Women’s Euro Opening Match Smashes Competition Attendance Record At Old Trafford

The UEFA Women’s Euro in England, delayed for a year, kicked off with a bang at Old Trafford, the so-called ‘The Theatre of Dreams’ in Manchester as a crowd of 68,871, a new record for the competition, watched hosts England defeat Austria.

Arsenal’s Beth Mead scored the first goal of the tournament, lifting the ball over the Austrian goalkeeper, her club team-mate Manu Zinsberger. It was her 15th international goal of the season, extending the all-time England record she broke last month held for over half a century by legendary men’s striker Jimmy Greaves.

After an extravagant media launch in February 2020 announcing that the Opening Match would be staged at Old Trafford, England’s biggest club stadium, the 13th edition of the women’s European championship seem to be bedevilled with ill-luck as the global pandemic created a domino of cancellations which resulted in the women’s Euro being postponed for a year until 2022.

In retrospect, the extra year gave promoters the time to dial up the hype around the tournament to the extent that 517,000 of the 700,000 tickets have now been sold. Almost a third of those tickets were for tonight’s Opening Match and the sold-out final at the 90,000 Wembley Stadium on 31 July.

Before tonight, the previous record attendance in the competition had been the 41,301 who watched the 2013 final between Germany and Norway at the Friends Arena in Stockholm. Playing in that match for Germany was Nadine Kessler now UEFA’S Head of Women’s Football. Tonight’s record breaking attendance, which almost doubled the previous mark, is a testament to the work she has instigated since taking the role in 2017 after a succession of injuries ended her glorious playing career.

Previously the biggest crowd at a UEFA Women’s Euro group stage match was also in Manchester when the last tournament in England kicked off in front of 29,092 fans at the Etihad Stadium in 2005, yet these figures were not sustained across the tournament where the average attendance eventually fell below 8,000. Now with many of Europe’s top stars playing in the English Women’s Super League there is the belief that tonight’s match will not be an outlier for the tournament and average crowds will be over 15,000 at the end of the finals.

Tonight’s attendance is not a record for a women’s match in England which remains the crowd of 80,203 which witnessed the 2012 London Olympic final between the United States and Japan at Wembley Stadium. However, with Wembley long since sold out for the final of this competition, it seems only a few weeks before that record is broken too, particularly if the hosts continue winning and play in it on July 31.