Lotte Wubben-Moy: Why girls must be offered football in PE

Her voice still croaky from the wild celebrations at Wembley, Lotte Wubben-Moy makes no attempt to hide the after-effects of a whirlwind week. “I hope it doesn’t calm down for the next 100 years,” she grins. “I’m still on cloud nine.”

The England and Arsenal centre-back was sitting on the coach returning from the dizzying Euro 2022 celebrations in Trafalgar Square last Monday when, inspired by a sea of fans screaming and dancing in front the National Portrait Gallery, she felt compelled to act.

It was all very well talking up the Lionesses as the history-makers and the heroines who had finally brought football home, but Wubben-Moy wanted more. She was determined, as she puts it, to “leave a legacy beyond the intangible words”.

So she approached Leah Williamson, the England captain, and Sue Campbell, the director of women’s football at the Football Association, and told them of her plan: to write an open letter to Tory leadership hopefuls Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, demanding they make football available to girls in school PE – a luxury afforded to only 63 per cent of schoolgirls. Their European Championship triumph, the team would warn, must be “only the beginning” of inspiring the next generation.

'It's an inequality that should be illegal'

“I’d had the idea before and I’d been thinking about it a lot, so I went to the team and was like, ‘We need to do something about this’,” Wubben-Moy says. “I’m a London girl, I don’t know whether being in London, feeling the energy of the city, feeling the energy of the people that we’d been celebrating and dancing in front of [helped]. I was like, ‘Let’s go’.

“Everyone was fully on board. It’s an inequality which should be illegal. But we’re at a stage where we’re having to put it in a letter to address the Government about it.”

Truss and Sunak have acknowledged the Lionesses’ letter, although the pair are yet to formally commit to meeting the team’s plea. Truss has vowed to “investigate what prevents schools from delivering the recommended minimum two hours of PE per week” while Sunak pledged to “tighten accountability”.

In a more encouraging sign that they are being taken seriously, James Cleverly, the Education Secretary, has invited Wubben-Moy to Downing Street to discuss the next steps.

'Football has come a long way... but it's still got so far to go'

In truth, there is no better spokesperson to advocate on behalf of the Lionesses than Wubben-Moy, who has become an outlier on the women’s professional scene.

At a time when the nation is basking in Euros fever – tickets for the Lionesses’ next Wembley fixture against world champions the United States in October sold out in less than 24 hours last week – the mature 23-year-old is determined to not get lost in the hype. She knows the challenges thousands of girls up and down the country still face in accessing football at school.

“Like many of the girls in the team, I had to forge my way into playing football,” says Wubben-Moy, her voice hardening. “I had full access to football on the streets in London. I had really positive experiences playing with boys and being accepted as the player I was rather than the gender I was.

“But at school, I definitely had to forge my way. I had to make a girls team at my school, because there wasn’t one. I’ve listened to stories from Ellen White, who was banned from playing football at school. Some of the stories are mad. Football has come a long way since, but it’s still got so far to go – there’s so many barriers to young girls being involved in football, societal and psychological.”

The latter point is particularly pertinent. According to research by Venus, which has launched a Move Your Skin campaign for which Wubben-Moy is an ambassador, a third of women do not play sport because of insecurities over the way their skin looks. Of the 2,000 UK women aged 18-45 surveyed, scars, bumps, cellulite, cuts and hairs were reported as major barriers for women in sport.

It is why Wubben-Moy, who admits to having had her own body image struggles growing up, is motivated to evangelise her sport more than ever. During the Euros, she kept a doodle diary of illustrations documenting some of the iconic moments of the Lionesses’ tournament, such as Alessia Russo’s audacious backheel during England’s semi-final win over Sweden and Georgia Stanway’s screamer against Spain. Her doodling even made its way onto her brand new pair of Nike Air Force Ones.

“My original idea was just a way of communicating the journey to younger kids,” Wubben-Moy says. Although she did not play a single minute of the Lionesses’ victorious Euros campaign, Wubben-Moy’s positive outlook is testament to the winning mentality that England manager Sarina Wiegman instilled in her group of players.

As brands rush to snap up the Lionesses and share in their success, this is a player whose feet remain firmly on the ground. Wubben-Moy’s intuitive intervention has already kicked down doors for future generations of little girls who, unlike so many of those before them, can start dreaming of a future with football.