, that is disgusting!’ but he was just trying to break the ice. It made me laugh and loosened me up. That’s what he was. On road trips, players would try practical jokes on him, but he’d get them back.”

Another who got an early impression of the personality Charles held within was Michelle French, another who played in the 1995 final but as a freshman, and by 1997 was a MAC Hermann trophy finalist as part of the programme.

“He had an incredible ability to show two different sides in the right moment,” says French. “He could be really serious while sat doing a scouting report, but the very next minute he would be the most funny, incredible prankster, doing some silly gimmick or something!

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“He had such a good balance. From a soccer perspective he was exceptionally detail-orientated, but also very simple at times. He could be intense, but he could be calm, and it was such a gift to be able to recognise when to be a certain way and what the team needs in the moment.

“His ability to feel those moments and bring that emotion out of you was such a special quality about him as a coach.”

It's testament to his impact that even now, decades later, both French and Mac Millan are able to tell the same story completely separately, without prompt, when discussing one of his regular gimmicks he would pull on players who had just joined the programme.

“He had silly games he’d play with the freshmen,” recalls Mac Millan. “He’d offer them a race for 50 bucks. He’s there doing stretches and all of us can see it coming, we’ve all seen it before!

“They take off sprinting and obviously beats him easily and thinking this is the easiest 50 bucks they’ve ever made, and he turns around and says ‘Ah, I never said I’d win, I said I’d race you!’.

“All those little things that he made human, he knew when to be there and when not to be. When to shut it down and when to have the team over for a barbecue.

“It just speaks to the man he was. It was a blessing to play for Portland because he made everybody feel heard. If you needed him, he’d drop whatever he was doing. He was there for advice; he was there for a laugh.”

French adds “He just an uncanny ability in moments. There are so many people who feel they know him who never met him because of stories passed down. He’s such a connecting point, there’s people I meet older than me that say they played with him in England or have been at an event with him.

“Even people who only had five minutes of his time, he left an impression on.”

His whole family became connected with Portland. Daughter Sarah played for the Pilots in the 1990s, while son Michael played golf on the same campus.

Charles himself was more discreet about his role, once saying if he recruited a talented player he couldn’t give them anymore talent, but his job was solely “not to mess them up”, which very often he did a good job of avoiding.

His talent was soon noticed by US Soccer who made him head coach of the women’s U20s team from 1993 to 1995, before he became an assistant for the men’s national team, going to the 1998 World Cup in France and then becoming head coach for the 2000 Olympics team, guiding the USA to an unprecedented semi-final.

Those who know him believe he could have gone on to coach the women’s national team, who had just won the World Cup a year previous in 1999, with Mac Millan a key part of the team, but it’s here the true emotion, and tragedy, of the tale comes to the fore.

In 2000, Charles was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which would eventually take his life.

But Charles didn’t rest, he remained in his role until shortly before he passed away, determined to get the one thing which had eluded him during what became a tenure full of other successes – a National Championship.

It’s further testament to who he was that he continued to coach through the illness and never gave into it until he finally succumbed to his battle three years later.

Wynne McIntosh, who had been part of his side in 1995 which reached the final, returned as his assistant in mid-2002 ahead of a final charge on the championship, with a team spear-headed by Christine Sinclair.

And he got it, with an incredible run to the final which saw the Pilots not concede a single goal, and Sinclair scoring the winner in overtime against Santa Clara to give Charles the title which had evaded him, a mere eight months before he passed away.

It is here the memories become tough to talk about for all who were there and remember.

“Being a part of that season was kind of a dream come true,” recalls McIntosh, as she fights back the tears. “None of us wanted anything more than to get Clive that National Championship. He was very sick at the time.

“He was a second dad for a few of us. My dad passed away the same summer he started coaching me with Justi in the FC Seattle sessions. He made a huge impact on me in the first session, I still remember it. Justi and I played together from age 13, the WUSA days. Mac and I were the forward duo that scored a million goals the year we lost in the final.

“It was heartbreaking to not win that year. We of course all wanted it, but we all adored Sir Charles so much that we felt like we let him down - even though he’d never let on to that and just showed us love and told us he was proud of us after the game. It was honestly one of the hardest days.

“I had a bit of a meltdown in college - I hadn’t properly dealt with my dad’s sudden death at age 46. So, I went to go see A River Runs Through It with a teammate one night in spring. I grew up in Montana before moving to Seattle at age 10. I would fly fish with my dad at our cabin in Montana and it was a magical way to spend a summer. So, the movie struck a nerve. I couldn’t stop crying after watching it and somehow, without real internet or real cell phones, I was able to book a flight to Montana for the next day. I went back home without telling anyone to go process my dad’s death. I went to visit his friends and went to his grave site for the first time, I showed up on my aunt’s doorstep unannounced and she told me stories and shared mementoes with me.

“Anyway, after a few days, Clive called. I sobbed on the phone, but he told me he loved me and that he understood me - which is what sold my mom on my recruiting trip - he understood me and we saw eye to eye better than any coach/mentor/teacher I’d ever had - and that he’d take care of me, but that I needed to come home. I trusted him and he wrapped me in his arms when I arrived back on campus. He was a safe person for me and for many of us. He was truly incredible, and I could not be more grateful for the time I was able to spend with this him.

“His asking me to come coach with him was one of the greatest honours of my life.”

McIntosh recalls several years earlier the moment she realised something wasn’t right, again painting a picture of the connection Charles had with his players, even after they’d left the programme.

With the new Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) about to start in 2001, both Milbrett and McIntosh were in New York training with new franchise side New York Power, when McIntosh sensed something was untoward with her former coach.

“If I could tell you one regret, it’s I wasn’t part of a team which won him a Championship…”

“We all knew Clive’s home number by heart, but he’d stopped answering the phone or emails, which was totally abnormal for him. I’m close with his family, his daughter was one of my closest friends, and I just had a feeling something was wrong.

