Two hundred metres from Manchester City’s Etihad stadium is a baby stadium. This is the City Football Academy, and there is no sporting equivalent in Britain. It is small, perfectly formed, and may just hold the key to the future of British football. This is where the club’s under-21 team play but, more significantly, it is also the home to Manchester City Women, MCWFC. City is the first professional club to allocate a custom-built stadium to its women’s team.

Until last month, the club averaged little more than 1,000 spectators, which didn’t go far towards filling the 7,000-capacity ground. But in the first match following the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada last month, the crowd doubled. This was replicated around the country.

At a time when there is much cynicism about the men’s game at the top level in England (overpriced, over-sold and overrated), women’s football seems to be facing a new dawn. This is partly down to England’s women’s team’s success at the World Cup – their third-place finish is the second-best result an England football team of either gender has achieved in footballing history, only outshone by the men’s victory of 1966.

But this is just the latest development in a bigger story: one that suggests the women’s game is finally being taken seriously. In 2011, the FA created its Women’s Super League (WSL), and for the first time in England women footballers started making a living from their sport. Last season, an audacious volley scored by Ireland’s Stephanie Roche was runner-up in Fifa’s world goal of the season. The BBC now has a television show dedicated to the WSL, while BT Sport screens live matches. And today, the women’s FA Cup final will be held at Wembley for the first time.

The Manchester City Academy is umbilically linked to the Etihad by a bridge, but it could not be more different from Britain’s old-fashioned, beaten-up football stadiums. It feels more like the home to a high-end global corporate. And in a way it is.

England and Manchester City players Lucy Bronze, Steph Houghton and Toni Duggan. Photograph: Shamil Tanna for the Guardian

Above the reception of City Football Academy HQ hangs a series of crests to remind you that Manchester City is, well, not just Manchester City – there is now a family of clubs that belong to the franchise: New York City FC, Melbourne City FC and the part-owned Japanese club Yokohama F Marinos. Walk a few steps farther, and you come across a smart glass cabinet displaying two mannequins in Manchester City shirts. One is male, and on the back of the shirt is written Kun Agüero (City’s star forward and last season’s top scorer in the Premier League). The other mannequin is female, and on the back is Steph Houghton. Houghton is the City and England captain, an inspirational defender who played a huge part in England’s success at the World Cup.

Down in the club gym, the women weight-train. Five of the England squad are here – Houghton, goalkeeper Karen Bardsley, right-back Lucy Bronze, midfielder Jill Scott, forward Toni Duggan. If you want a symbol of how quickly the women’s game is changing, this is it. Two years ago they were all at different clubs, and City Women didn’t exist. Now MCWFC is fully integrated into Manchester City – indeed, the women train regularly with the under-18 boys. I’m watching them work out from a level above, and their camaraderie is striking. They applaud when a player lifts a heavy weight, help each other with stretches, high-five and work, work, work.

After training, three of City’s England stars join me in an office looking out over the training pitches and across to the stadium. Close up, all three have the glow of elite athletes. Their athleticism isn’t always recognised. Spectators are so used to the men’s game, the women are often compared unfavourably, dismissed as slower, weaker, less physical. Yet at the World Cup, tackles were flying in from all angles. In the final against Japan, America’s Carli Lloyd scored a goal from the halfway line – an astonishing achievement in any game.

Toni Duggan, 24, is a whippet-like winger, as quick with her banter as with her feet. It’s only a week since she returned from the World Cup in Canada, and she is buzzing. “It was incredible. Amazing. Best experience I’ve had.”

Like nearly all of today’s professional women footballers, Duggan started playing with boys – for an under-eight team known as the Jellytots. “I was just one of the lads. There were no girl teams.” Her mother and grandad were supportive, she says, but her brothers gave her a hard time. “They would skit me, take the piss. They’d say women can’t play football. They called me Golden Balls.”

She says it must have been hard for them. “They got a lot of stick from their mates, who’d say I was better than them. They were jealous that they would knock for me to play football before they’d knock for them.”

Now, she says, her brothers couldn’t be more proud. “My older brother came out to Canada, stayed for the whole tournament, and was my biggest fan. As they’ve got older, they’ve realised how much I’ve achieved.”

