Suckers For Nostalgia (Editor’s Letter)

Jen O’Neill opens 2020 by listing attendances rather than results: 77,768 at Wembley, 38,262 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, 23,500 at Anfield, and further down the pyramid 2,109 for Derby County against Nottingham Forest. Average WSL attendance, she notes, is up 45 per cent on the season. She had meant to reflect on the decade, but says the changes of the past few months alone are enough to send her head spinning. Instead she reaches for the first issue of She Kicks, from December 2009, and finds Arsenal as the team to beat, Eniola Aluko at St Louis in the WPS, and one of Lucy Bronze’s first big interviews after winning the NCAA College Cup with North Carolina. She Kicks, she notes, is entering its fourth decade.