“I said to Tiff ‘something’s wrong with Clive, we need to go home’. She’s like ‘what are you talking about?’ I just told her to trust me. I had no right to go, it was my first camp, I was risking everything. Tiff was a founding member of the team and a magical soccer player, but I had to go, and we flew all the way back and found out he had Stage 4 cancer.

“We were heartbroken, but also grateful we got to spend time with him that weekend.”

When Portland reached the final in 2002, Mac Millan and French, as well as Milbrett and no doubt many other former players of his, were there to watch, all hoping and praying he got the send-off he deserved.

“Everyone that had ever played for him wanted that for him,” recalls French, who now holds the role he did as head coach of the Pilots since 2018, just the second head coach since Charles’ death.

“When I was there and we lost the final in ’95, I was more affected because I didn’t win it for him. He brought me in and told me he’d build the programme and I felt like I failed him. To see him finally win it, that was all I ever wanted because he deserved it.”

Mac Millan echoes the sense of guilt, reaffirming the impact he had on those he helped build careers for.

“If I could tell you one regret, it’s I wasn’t part of a team which won him a Championship,” she says, visibly emotional. “They’d never even been a play-off team, and in my junior year we lost in the semi-final and senior year we lost in overtime.

“He’d joke we needed a fifth year together, but I was there in the stands and jumped the fence when he won. Talk about powerful, someone who deserved it all. I just resent I couldn’t win it for him. He was something special.”

“We flew in just for the game. It was like ‘they win, we go down on the field’. And there is Clive, hugging us all! I think for him it was just embracing everything that programme had been, and for him so deserved and so earned…yeah, I don’t know how else to put it.

Baumgardt couldn’t be there after undergoing surgery on an ankle issue but was at home “crying tears of joy” watching the game on TV.

“There had been a lot of successful moments, but that cemented everything he had done. It would have been a tragedy, and that’s a heavy word, if he’d never won a Championship. I don’t think there’s anyone ever more deserving of that happening.”

But he was still Clive Charles, right until the end, as Irwin recalls a story from just 24 hours before the biggest game of his life.

“When we won our first Championship, the day before the game we had a shoe throwing competition,” he laughs. “That was a day before a final. He just told everyone to take their shoes off and see who could throw them the furthest!

“That’s how he was, and he was really ill at the time.”

On his success, Irwin adds “Oh yeah, he deserved all that. We weren’t as funded as other programmes; he started his own club here for players he could take into the college game and quite a few came to us that way.

“Tiff was one of those. He was a visionary in stuff like that. What he saw in the game to develop it here in the States. He was a coach players wanted to play for, he had a magnetic personality.”

It was particularly emotional for McIntosh, who had both played in the final the team lost, and then returned as an assistant just months before finally getting the National Championship seven years later.

“When I came in, we all knew he was quite sick,” she recalls. “There were moments he couldn’t stand up, he couldn’t coach, he couldn’t be at games.

“It was important to everyone to embrace Clive. He never asked that of us, but he had given so much to us…” she pauses as her voice begins to break, before continuing “He was just the most important person to many of us. We’d have taken a bullet if it meant keeping him around.

“It felt like a big weight was lifted. We lost in three final fours, we lost a final, we owed him that and we wanted him to go out on top. Even during that game, he was in a lot of pain, we had to manage that. Sinc came through and scored that goal. It was just a fight and a will; everyone was so determined Clive would win that Championship.”

Charles passed away on 26^th August 2003.

His legacy is most felt by the naming of the stadium at the University after him, but it goes much further than that.

As she sits in the same chair in the same office he once occupied, French is best placed to really offer a vision of what he has left behind, just over 20 years after his death.

“When I walk out of my office there’s a picture directly opposite of him with a quote,” as she too has to pause to battle the emotion.

“When you go one hallway down there’s an image of him celebrating the Championship. In our locker room, the wall is wrapped with him holding the trophy and it’s signed by all the alumni who have come back here.

“The people here are still fans of him and fans of the programme because of how Clive made them feel. They all have their stories. When I first got hired, a lot of people shared experiences both of their memories of him and the growth of the programme. We have the Clive Charles award we give out every year, to someone who encapsulates everything Clive was as a human being.

“For me to have him as a coach…now it’s to never let the fire he set here die. Every player who comes through here needs to know who he is. In the stadium, there’s a huge banner with all his accolades, his presence is everywhere.”

Baumgardt has also followed Charles’ route into coaching, taking over as head coach of USL side Midlakes United last year.

Reflecting on where Portland is now as a programme, in being able to attract the likes of Megan Rapinoe over the years, Baumgardt believes Charles “100% put it on the map” when it came to being a major player on the college scene.

“When he recruited me, they were just breaking into the top 20. He told me ‘Come here and I’ll build the programme around you, I promise we’ll be at the top’. He made a promise and kept it because we went into the final four a couple of times.

“You trusted him. He knew a quality player; his talent identification was fantastic. Every time I talk about him, people are like ‘you were at Portland with Clive?’ Everybody knows, that’s a huge thing.

“People say ‘wow, how lucky were you?!’ I’m sure you get this from everybody, but there’s nothing bad to say. He was proud of the programme and I’m sure he had a thousand offers to go somewhere else, but he wanted to build that, and everyone looks back knowing how special that was.

“It’s not a Notre Dame, it’s just a small university on the block, and he created that.”

The further tragedy is how much more Charles had to give.

At 51, there is a belief from everyone he could have managed either the USA men’s or women’s team, or even returned home to coach at the highest level in England.

“He could have coached in England, no problem,” says Irwin. “If he was alive and well, he’d have probably been the men’s national coach in the USA, but definitely the women’s.”

Mac Millan adds “I think he would have loved and would have been phenomenal coaching the USWNT. He was involved in the U20s, and I always wondered what that team would have looked like had he not been taken from us.

“I’ve come across players who played for him for only a handful of minutes and thought he was awesome. The stories you hear, it’s just sad. He definitely had a lot more ahead of him and more lives to touch. I guess it’s that ‘too good to be true’ kind of thing.”