Duggan signed for Everton girls when she was 11, but that meant something entirely different from signing for Everton boys. There were no contracts, or promises of a future. Many professional clubs had girls’ teams, but they were just a means of playing regular football and pursuing a hobby. When Duggan broke into the Everton first team, she was working full time for a five-a-side football centre, but was determined to make a living from playing. While most women players were completing degrees and making sure they were equipped for the future, Duggan dropped out of college. “I used to look at my team-mates like Lindsay Johnson and Rachel Brown, who were full-time teachers and trained in the night. I was like, ‘I’m not going to do that.’ I always believed I’d go full time.”

Jill Scott, the City midfielder who never stopped running for England in the World Cup, played alongside Duggan at Everton. She is 28, only four years older than Duggan, but one of the old school. She studied sports science at Loughborough University, worked as a coach by day, trained by night and played at the weekend. Although she moved from Sunderland to Everton, she was still living and working in the north-east. So, three times a week, she would finish her shift as a coach in Gateshead, drive to Liverpool for evening training and drive back the same night.

Jill Scott: ‘I always find Sepp Blatter’s statement about shorts ironic, because at the time we wanted tighter kit. We had to play in men’s baggy kit. We wanted women’s fitted kit.’ Hair and makeup: Samantha Parker at PHA. Photograph: Shamil Tanna for the Guardian

How exhausted was she? “It was bad, yeah. When I look back at pictures, I looked ill. I wasn’t eating. I relied on Red Bull a lot.” But, she says, she is one of the lucky ones. “There were girls who did that throughout their career and never got this opportunity of playing full time. Some girls completely missed the boat.”

Both Scott and Duggan talk about how the WSL has made women’s football more competitive. In the old days, there were a few good teams, lots of lousy teams and one great one, Arsenal. There were 12 teams in the top league, but the FA decided that if quality was to improve, they would have to prune the number to eight. “When I started, you’d win like 12-0, 15-0,” Duggan says. “It was just Arsenal, Everton and Doncaster Belles. You’d play Arsenal and get beat 5-0.”

They love the fact that the league is now so unpredictable; anything could happen in the WSL. Last season, Liverpool started the final day in third place behind Chelsea and Birmingham City, but clinched the title with a 3-0 victory over Bristol Academy.

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While Wayne Rooney is on an estimated £300,000 a week, the best-paid women in England now earn around £50,000-£60,000 a year, with bonuses and sponsorships taken into account. Players on a central contract with England earn the most, and are in effect jointly owned by club and country. They are paid £20,000 by England, and around the same again by their clubs. Most men who play for England usually give their international fee to charity – it is chicken feed compared with their wages.

The WSL is still having teething problems, not least that the tiny 14-game season (dragged out between March and October) in the top division leaves players and fans frustrated. Players want it extended, perhaps by having teams play each other four times a season rather than twice. “We want to be playing religiously every week, so fans can keep up to date with it,” Duggan says. “Also, as players, you want to keep fit.”

Neither Duggan nor Scott believes that the WSL could become the billion-pound industry the Premier League is, and they say they are happy with what they are paid. But if they were offered that kind of money? “Yeah, I’d take it tomorrow, course I would,” Duggan says. “Any of us would. You’ve got to remember women’s football is in its early days.”

What would be a fair wage in five years’ time? “Getting what Raheem’s being paid.” Duggan giggles. She’s talking about Raheem Sterling, City’s new signing, earning an estimated £200,000 a week and by no means the top earner at the club.

It used to make Scott laugh when she went into schools and children would ask whether she drove a Ferrari or Porsche. At the time, she says, she was actually paying to play. Does she mean she took holidays from work to play for England? Oh, no, she says, it was worse than that. “We literally had to pay to play. I had to pay for my petrol, everything.”

Karen Bardsley, City and England goalkeeper, says she can’t understand the attitude to women footballers in England. She grew up in America, where American football and baseball are the leading male sports, and more girls than boys play football (soccer) at school. “Just look on Twitter. This is what I find difficult to accept,” she says. “Comments like, ‘You belong in the kitchen.’ Growing up in the States we were empowered to go and be strong women.”

Even those who champion women’s football have been known to patronise the players on social media. Just after England returned from Canada with their bronze medal, the FA tweeted, “Our Lionesses go back to being mothers, partners and daughters today, but they have taken on another title – heroes.” But these are the kind of comments women players are used to. In 2004, Sepp Blatter, the disgraced president of Fifa, commented that women would attract more fans if they wore skimpier kits. “They could, for example, have tighter shorts,” he said.

