Issue
December 2020 33 articles indexed
Read She Kicks issue 64 in full
Column / Opinion p.3
Jen O'Neill opens by saying she has just deleted a longer piece about the pandemic, and then writes it anyway. Tiered restrictions and changing travel protocols have hit participation and competitions at every level,…
News pp.4–5
Beverly Priestman leaves the England set-up to become head coach of Canada, where she had previously run the youth programmes, while Tony Gustavsson takes charge of the Matildas until 2024 and Melissa Phillips steps…
Other p.4
A dated listing of the fixtures and draws for the closing weeks of 2020, published as the calendar continued to be rebuilt around the pandemic. It opens with the delayed 2019-20 Vitality Women's FA…
Poster p.6
A full-page poster of Pernille Harder in the Chelsea shirt, captioned as the 2019/20 UEFA Women's Player of the Year. She won the award for a season played at Wolfsburg, where she reached a…
Other p.7
Elisha Sulola started playing at five for Edmonton Eagles Barsulola FC, the grassroots boys' club her father set up for youngsters in the community, and stayed until Tottenham picked her up at twelve. Throughout,…
News pp.8–9
England, hosts and therefore without qualifiers, had their October friendly in Germany cancelled and a December date with Norway called off too, so Phil Neville used extended September and October camps to run competitive…
Column / Opinion p.10
Writing from inside England's second national lockdown, Wales' record scorer is glad the WSL and Championship were allowed to continue and does not hide her disappointment that everything from the FA Women's National League…
Match report pp.12–13
The fiftieth Women's FA Cup final, delayed by the pandemic and played before an empty Wembley, still produced a contest that took 120 minutes to settle. Sam Mewis rose to head in Alex Greenwood's…
Other pp.14–15
Twelve photographs from the first two months of the 2020-21 Barclays FA Women's Super League, the season the summer's transfer window had reshaped. Alanna Kennedy helps Alex Morgan up at Tottenham; Sam Kerr is…
Run-of-page feature pp.16–17
When Vivianne Miedema scored against Tottenham in October she went into the record books. She had begun the day level with Nikita Parris on 49 goals at the top of the FA Women's Super…
Column / Opinion p.19
Writing during England's second lockdown, Tottenham's defender counts herself fortunate to be a professional still training and playing, and says that a few matches in it has really hit home how much the players…
Interview pp.20–49
Casey Stoney says she does not miss playing, which she takes as proof she retired at the right moment - the one exception being a day pitchside at Wembley as an FA Cup pundit.…
Interview pp.26–27
Scotland's captain, on loan at Birmingham City from Utah Royals and the spine of Carla Ward's stubborn defence, takes the magazine's quickfire questionnaire. She describes herself as a player who loves having the ball…
Cover feature pp.28–31
France's centre-forward joined Everton on a three-year deal in August and scored the Wembley equaliser that sent the FA Cup final to extra time. Speaking through the club's interpreter, she credits her compatriot Maeva…
Other p.33
Eight photographs from the first two months of the 2020-21 FA Women's Championship. Liverpool's Rinsola Babajide and Charlton's Shauna Vassell appear, in the caption's word, mesmerised; Blackburn Rovers warm up; Sheffield United's Katie Wilkinson…
Interview pp.34–35
The first instalment of a new Championship slot, an interview of two halves - five questions about the player, five about the dressing room. Ashleigh Plumptre is a lifelong Leicester supporter and a Centre…
Poster pp.36–37
A double-page poster of Manchester City celebrating the 2019-20 Vitality Women's FA Cup, won at an empty Wembley on 1 November 2020 after extra time against Everton. It was the club's second consecutive FA…
Interview pp.40–42
The first Indian woman to sign a professional contract overseas arrived in Glasgow for a week-long trial in late 2019 and remembers mostly the cold, the wind and the rain - and wanting to…
Column / Opinion p.43
Four games into a delayed season Hibernian have won two and lost two, which their captain calls unprecedented. Wins over Spartans and Motherwell brought momentum before back-to-back defeats to Rangers and Glasgow City, both…
Run-of-page feature pp.44–48
Glenn Moore opens with a piece of history nobody noticed happening: 1. FFC Frankfurt's 2015 Champions League win, the last a standalone club will take. In 2015 half the quarter-finalists were independent; by August…
Run-of-page feature pp.50–51
Katie Webb plays right-back for Newmarket Town on a Sunday afternoon and spends every other day at Racefield Stables, and a week before this interview she rode her first winner as a professional jockey…
Run-of-page feature pp.52–53
Jessica Ziu scored twice in an Irish national under-16 final at thirteen and has been making headlines since. She made her senior FAI Women's National League debut in the week of her sixteenth birthday,…
Interview pp.54–55
Chelsea's goalkeeper takes the magazine's regular goalkeepers' questionnaire and gives an unusually frank account of how she got there. She played as a striker for years and switched, by her own admission, because she…
Interview pp.56–59
Fern Whelan's playing career was shaped by injury, but the heights she reached cannot be taken away: cup wins, England caps, individual honours and, she suggests, the bonds that mattered most. She was named…
Interview pp.60–61
Reading's left-sided player marked her senior Wales debut at Newport by heading in the fourth goal against the Faroe Islands, and was interviewed in the changing room afterwards by Jess Fishlock in the character…
Interview pp.61–63
The magazine gets two players for the price of one as the Workington-born twins Steffi and Rio Hardy, of the Cypriot champions Apollon, talk food. Steffi cannot abide seafood; Rio cannot watch anybody eat…
Interview p.62
Liverpool's England Under-19 midfielder had just passed her driving test when the magazine turned up with its car questionnaire. As a child her taxi service was her nan and her dad, whom she calls…
Interview p.63
Tottenham's defender, three years in American college football behind her and a Scotland debut a year old, submits to a survey of her boots and shirts. Her first were the smallest pair of black…
Interview pp.64–66
Eight-year-old Abigail Edwards, who plays for a boys' team and a girls' team and wants to be a defender and a captain for England, puts six questions - or seven, the magazine admits -…
Other p.66
The sixth consecutive instalment of Saving Grace, the strip about a young, football-mad goalkeeper drawn by the magazine's regular cartoonist Steve English. It runs along the foot of the Little Kicks page, this issue…
Poster p.67
A full-page poster of Wendie Renard, taken as she celebrates with the UEFA Women's Champions League trophy and a winner's medal, with a factfile running down the side. Born in Schoelcher on Martinique in…
Other p.68
Maria-May Millington is twelve, based in Derby, and answers to Mimi or, on the pitch, Safehands - or, at full length, MimisafehandsMillington. She has recently secured a place with the Derby regional talent club's…
Other p.70
The issue's puzzle page runs the two games it ran last time, with the pandemic still supplying the material. Spot the Difference uses the Manchester City squad celebrating the Women's FA Cup at an…