French says “I think people of his era remember him. When we play Santa Clara…Jerry Smith has been there 30 years. Tim Ward at Pepperdine, Anson Dorrance at UNC. Those coaches who coached when Clive was still around. There’s not a day or game we don’t come up against one of them where he doesn’t become the conversation.”

Baumgardt also hits home his legacy. “Among soccer people, for sure. I’ve got a kid on my team; we were just talking yesterday, and he was like ‘how was your time with Clive?’ He’s 18 and knows who he is, they all know, that’s credit to Portland for carrying his name on.”

Some of their final words finish off telling the story of how, in the most heartfelt of ways, a coach from Essex impacted so many lives at the other side of the world, with that impact still felt on them and even their families over 20 years on.

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For Mac Millan, being at the final in 2002 was particularly poignant. When she and Milbrett scored the goals which won the USA a first Olympic gold in 1996, Charles had stayed up until 3am to watch the game while on camp with the U20s in Sweden, so she could only repay the favour by being there herself six years later, because it was he who set her on that journey.

When Mac Millan missed out on the initial squad for the Olympics, she told Charles she was considering quitting, but it was he who talked her out of it, and despite only 16 players being selected, Mac Millan went from outside the initial squad the player who scored the gold medal-winning goal.

“Who I was as a player was because of Clive,” she admits. “Everything I achieved on the field was because of that man and what he taught me. Who I am now as a person, as a mum, as a partner is owed to that man.

“I miss him all the time. I have a collage of pictures with him. I have a picture with him stood behind me with his cheesy grin, it’s one of my favourite pictures.”

His legacy with others goes even further, with Baumgardt ensuring the name Clive Charles will continue to run in her own family, again only further showing the impact a mere soccer coach had on so many people.

“I’m getting emotional, I’m happy you’re writing about him,” smiles Baumgardt. “I want his name to continue on because people need to know what a remarkable human he was. My son is a sophomore and he asked, ‘do you think if Clive was still alive I’d be in his type of player?’

“I said ‘Yes, I do’. My eldest son’s middle name is Charles, after Clive. It’s sad for me my kids never got to meet him. They would have absolutely loved him, just to know him and get to know him.

“Whatever he said, you just respected. It was like gold.”

Mac Millan is going a step further; she’s currently working on getting Charles posthumously inducted into the US Soccer Hall of Fame.

“All of us who were a part of Clive have tried in different ways to continue that on,” she admits. “There could only be one Clive Charles, that’s too big a burden to carry for someone, even if we’ve all gone out and tried to do it. It might sound clichéd, but when I’m in a tough situation I ask myself ‘what would Clive have told me?’

“I got him onto the voting ballets to be added. He lost on a tiebreak a few years ago, so that’s an ongoing labour of love, but he was granted an exemption with no hesitation.

“My dream is to call Clarena and say ‘hey, he’s in’…”

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It’s now almost a decade since the first Women’s FA Cup final was held at Wembley Stadium, as Chelsea defeated Notts County 1-0 hot off the heels of England’s historic bronze medal at the 2015 World Cup.

Among many over the subsequent nine years, it was a watershed period for the women’s game in England, the combination of the Lionesses’ breakout tournament which captured the hearts of so many and the first showpiece occasion at the national stadium which has now become a regular home for the final and many England matches, including the Euro 2022 final.

Everyone has a story to tell about their memories of that first final, but for one player who will be back there for a second final in a row this Sunday, that story is unique compared to many of her cohorts on either side, whether Manchester United or first-time finalists Tottenham Hotspur.

That player is Guernsey-born Maya Le Tissier, whose fledgling career was at a tipping point.

The 22-year-old has been a standout star in the Man United team since arriving to much fanfare from Brighton & Hove Albion in 2022 as one of the highest rated young defenders in the country, but her beginnings are much more humble.

In fact, if the entire population of the channel island where she grew up flocked to Wembley on Sunday afternoon, there would still be 18,000 spare seats, such is the difference in size and space.

Closer in geography to France than it is mainland England, it offers an idyllic lifestyle filled with sandy beaches and quaint towns, but not the ideal surroundings to kick off a fledgling football career.

Dad Darren had played for one of the island’s main clubs, St. Martins A.C., and daughter Maya started playing for the boys’ teams from the age of four, sharing her dad’s passion until the point came for Le Tissier senior to focus on his daughter.

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“Maya started playing and I was maybe 34 or 35 and I’d played so much football in my career I was like ‘right, into coaching!’” he recalls. “She was enjoying it and I suppose we got to a point where it was like anything, it was just grassroots football but by the time she got to 10 or 11 there was a gap with the Guernsey FA, they weren’t providing any on-island what we’d call elite training.”

Darren and good family friend Rob Jones therefore set up their own academy, initially for one year group, going around local clubs and selecting up to 15 children to be part of the first team.

At that point, Maya wasn’t involved properly, but given her dad was leading the academy she’d often tag along with a ball at her feet, and current Premier League star with Bournemouth, Alex Scott, was part of the same team having grown up on the island.

When the mainland came calling having spotted Scott’s prodigious talent, it opened the door for Maya who didn’t take long to have her own talent spotted too.

“I had some connections with Southampton, they’d come across to do a soccer school on the island and we were getting Alex over there into their academy and sort of piggy-backed on the back of that to get regular games against their academy sides.

“We’d always do quite well and one time Maya came along for the trip and we sent her on. She played really, really well and Terry Moore the academy manager at the time came and asked me who she was.

“I laughed and was like ‘Oh, that’s my daughter’ and he said she was the best player on the pitch and you need to get her across. I was just like ‘yeah thanks very much’ and I think she was only eight or nine at the time.”

Darren took daughter Maya across to Hampshire for trials, but soon the logistics of the flights back and forth from Guernsey reared its ugly head and threatened to derail Le Tissier’s future career.

“Martina Heath was there who is still at Southampton today. Maya got through the trial but we said we were from Guernsey and it wasn’t going to be straight forward,” he recalls. “It was Monday, Thursday and a game at the weekend. We said ‘we can’t do this, but we hope you’ll give us access just even on a once a month basis’.