“I always find that statement quite ironic, because at the time we wanted tighter kit,” Scott says. “We had to play in men’s baggy kit. We wanted women’s fitted kit.”

Now they have their own kit, their own stadium, and a £200m home. Investment in the women’s game is a hard-headed business decision, as Gavin Makel, head of women’s football at City, tells me. “We want to be the biggest women’s team in the world, just as the men’s want to be the biggest men’s team in the world. We’re not going to shy away from that.” It’s about the sums as much as anything. If City are to have any hope of becoming the biggest club in the world, they need to attract more female support. “Two or three years ago, you [would] look at our season card sales and only 10-15% were female. We wanted to reach out to a female fan base, and we felt we couldn’t do that if we didn’t have a women’s team.”

A few days after visiting City, I talk to Chelsea and England forward Eniola Aluko. She is not a happy woman. Her Chelsea team has just been hammered 4-0 by high-flying Sunderland. “It was not a good weekend,” she says.

Aluko is unusual in two respects. Both she and her brother, Hull City’s Sone Aluko, are professional footballers, and she has a first-class honours degree in law. She and Sone played together when they were small. They grew up in Birmingham with Nigerian parents, and Aluko says that it’s only now she realises why she started playing the game. “It was an easy way to be accepted in the group. There were so many boys, and as a girl I wanted to keep playing with those boys, and the best way to do that was to play football.”

Eniola and Sone’s football soon took different paths. At 11, she was approached to play for a girl’s team, Leafield Athletic Ladies, which provided regular football but no hint of a career. Meanwhile, at the age of eight, her brother was scouted for Birmingham City. “It was a professional setup with a player pathway. For me, there wasn’t a player pathway. So I couldn’t say, right, if I get into the under-15s for Leafield, then I can jump into the senior team and then into the England team.”

Did that upset her? “It’s made me what I am today,” she says. “So there’s no envy. I had to play for the love of the game instead of money, and it gives you a different outlook – it makes you really enjoy what you’re doing. I’m grateful for that. I’ve had to go to uni and get a professional degree and have something to fall back on, because football doesn’t give you that security.” In some ways, she suggests, she is in a stronger position than Sone, who gave up studying for football. It’s only now that he has begun to think about life after he retires. “A lot of the men can’t have a hinterland, because the club expects so much of them and, commercially, they have so many other demands on them.”

Not all of England’s women footballers have something to fall back on, however. With 146 caps, Fara Williams has played football for England more times than any man or woman. She scored the winning goal against Germany in the World Cup third place play-off, and is joint second-highest goal scorer for England women with 40 goals. In short, she’s a national hero. And last season she won the WSL with Liverpool. Yet it is hard to imagine that any professional footballer has had a rougher ride to the top.

Eniola Aluko, Chelsea and England: ‘I play for the love of the game, not for money. It gives you a different outlook.’ Photograph: Shamil Tanna for the Guardian

Williams was homeless for six years, moving back and forth between hostels and the streets. Throughout, she was playing for England and working as a coach. Somehow, she hid her situation from her team-mates. It was only when former England manager Hope Powell asked her explicitly whether she had anywhere to live that she confessed she was homeless. Last year, she spoke for the first time about her experience of living rough; how she talked to herself and made loud noises when she was on the streets so people would think she was mad and not approach her; how she never smiled at anybody in all her time in hostels.

Despite this, getting paid for playing football was not a priority for Williams. “I was never motivated by money,” she says. “I wanted to be an FA Cup finalist, I wanted to walk up the steps at Wembley. I wanted to win the league. I still only ever want to win trophies. No matter what happens to our game, money won’t be a motivation for me.”

Williams is pleased with the progress the game has made, but is adamant that it should not mirror the men’s Premier League. It would lose its purity, she says. “I certainly believe we’ve worked hard enough to earn a decent salary, but I wouldn’t like to see ours go as far as that. I’ve always worked, and will always work after I finish playing. That’s how I’ve been brought up. Everybody has to work for a living.”

