There is a gulf in funding for girls’ and women’s football between the two countries but the FA plans to narrow it

“The last Fifa World Cup was a remarkable achievement but we are setting an even more ambitious target for 2023. To achieve this we will be working tirelessly with the clubs in the FA Women’s Super League to create a vision for the women’s game that is mutually supportive and will be the envy of the world.”

That was the Football Association’s head of women’s football, Sue Campbell. She was not speaking after England’s defeat by the USA in Lyon but two years ago, at Wembley. In March 2017 the FA launched its flagship Gameplan for Growth for the women’s game. It was a turning point, with the chief executive Martin Glenn opening by apologising on behalf of the FA for the 50-year ban that excluded women’s teams from association-affiliated grounds.

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The plan had three key targets from 2017 to 2020: to double participation, double attendances and show consistent success on a world stage. That third ambition was broken into two parts: to be “within the top three countries across all age groups” and have the “potential to win the 2023 Fifa World Cup”.

This was before Phil Neville; before the Barclays Women’s Super League sponsorship; before the restructure and professional top tier. If two years is a long time in football, it is even longer in women’s football.

So although the defeat in France is still raw, it is important to reflect on the journey that started in 2017. No one goes to a World Cup not wanting to win but this year’s tournament was never the gold goal set out by the FA; it was considered too soon. That the Lionesses, while being outplayed, lost the semi-final by the finest of margins is a testament to how rapidly things have changed.

You could argue that Neville’s tactics were wrong, that he shuffled his pack a little too much, that switching the penalty-taker was a mistake, that breaking up the Lucy Bronze and Nikita Parris right-wing tag team was an error, that Millie Bright is not equipped to pass out from the back, and that he perhaps naively tried to out-tactic the masters of game management. But ultimately England were outclassed and it is hard to see how any of the alternate starting XIs would have dealt with the speed and skill of the USA players in transition to much greater effect.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Phil Neville may have got his tactics wrong against the USA but the issues run far deeper. Photograph: Javier García/BPI/Rex/Shutterstock

You could also argue that the difference was mentality. The USA are winners. They even have a chant for it – the clumsy “we believe that we will win” rings out at every match.

However, the context to this discussion is deeper than all that. Underpinning the US women’s national team is a domestic game and education system that give them a talent pool and competitive winning environment that other nations can only dream of.

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The new Fifa Women’s Football Survey shows there are 120,557 female players registered in England (76,625 under-18). In the US, though, there are 1.6 million formally registered players and it is estimated that 9.5 million girls and women play organised football (with those in the National Collegiate Athletic Association and/or high school system not necessarily formally registered with US Soccer).

As an aside, of teams that made the World Cup’s last eight, seven were from the nine countries listed as having more than 100,000 registered players (only Canada and Australia did not make the quarter-finals from that list, while Italy bucked the trend).

Women’s football in the US has benefited from a 1972 law, known as Title IX, which prohibits discrimination from any education programme or activity that receives federal financial assistance. Colleges and schools wanting to spend big on their men’s sport had to fund programmes for women equally. The US has 21,065 licensed female coaches, 12% of their total. In England it is 3,520 (5%), the most of any European country, narrowly ahead of Germany on 3,406.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Portland Thorns play a NWSL game against Chicago Red Stars in June, watched by a crowd of 19,461. Photograph: Craig Mitchelldyer/isiphotos.com

Where we have girls forced to play in boys’ teams, or to travel miles to join girls’ teams, and a lower competitive level because there are so few players, the US has girls training and playing competitively from childhood through to the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). Though the WSL may be catching up and possibly overtaking it, the deep foundations underpinning the sport keep the Americans miles ahead.

They know it. That is not arrogance, it is pride. Pride in a system that has delivered.

Campbell summed it up after England were beaten by the USA. “These women came through their schools with soccer,” she said. “In some schools in America they get soccer every day of the week. In some of our schools we’re lucky if they get a few hours a week. You can’t start suddenly developing this three-quarters of the way through their development. You have to start at the foundation stage. Until we get the foundations right we are going to be playing catch-up.”

There is plenty not to like about women’s football in America. It is very much a white middle-class sport, you have to pay to play outside school, excluding those from the most vulnerable backgrounds, but the principles of Title IX and the college system should be celebrated and protected.

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In England growth is small but significant. There was an increase in registered teams of 1,774 in the 12 months to March 2019, to 11,088. Last year the Under-20s won a World Cup bronze. The senior side have reached two more major semi-finals since the Gameplan for Growth was launched. There is a promise to give every girl the chance to play football in school.

“We’re working on [grassroots] and making great strides,” Neville said after the semi-final. “That takes four or five years and we’re 18 months into that.”