“Martina and the others went away and uhm’d and ahh’d and they said that was fine, bring her as much as you can and that was absolutely fine for about two seasons where once a month we’d come across.”

While Scott was travelling weekly, Maya was still playing boys football for St. Martins around her sparse trips to Hampshire, before an intervention from The FA was potentially going to put a stop to a career which has led to Wembley this Sunday.

“We had a call from Martina who said the FA had been down and the next time you’re over they want a chat. The guy came over and said ‘we can’t be doing this’. I was like ‘excuse me?’

“They said she wasn’t following the academy pathway, she was just doing bits and bobs. I said ‘no disrespect, but she’s been doing this for two years and it was fine’. Hampshire found it fine too, but he was adamant.”

He continues, of the potential repercussions on Maya “I said ‘you’re going to break this girl’s heart. Where is she meant to go from here?’ She was clearly of standard to be in the academy and they were turning around as an FA saying no.

“They spoke about welfare of the child but I said as parents the welfare was our concern and we had no concerns whatsoever. Her school was up to date, the reports were fine and I think in the end it went all the way up to Kay Cossington and it came back she couldn’t do it but she could come to these new satellite centres in the south west with Sarah Lawler was running.”

The centres ran four or five times a season, which saw the Le Tissier’s and daughter Maya fly into Exeter and back, where she was joined by future Brighton teammate Katie Robinson in being placed into the unofficial England U15s age group.

“It wasn’t technically a side,” says Darren. “It was to get them in and train and be around the U16s group to get them ready for that step up.”

With Maya now 15 and approaching her GCSEs, it was a pivotal point of no return for the whole family, with Maya adamant she was going to be a professional footballer, and made the bold decision herself to leave the island she’d only ever known once she’d finished her exams.

“At that point, we knew Maya needed to be in the UK. She said she’d do sixth form in the UK, but we were quite conscious Maya had grown up on an island with beaches and the sea and only 60,000 people, so what was the best environment for her?

“We were going to go to Bristol but we didn’t. We went to Reading but it was too inner-city for her at that time, too in your face. Us Guernsey people are all extremely laid back, but the same weekend we went down to Brighton and Worthing College and Maya went to play for their academy a couple of times and they really liked her.

“We were trying to find a host family as at that time there was minimal support for stuff like that, but with the help of the college we did piece it all together. We were quite lucky, we had to fund it all because that just wasn’t around back then but it’s what she wanted to do.”

Maya studied at college and trained with the development squad after making the permanent move to the south coast, but impressed so much it wasn’t long before then head coach Hope Powell had her around the first team.

“She made her debut against Chelsea in the Continental Cup and just took off. She passed her B-tech sport but god knows how because she was never there, she was always with the first team during the day! She’s quite a clever cookie and everything they get taught with England in the analysis and everything…I think that all backed into the B-tech and I think she took those experience and just popped it into her exams.

“At 18, she went into a player house and I have to say Hope was so good to her. Maya had a good grounding from good people, from Sarah to Hope, and it was meeting those people at the right time. We as a family feel lucky. Maya’s ability and determination to succeed even against the challenges, leaving home when she did, it just transpires with Maya that nothing was going to stop her. ‘This is what I’m good at and I’ll give up everything to achieve my aim and move away from my friends and family at 16’.

“Fair play to Maya, to have that determination and sacrifice to do it and ultimately, she’s been proved right. She’s where she wants to be at 22, but we had the breaks at the right time, but the Hampshire bit was a car crash waiting to happen in what would we do? Because it would have sent her into a tailspin.”

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It wasn’t just Maya who made sacrifices though. Darren lays bare the expense it regularly cost to get their daughter to the mainland and back, to the tune of almost £700 a trip.

“A parent and a kid travelling, the hotel for three nights. We’d go on a Thursday and come back on a Sunday, flights there and back, there wasn’t much change once you’d done all that!

“We were lucky financially we both had good jobs and people sponsored and gave money for Maya to succeed. It was a community island effort combined with Maya’s absolute determination to make it, to get to the Women’s Super League, to do what she’s doing and we’d work hard and do anything to ensure that happened.

“Even now, you look at her and she’s so dedicated to her performance and ensuring she’s in the best position. She rarely goes out, she doesn’t drink, I suppose like the rest and being ex-military myself, they live a very military lifestyle. Turn up here, do this, do that, go home and do the same tomorrow. It’s very regimented.”

He points to the fact she is closing in on a fourth consecutive season without missing a game as a testament to that commitment, regularly ensuring even if she’d picked up a knock she’d do everything she could in her recovery to be ready for the next game.

On Sunday, she will no doubt walk out in the Manchester United team, where she’s just signed a new long-term deal, in the same stadium she graced for the first time last year, and has been a part of several England squads for games at Wembley too.

Under Marc Skinner, she has become both a key player and key pillar of the United defence, helping the team to an impressive clean sheet record last season, and will be hoping to get her hands on a first major trophy as well as walking the famous steps come 4:30pm.

While there was always an obvious dedication and talent to go with it, Darren admits he could have never envisaged his daughter playing for both Manchester United and England.

“I suppose if you strip it back, any parent just wants to give their kids the best opportunity to succeed in whatever walk of life it is. We’re fortunate as parents we could…even against all the odds, we could give Maya that opportunity to try and make it.

“If you’d said to me down Wide Lane 10 years ago she’d be where she is now, no, you couldn’t ever predict that. We were hopeful she’d have a career, but you didn’t know it could be this.”

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Robert Vilahamn has never been a man in a rush, carefully plotting his route through the managerial scenery in a way which doesn’t tally with the fast-tracked route which has ended with an FA Cup final in his first season in English football with Tottenham Hotspur.

When the Swede rocked up after a successful spell with BK Häcken as the latest Scandinavian import into the WSL manager market, it looked like a match made in heaven for the Spurs long-term project, with little eyes on instant success after escaping a relegation battle 12 months ago under now assistant Vicky Jepson.