Have her struggles made her stronger today? “Yes. Going through difficult times makes you appreciate the good times. I remember where I come from, I remember my background, not just when I was homeless but growing up struggling, my mum being a single mum with four kids.” For nine years, Williams and her mother were estranged. In 2011, after watching her playing for England, her mother got back in touch. Now, she says, their relationship is worth more than any riches football could offer. “She came out for the Japan and Germany games, and I scored in both. I’ve been close to her for the past few years now, and it was great that she could finally see me in a major tournament.”

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Walk along Wembley Way at the moment, and you would be forgiven for thinking that football is exclusively a woman’s game. Neon signs flash special offers for today’s FA Cup final between Chelsea and Notts County, Sport England’s campaign #thisgirlcan is everywhere: “I kick balls. Deal with it”; “I jiggle therefore I can.” Even the football shirts on display are emblazoned with the names of England’s female stars.

Wembley is the FA’s headquarters, and in one of the stadium’s restaurants I meet the FA’s Director of the National Game and Women’s Football, Kelly Simmons, who is invigorated by the World Cup, but cautious. The work has only just begun, she says. “Research shows that dads are less likely to encourage their daughters to play [as they are their sons], even when they want to play. Girls are still concerned about peer pressure and four in five fathers think it’s not really a sport for girls to play.” She recently visited America, and understood what was so different. “They don’t have the history in men’s football that we have.”

Despite the fact that professional women’s football is in its infancy in the UK, it goes back to the late 19th century, when an English team travelled to Edinburgh in May 1881 to play a series of games against a Scottish side. Around the time of the first world war, it became huge. In 1920, Dick Kerr’s Ladies and St Helen’s Ladies played in front of 53,000 at Everton’s Goodison Park. A year later, the FA banned women from playing on professional grounds. The ban lasted 50 years, and the women’s game as good as disappeared. It was only after the Football Association was ordered by Uefa to lift its restrictions on the playing rights of women that the game re-emerged, and it was another 12 years before the WFA was affiliated to the FA, in 1983.

In 1993, soon after Simmons joined the FA, research showed there were only 80 girls’ teams in the country. Now there are more than 5,000. Simmons quotes with delight Uefa’s description of England’s WSL as “the most competitive league in Europe”. In 2014, a second division was introduced to the WSL, and the top league became WSL1.

Another change she has overseen is the introduction of maternity rights, following a campaign led by Chelsea and England midfielder Katie Chapman, who spent time out of the game after having children. “We’ve now got a maternity policy linked to the England central contract.” (The reality is that most professional female footballers delay having a baby until their careers are over, and Chapman says childcare support could still be improved.)

Simmons is particularly pleased that all but one of the current England squad are professional, and Claire Rafferty has an outside job only by choice: she works in the City, where she earns far more money than she can make through football.

The most important change that still has to be made, Simmons says, is psychological: “We’ve got to stop comparing the women’s game with the men’s. They are entirely different.”

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Alex Scott asks to meet at Starbucks in London Colney, Hertfordshire, close to where Arsenal train. The right-back is England’s second most capped player, with 127 caps. When I arrive, she is sitting next to another Arsenal player, Irish goalkeeper Emma Byrne, who is working on her laptop. Soon they are joined by a third player, Scottish international Emma Mitchell. They all look smart in their crested tracksuit, and it seems incongruous for them to be at this remote out-of-town shopping mall in the middle of the afternoon. Scott is passing the time reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray.

She grew up in Poplar, east London, and when her mother used to tell friends that Alex was going to be a footballer, they would laugh and tell her she’d grow out of it. If young Alex needed a new pair of boots, her mother put in the over-time to make sure she got them.

She signed for Arsenal at the age of eight. “It was the club of my dreams and I got the chance to go to Highbury and train. It gave me the out from east London, a focus, going up to train twice a week. I used to get the 277 bus up to Highbury by myself, and just walking in there…” She trails off.

The club gave her something else equally important. “Arsenal became like a second family. My dad had moved away and Vic Akers, who was the manager, took me under his wing and became a father figure. I had my security in the football club.”

What did she do for money? “Vic gave us a job in the Arsenal laundry,” she points to Byrne. “So we could earn some cash and play football at the same time. We were scrubbers! Doing the first team men’s kit.”

What did they earn? “Basically nothing, but it was pocket money.” In those days, Arsenal was way ahead of the other women’s clubs. They even paid their players match fees – £100 a pop. “Back then, £100 was a big thing. And with the jobs in the laundry, we could get by.”

