The She Kicks Locker Room: Kit Check Special with Steph Houghton (Manchester City)

The Locker Room’s kit slot, expanded into a two-page special with the Manchester City captain at the end of a season lost to two long spells of rehabilitation after injury and an operation – and, as the standfirst puts it, having just run out of time to make the EUROs squad, though not for want of focus or hard work. She had missed the 2007 World Cup and EURO 2009 the same way as a younger player, before going on to 121 caps and seven major tournament finals, four of them as captain. Between the questions about her first Diadora boots and her shirt collection, the piece becomes a tour of those tournaments: watching back Fara Williams’s penalty in the 2015 bronze-medal match, and remembering the quarter-final against Canada far better.