But even before a historic run to Sunday’s showpiece occasion at Wembley, Vilahamn’s coaching methods had already made a big impact in North London, guiding his team to several impressive results, mixed with the occasional drubbing, such as their 7-0 defeat at Manchester City.

That quick progress though was emphasised when Spurs beat the same opponent on penalties to reach the semi-finals, where another late goal secured their spot in the final against last year’s runners-up Manchester United this weekend.

Vilahamn’s coaching career has been eclectic, and is best described by Håkan Sandberg, a coach he worked with in the Swedish lower divisions, as both a player and an assistant coach at the same time.

Sandberg paints a picture of a model coach, a “clever guy” and someone “nobody has anything bad to say about”, yet Vilahamn himself in the past has admitted being far from the model professional as a youngster, wasting his own playing career with a poor lifestyle.

In some ways it makes his successful coaching career something of an enigma, and that stretches as far as his identity, originally Jan Robert Karlsson, embracing the name Robert, while Vilahamn is a mix of Vilhelmina and Skalhamn, the two small towns he and his wife grew up in.

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Skalhamn, Vilahamn’s birthplace, inhabits just 135 people and you could fit the population into Wembley this weekend 607 times over. His dad worked in the local harbour while his mum helped to support he and his six siblings, another of whom went on to be a professional footballer and is now an agent.

Vilahamn has channelled his failings as a player, where he lived an unhealthy lifestyle after moving to the big city of Gothenburg to play for one of Sweden’s biggest clubs, into how he is as a coach, but he’s needed a helping hand from the likes of Sandberg along the way.

In a playing career which was petering out, Vilahamn joined Ytterby IS in the third division in 2007, but his love for playing was long past being on the wane, and in 2009 he became a player-assistant coach alongside Martin Berggren, before Sandberg took over as a manager a couple of years later.

“That was 2012 I think it was, so 12 years ago now,” recalls Sandberg. “You could see straight away he was a clever boy. He was intelligent and a little more mature than the others, he would have been coming up to being 30 and in a different part of his career to many.

“In those days I didn’t see so much of the coaching skills. He was helping me, but it was lower division and it wasn’t that much work. As a player, he was clever too and as a leader in the group he was fantastic that way. He was my captain, he took care of all the boys in the team.”

Admitting previously the only influences he has taken into coaching have been from his own failings as a player, Vilahamn was showing the talent which could have made him a Swedish superstar, winning several golden boot awards in the lower leagues while concentrating on his future as a head coach.

“I knew very quickly he was a little more intelligence and engaged than the other players,” continues Sandberg. “He started his own academy in Africa, he was doing things as if he was 45 rather than 30!

“He was just a nice guy, very clever. We worked together for three years and he stopped playing just after I left Ytterby.”

When he did hang up his boots, he spent only a little more time with Ytterby before taking on a role as U19s head coach of Örgryte IS, where he made an impact winning the U19s league, before becoming the head coach of Qviding FIF, who had just been demoted from the third tier to the fifth tier after going into bankruptcy, but who Vilahamn had a previous attachment to from his playing days.

“When he was in Qviding I was sort of a mentor for him because I’m much older than him and my coaching career was over,” says Sandberg, now 65. “I followed his progress there and it was the same things. He showed the same traits, that he was hard working, very friendly, I never met anyone who had something bad to say about Rob.

“He’s worth everything and lately his coaching career has gone very quick in my eyes, but of course he’s ready for it. He went from BK Häcken as an assistant and then coach for the women’s team to England, I really love that he has got this chance in England.”

Sandberg admits he “saw that” in Vilahamn when I ask about his talent as a coach even as a man in his early thirties and having never been a head coach until 2018, less than six years later he will lead a team out at Wembley on Sunday afternoon.

While it may seem like it’s been rushed, it’s more a testament to his talents as a coach and some smart decision making along the way.

“I remember the first year I was sort of a mentor to him we would meet up and go for coffees in the centre of Gothenburg. He was working in a school as a teacher as well as a few other projects, but he was dreaming of being a coach full-time and in Qviding he couldn’t do that, so he was a teacher too, and generally if you’re a teacher you’re quite smart!

“But he always showed how much he wanted it and I was just waiting for a bigger club to find him. BK Häcken is a big team in Sweden. He was an assistant with the men and then took over the women’s team. He took his years to learn, you are not ready to take a team like that when you are 30. I said to him ‘yes, take the chance, learn how it is in a big team’ and he did. He has come through very quick since.”

As an assistant in 2020, he helped BK Häcken qualify for the Europa Conference League before taking the reins of the women’s team towards the end of 2021, finishing second in the league.

He guided the side to another second place in 2022 behind Swedish giants FC Rosengård before going toe to toe with Hammarby in 2023 until Tottenham Hotspur came calling last summer.

Vilahamn also helped guide BK Häcken to back-to-back Swedish Cup finals but again had to settle for silver in both, meaning this weekend would be his first major trophy as a coach, but will have to get past Manchester United to do so.

He is not defined by his trophies though, certainly not in North London where he has become an instant hit and on his way to building something special for the future, and if not will no doubt have done enough already to attract the attention of potential suitors elsewhere.

Whatever happens, Sandberg believes his smart decision making and intelligence means he will always find himself in the right places at the right times, and the silverware will eventually come with it.

“He got what he deserved, that’s for sure. In my view, he has done so far a perfect coaching career because he has made very clever choices.

“I have followed him very closely and even years ago he had choices, he could have been head coach for a top division team in Sweden, but I said take your time and this chance will come later.

“Then he got the women’s team in BK Häcken and that was a big decision for him, but it was a clever decision. As I keep saying, he’s a clever guy!”

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“I think when you see the word icon used…I wouldn’t use that term lightly, but she absolutely is,” said Emma Coates, head coach of England’s U23s, about Steph Houghton.

The 35-year-old Manchester City captain last week announced she would retire from playing at the end of the current season after a glittering career which saw her lead the England team with the armband for seven years.

