I had nothing intelligent to say during the Euro 2025 final. That didn’t shut me up … | Zoe Williams | OneFootball

If, like me, you know nothing about women’s football, you have to be really careful to emphasise that you also know nothing about men’s football, otherwise you move from the crowd of cheery bystanders, willing on a victory that will bring gaiety to the nation, into the crowd of the patriarchy, which has ground the women’s game down with a drone of contempt, only to – bad luck, patriarchy – make it stronger. As England v Spain drew near on Sunday, my 15-year-old wondered whether I had to emphasise anything – had I tried simply not talking?

An hour before kick-off, she tried to give me a crash course in staying silent. She wasn’t even intending to watch the match with me, just selflessly worrying about how it would affect other people’s vibe if I entered a fan environment without this life skill. It was too late for backstories, or a 30-second, “previously, in women’s football”, or even a quick refresh on the rules. The best thing would be if I didn’t talk at all. And that, sadly, was never going to happen.

I watched the Euro 2025 final with a fan so ardent that she had a lucky England shirt that had never let her down, except that in certain weather conditions it was too small to wear as a top layer, so she had to drape it over herself like an antimacassar. Her father was out of the room when England equalised, which led to him being made to go stand in the corridor superstitiously whenever things looked dicey. Her mother shared a surname with one of the players, and this came up so frequently that I thought at one point there were two Walshes on the pitch, one of them Spanish.

Another devotee revealed a nationalistic fervour so powerful that he would only refer to the Spanish manager as Señora Evil.

I have no problem with this, but newcomers to the game also have to avoid making saccharine remarks about how supportive the players seem to be to one another, whether any of the English ones are dating any of the Spanish ones, or whether it’s because they are female that they can play on through astronomical pain (Lucy Bronze played the whole tournament with a fractured tibia, she revealed at the end). Otherwise they’ll get blasted from beneath the antimacassar: “It’s not, ‘Everyone make a daisy chain because we like women so much’ – we’re here to win the [insert swearing] Euros.”

It is also frowned upon to make any personal remarks about the players’ appearances, which is a trap I most likely wouldn’t fall into – one of the things I love about women’s sports in general is that they’re never thinking about how they look. It’s the only time you get to see women concentrate in a public sphere without someone saying: “The voters won’t like her – she looks too grumpy.”

However, it turns out there is a Leah Williamson exemption, and you’re allowed to call her the most beautiful woman in the land, and every time she does anything, intone that she has always been brilliant at doing that. “Look at that,” said the non-playing Walsh. “She won the toss for which end. She won the toss for who starts. She’s so good at heads or tails.”

It’s hard to go wrong with penalties, even for a novice. You are supposed to be happy when they score, gutted when they don’t, and these emotions seem to be hardwired, probably for some evolutionary purpose, just arriving in your bloodstream with no complicating factors or qualification. By this point, incidentally, nobody cares whether this is the first game you’ve ever watched or the lush climax of your life’s desire; it is enough that you all want the same people to win.

The Lionesses’ emotions, upon their victory, were also pretty uncomplicated – you have seen footballers hug each other before, I’m sure, and gesture magnificently at the crowds, and leap on the spot like fish who are glad to be alive. But when it got to the point that they were lying on the pitch making angel shapes with glitter streamers, I said the one thing you’re not meant to say: “Is this a women’s football thing? Do England’s men’s team also celebrate so hard, so inventively, when they win?” But nobody knows. It was before we were born.

• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Header image: [Photograph: Maryam Majd/Getty Images]