Alex Scott: ‘At Arsenal we have to wait around to train in the evening when all the men have gone. It’s so frustrating.’ Photograph: Shamil Tanna for the Guardian

This was the era when Arsenal reigned supreme. In 2007, they won the quadruple: every trophy they were competing for, including the UEFA Women’s Cup. Scott left to play at Birmingham City and in America, but she always returned to Arsenal – this is her third stint, and she has now played well over 200 games for the club.

At 31, Scott is edging towards the end of her playing days, and considering her options. “Me and Emma [Byrne] have just finished our journalism degrees.” Scott has already written columns for the Independent and the Morning Star (though she admits she isn’t a true lefty).

We talk about the appeal of the women’s game and, as with everybody I have spoken to, she cites the same factors: it’s cheap, entertaining, sporting, the quality is high, the fans have an intimate relationship with the players, who stay behind after the match until every last selfie has been taken. That intimacy, she says, is the USP of women’s football – something the men couldn’t have even if they wanted to, because of the scale of their game. “I remember I was that girl at Highbury waiting for Ian Wright, and I know how I felt when he’d drive off in his car and sometimes didn’t see me. I don’t want people come to our games and have that feeling.”

Scott is a life force, exuding can-do energy. There’s one thing that confuses me, though. Why did she want to meet at the Starbucks in an out-of-town shopping mall? “Because we’re always here.” What does she mean? “We’re here waiting for the men to finish their training. We’ve got the same facilities, but we have to wait until they’re finished. And it is so frustrating.”

And suddenly Scott really does vent that frustration. “We were winning everything, we were paying people first of all, and now all the investment has gone into women’s football and Arsenal has stood still.” she says. “Everybody overtook us and now we are playing catch-up. City have set the standard by being professional. All their players are in every day, the woman’s stadium they’ve got – they’re doing everything like the men are doing, and that’s how it should be. Professionalism. They are raising the bar, while we’re out here, waiting around now to train in the evening when all the men have gone. It’s so frustrating.”

Back at Manchester City, England captain Steph Houghton, the first woman to appear on the cover of Shoot magazine, explains why she transferred from Arsenal. “It was the chance to be a professional footballer.” At Arsenal, she says, they were training two or three times a week, in the evenings. “What we mean by professional is you’re in every day, Monday to Saturday, train all week and have one rest day. My draw was to be able to train in the morning and be finished by 3-4pm, and the night time’s mine. But the chance to play in a stadium like this is also a massive draw.”

Houghton is the only footballer I’ve met who played with girls from the start – her cousin and best friend were both keen footballers. Her father, a former semi-professional, encouraged them to play. “He was a centre half, too, actually.” She smiles. “He’s nastier than me, though. Bigger tackles.”

Houghton has a good sense of humour, but also a fierce ambition. Like a number of the women in the England squad, she got a degree in sports science. Has she ever totted up the number of degrees in the England squad? “There were a lot who were at Loughborough together. I think we counted 12 or 13 who had been there.”

City’s management tell me that the under-18 boys idolise the women, not only because of what they have achieved, but how they’ve achieved it. I ask Houghton why she thinks they are role models for the boys. “We’ve had to graft to get where we are today,” she says. “We’ve had to pay to play, we’ve had to borrow kit, we’ve had to train on a Friday night. Maybe a lot of boys, given that opportunity, would slip away. Whereas we’ve had the mentality to go, ‘I really want this. I’m going to show that I can do this.’ Now, we are one of the most professional teams here, in how we train, how we prepare, how we recover, how we eat, and generally how we just walk around the place.”

The women help keep the boys level-headed, she says. “It is important that they keep their feet on the ground and we’re not afraid to tell them, ‘Just get on with your programme, stop messing about.’” She pauses. “I’m not saying they mess around all the time.”

Like the other women, Houghton believes it is the intimacy of the women’s game that makes it so special. But unlike them, she is not worried about becoming more removed from the fans, if that’s the price of success. “That would only be natural,” she says. “That’s something we have to accept, and it’s not something that would really bother us as players. We’d love to be playing to five or six thousand.” And if she hasn’t got time to stop for pictures in the future, that will be a good sign? “Yes, that would be very healthy,” she says. “At the end of the day, you’ve got a job to do and that’s playing football.”