Between her 121 caps for the Lionesses, Houghton has won 16 major domestic honours as well as a bronze medal at a breakthrough World Cup for the England team and the women’s game in general in Canada back in 2015.

Wherever her career has gone, regularly success has followed. As a teenager, she was part of a Sunderland side which included fellow future internationals such as Lucy Bronze, Jill Scott, Jordan Nobbs and Demi Stokes, and it was a similar story at Leeds Carnegie where she played with Ellen White, Jade Moore, Rachel Daly and Carly Telford.

It was also in West Yorkshire over a decade ago where another young defender in Coates was coming through the system, and took a place in the squad when Carnegie, who were backing the team at the time, decided not to apply for a licence for the new Women’s Super League, and all first team players departed.

“I wish I’d followed in the same steps after her,” laughs Coates. “I think for a long period she was the face of women’s football and has been a huge pioneer and leader in a lot of the changes we’ve seen in the game.

“I remember at Leeds when she was there and I was a young player coming through. I thought I was young, but then I realised I was only a couple of years younger than Steph and maybe I just wasn’t as good a player as I thought I was!

“But seeing what she has gone on to achieve doesn’t surprise me and I’ve had really, really small snippets of being able to see her in training when she was young and you knew she was destined for greatness and I’m sure she’ll have more great things ahead too.”

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Houghton’s career has in so many ways become intertwined with the progress of the women’s game.

Even as a defender, she became the star of the London Olympics in 2012 when she scored several goals as women’s football was put under the national spotlight for the first time, to huge crowds across the country.

In 2014, she signed for the revamped Manchester City, became the England captain and subsequently became the first female to appear on the cover of Shoot! Magazine all in the space of a year.

A year later, she was the captain of the Lionesses as they captured the nation’s imagination with a gutsy run to the World Cup semi-finals, the heartbreak of Japan and the subsequent euphoria of a bronze medal and a first ever win against Germany.

For many young players now, Houghton has been one of the first names and faces they’ve seen as they’ve made their own first steps into the professional game, a game a world away from the one Houghton stepped into.

The defender herself stated she hoped she’d leave the game in a better place than when she started and that in itself is indisputable, but so is the impact she has had on so many coming behind her.

“She’s been massive,” said Manchester City teammate Jess Park, who would have been just 12 years old when Houghton first joined the club from Arsenal.

“I remember when I was young watching the Olympics and saw her scoring the free-kick, I idolised that. Being able to meet her, play with her, just actually know Steph as a person…I think I said in my post, she’s an absolutely incredible person and I just think the stuff she does on the pitch, it’s obvious to everyone it’s incredible, but the stuff away from the pitch, the advice and help she’s given me has just been…yeah. She’s just a top person.”

Houghton’s international status likely won’t change between now and her retirement, and she hasn’t been capped since 2021, and gave it her all to battle back to be ready for a home European Championships in 2022, but was left out by Sarina Wiegman.

There will also be no change to her illustrious five FA Cups and seven Continental Cups, but there could yet be a fond farewell with a fourth Women’s Super League trophy, which would be her first since 2016, with Manchester City locked in a tense title race with Chelsea.

For a player who has achieved so much and given so much to the game, it would be hard to argue against being a deserved farewell for a player whose minutes on the pitch has dwindled through injury in recent years, but whose impact away from the pitch on those she works with has clearly never changed, despite no doubt her own disappointment at not playing as much as she would like.

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One player whose career she has shared a path with over the past few years is that of Alex Greenwood’s.

With Greenwood formerly of Everton, Liverpool and Manchester United, the pair were rivals for many years before coming together on the blue side of Manchester and share a role on the field, as well as many times on the pitch for England.

Greenwood of all people has known the Houghton of the latter part of her career as well as anyone, and gave an in-depth and poignant answer about the depth her influence goes within the changing room, even in the toughest of times.

"I could sit here all day and talk about Steph, I admire her so much,” said Greenwood. “The person she is even more than the player. I think...honestly, when she walks in every single day, I've never seen Steph have an off day, in terms of she comes in with 100% commitment.

“She announced her retirement on the Wednesday and the next day she's first in, as always, last to leave, as always. Every rep, every set in the gym is completed as she always does and always has, she's the ultimate professional.

“I think everybody knows about her situation off the pitch and the way she handles that situation is something I admire so much about Steph as a person. For me personally, what she's done for me in good moments, bad moments, she's the person I look to all the time as almost like a figure who I learn off, a mentor in the way.

“At the minute when Steph doesn't play at City I'm the captain, but she's our captain and I lean on her for so much advice and every day I try to take a little bit from Steph. How she acts, how she speaks with the girls, how she deals with certain situations. She'll be massively missed around the group because she brings something no one else does, but what an unbelievable person and player she's been for the women's game. I really hope she stays around it because she'll definitely be missed by me, but also by the women's game.”

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“It’s beyond rare,” says Fred Marks, reflecting on the careers of sisters, Kristie and Sam Mewis.

“There’s not many sisters in sport who both reach that level. It’s interesting, because they were somewhat different. They don’t look exactly the same, they don’t play exactly the same, but two players out of the same family? I wish they’d had five more!

“But it’s not lost on me, it’s very special.”

Marks is well placed to offer an insight into the paths Kristie and Sam have been on, as one of their first coaches at the youth soccer club he set up himself in Massachusetts - Scorpions.

Having just taken on a coaching role at a local high school with what he admits himself at the time was a “terrible programme”, the competitive side of him which “didn’t want to keep losing” saw him go his own way, leading to the creation of Scorpions SC.

“Within a week I said to Bob ‘I think your daughter’s a genius’…”

Little did he know at the time, but not far away in the small town of Weymouth, not one but two young girls who would go on to be future national team stars for the USA were tightening their studs.

Marks launched Scorpions in 1998, and in just its second year, a former teammate of his by the name of Bob Mewis came calling with a proposal for his eldest daughter, Kristie.

“The parents got in touch and immediately you could tell Kristie was different in her athleticism and mentality,” he recalls. “She became our best player in that age group, but she was on a good team too. She was a great little girl, very polite. She took over most games and she was very competitive too. Strong, fast, completely left-footed and that went on for a while.

“A couple of years later I passed the team on, but Bob asked if they could bring their little one over. So, Sam shows up, she was about nine I think, and the league didn’t start until under 12s, but she was as good as any of them and I could tell immediately this was different.

“Kristie was great, Sam had some other dimension that I hadn’t seen before and within a week I said to Bob ‘I think your daughter’s a genius’. He said he wasn’t ready to go there, but I said I was serious, she understood things instinctively that I couldn’t even teach under 16s.”

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Suddenly, Marks was tasked with a club he laughs “hardly ever lost”, with elder Mewis in one team and younger Mewis in another, two future stars of the game put Massachusetts and Scorpions on the map, and this was only the beginning.

“Kristie was a handful. Fast, super skilful. Sam was more competitive, controlled games. They were both very special and Sam’s team was number one in the USA for much of her youth career.

“Kristie was one of the best players I’d ever seen, then it was the same with Sam. Kristie isn’t a lot smaller, she’s very sturdy and very strong. Sam was lanky, but she didn’t use the physicality like Kristie did at that time. They were both eye-poppingly skilful.

“Once in a while there would be a team with a player who could match them, but not often.”

He adds, “I don’t take any credit, they were just gifted. Their dad was their town coach, he played in the league I played in back when we were younger and I think that’s why he called me originally. He had a lot to do with both of their developments, but they were both going to be special either way.”

A decade later, the Mewis sisters were already making waves, called up for the first ever Under 17 World Cup on the women’s side of the sport.

Kristie was 17, Sam 16, and both still representing Scorpions as they prepared to make big decisions in where they would go for college, and participated in a group for the tournament in New Zealand which also included a young Crystal Dunn and Morgan Brian.

“I was probably the first to get them both into the national programme at that level and they’ve gone and stayed in that world for many years,” says Kazbek Tambi, the USA head coach for that tournament.

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When Mia Fishel joined Chelsea last summer, the American forward admitted Emma Hayes confided in her she’d been brought in to offer back-up to star striker, Sam Kerr.

The 22-year-old, coming for big money after an eye-catching 18 months in Mexico’s Liga MX with Tigres, is well thought of as one of the most highly-rated young players in the world, but there was an acceptance on both sides Fishel would have to be patient in an attack lined with stars, particularly the Australian.

But that has now changed, after Kerr became the latest victim of the devastating ACL epidemic during Chelsea’s warm weather training camp in Morocco over the winter break.

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After taking just 11 minutes to rescue her side’s FA Cup campaign when coming off the bench, Fishel led the line at Stamford Bridge against Manchester United on Sunday, an early sign of the added responsibility she may now have to take on in the absence of Kerr, with the striker likely to be miss most, if not all, of 2024.

But those who know her paint a picture of someone who thinks well beyond her years. One trait which consistently comes up is humility, but with it a driven belief in every decision she makes to the benefit her own career, such as turning down the lure of the NWSL for a developing league south of the border.

Long before that though, Fishel was a promising young talent playing close to home in San Diego, playing for local youth side San Diego Surf, following in the footsteps of future Chelsea teammate Catarina Macario, and was tearing it up for the USA youth teams, particularly in the regional CONCACAF Championships.

“Even right now that humility she has, she had when she was 14…”

Come 2018, Fishel was selected for the Under 17 World Cup by English head coach Mark Carr, who had worked with the striker for several years through the age groups, and gave her the added responsibility of captain, in a squad which included the likes of Trinity Rodman.

“I see her now on TV with Chelsea and that humility is still there,” says Carr. “How she carries herself…you’d think when you play for a club like Chelsea there’s all this glory, the grandiose feeling if you like, but even right now that humility she has, she had when she was 14.

“She was a sponge for learning, a sponge for growing, a sponge for just working hard. I remember being in a camp in Portland when she was 14 and she just worked, she improved, she listens to feedback and consistently gets better.”

Carr tells the story of how his daughter, who is now the same age as Fishel was when he started coaching her, follows her progress because she knows her dad coached the striker, and he uses Fishel’s personality traits as inspiration for his own daughter’s path.

“I always say ‘Mia’s very smart’. She knows what she’s good at, she uses that. She’s so good with her movement, but her humility and how she carries herself? She’s had that all along.”

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Germany star Lena Oberdorf was always destined for a life in sport. Her mum was an athlete, her dad a professional footballer. Older brother Tim, five years her elder, also became a professional footballer while sister Julia, three years her elder, plays American football in Germany.

“The first thing that comes to my mind is playing in our backyard,” recalls Tim, who plays for Fortuna Düsseldorf in the 2. Bundesliga, Germany’s second division, but he has played in the top tier. “I would be playing with my dad and our other sister. We would go every day, play all day apart from when we had to go our club. When she was old enough to take part, Lena was part of it.”

Julia did play football for a few years before going into American football, while their dad’s whole playing career was in football, so it was only natural both Tim and Lena ended up going down the same route.

“He was always around when we had to go to football matches. He stopped playing when we were young and just played with us in the garden. Our mother did athletics, so it was just sport all the time for us!

“They never forced us to play, but when you grow up in an environment where it’s sport all around you, you can’t do anything else! It was easy for me to say I played because of my dad, but when you’re a little boy everyone is doing it anyway and obviously for my sister it became the clear thing for her to follow that too.”

Oberdorf is still just 21 but her rise has been remarkable. Five years ago, she was still playing in a boys’ team close to her home town of Gevelsberg. Now, she plays for one of Europe’s elite sides, Wolfsburg.

“After two sessions and the first friendly Lena made all my worries go away because she was unique…”

She has played in a Champions League final, a European Championship final and was named best young player in both competitions.

She is, scarily, not even close to her peak. Yet her ability, tenacity and reading of the game has already set her apart as one of the best defensive midfielders anywhere in the world, which she has shown consistently not just in domestic competitions, but in the best competitions and against the best players for both her club and the German national team.

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Oberdorf started playing for TuS Ennepetal, the same club as her brother, before again following him to TSG Sprockhövel, where she would play with the boys until Bundesliga side SGS Essen spotted her and tied her down to a pre-contract to start in the summer of 2018 when Oberdorf was 16.

“For Lena and for me it was almost the same path up to the point she had to go into a women’s team,” says Tim. “We started at the same club. I was 12, then when she was 12 she came to the club just as I was moving on. Then she had to go to Essen and a couple of years after that is when I moved to Düsseldorf.”

Oberdorf joined the boys team when she was at under 13 level, and her coach was Oliver Triestram, who now works in the youth teams at Borussia Dortmund.

Triestram was the coach of the teams under 17 side, but despite joining at under 13 level, it didn’t take long for Lena to pop up on his radar.

“In Germany, the under 17 team is combined with the under 16s, and Lena joined us from the under 15s,” recalls Triestram. “Of course, I’d watched a few games of hers and she was a great talent. I thought it would be good for her if she could compete with the older boys.

“I was a bit worried, because they were older, but we started training and in pre-season after two sessions and the first friendly Lena made all my worries go away because she was unique. Girls have no disadvantage in the technical side, but physically sometimes they do, but Lena from the first session was so tough and she straight away had the respect from our squad within seconds, and from our opponents as well.”

Triestram and the club had to apply for a special permit for Oberdorf to play in the boys’ league, which would allow her to play in the Landesliga, the third division at that level, where she would thrive.

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When Rachel Daly was called up for her first major tournament by Phil Neville ahead of the last World Cup four years ago, the now Barclays Women’s Super League Golden Boot winner recalled to me how after the Under 17 World Cup in 2008, she was told she would never play for the England senior team.

Part of a talented group which included Lucy Bronze and Jordan Nobbs, England got to the semi-finals in what was a good tournament for the young Lionesses, but not for Daly, of Leeds United at the time.

“That World Cup was a bit of a turning point, it wasn’t very good for me,” she told me. “I didn’t get called in after that for a while and I almost wanted to give up. You’re a million miles away from home, 16 years old and getting told you’d never play for England.

“It was a turning point, I wanted to quit. I went home, I was in tears, didn’t know whether I was coming or going. It was all I ever focused on and it felt like it was being taken away from me. It upset me for a long time, I felt like I had no purpose anymore.”

Daly now has 70 senior caps, is a European champion and may well lead the line for her country against Denmark tomorrow, hot off the back of the best domestic season of her career.

To get from there to now has been a mental battle for the Aston Villa striker, as charted by three of her early coaches who all played their own roles in her development both on and off the pitch.

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“I’d spend a lot of weekends going to see which players were in town,” says Mike Sweetman, who ran the girls’ football programme at Rossett School in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, close to where Daly grew up.

“I remember going to watch a grassroots team. It was just boys and the majority were coming to us, but I was desperate to get some good girls coming to the school, but I got chatting to this bloke who turned out to be Rachel’s dad. He told me she was playing and I hadn’t realised because it was a boy’s game and 21 of them were boys, but she was really good, and he said ‘don’t worry Mike, she’s going to Rossett’ and I was like ‘yes, brilliant!’”

Sweetman recalls how women’s football in the area was “only just taking off” and after the school won the County Cup, he and the staff wanted to do more for girls in Harrogate, and Daly’s arrival was the first key part of that change.

“I just said ‘I don’t know who I’m ringing, but you need to get someone to see this kid’…”

“When Rach came, she was 13 but she played in the U16s, even though we had U13 and U14 teams. She was only Year 7, so people complained, they didn’t want to play with her, but we won anyway! When she arrived, we won everything, we became the most dominant school for girls in the county.

“When she was Year 8, we got to the national semi-final, which was unheard of for a school of our size. We played at Oakwell and the final was at The Riverside which was a dream for me as a Middlesbrough, I was desperate to get there! We did, but we lost the final 3-2. Rach was amazing, she just went from strength to strength. We had to let her play P.E. with the boys because she was too good for the girls.”

Sweetman remembers how the lads love her and she became good friends with them because they saw and appreciated her talent.

One year later, when Daly was in Year 9, they got to the County Cup final again, this time in Daly’s hometown of Harrogate, and Sweetman recalls how he took matters into his own hands to ensure Daly’s talent didn’t go to waste.

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“A couple of weeks before the game I rang the FA because she was off the scale. I just said ‘I don’t know who I’m ringing, but you need to get someone to see this kid’. I didn’t think it would go anywhere, but somebody was coming down from Newcastle for the final.

“We won 4-1 and Rach scored twice, she was brilliant. I think from there she was on the radar. She had some trials and camps with the younger groups. I was also Head of Transition for when they left school, so that was part of it too and making sure Rach’s talent didn’t go unnoticed.

“All she wanted to do was play football. She was sociable, she got on with everyone, especially the football crowd. She had a real social ability and with me as an adult too. I’m really into psychology of players, but she’s difficult to pin down because she was so different. She could be difficult, not for me, but she was just so fully focused on football, nothing else. It’s all she did, all she wanted to do and that ultimate focus is what set her apart from anybody else. She just had a complete desire to play football and to win.”

It wasn’t just England who were paying attention either. The club Daly supported as a child and still does to this day, Leeds United, were looking closely too.

One of the top teams in the country at the time, Leeds had a track record of developing young players and their manager at the time, Rick Passmoor, recalls his first memory of discovering Daly’s talent.

“We had a great connection with Mike and the school and that area,” recalls Passmoor, who is now back at Leeds United. “She came on board around the time she’d started at the school, she was a massive Leeds fan and had a fantastic support mechanism around her. People in the club were pointing her out to me from around U14 level, so I went down to the Centre of Excellence a few times to watch her.

“She stood out. I just said ‘we need to ensure someone is here with this talent to push her’, because she wasn’t being challenged enough. She was too good for that level, but she was going to come across very good players on her way up and what we didn’t want is to get to that stage and she hadn’t been tested.

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