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It's the international break! Let's get it. When this lands in your inbox, you might be settling down to watch Leah Williamson return to international football for the first time in a year 🥺 ....or licking your lips at the prospect of opposite captain Katie McCabe doing her utmost to spoil it for her Arsenal teammate.
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Either way, I'm here with a fresh helping of women's football stuff from all over the United Kingdom, including:
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- a brand new word to add to your football vocabulary
- the lyrics to an offensive chant
- a bit about Welsh legend Jess Fishlock
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Jealous all over the world
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Alessia Russo is in a tough spot. She played her socks off against Sweden on Friday night, a glimmer of hope on a scary night of largely ineffective Lionessing. Her 24th-minute opener promised a box office occasion in which England would retrieve the trust of their fans, traumatised by the rug-pull of the Nations League. But this isn't July 2022 and England might be regularly filling up Wembley, but they're not pulling out the performances the expectant fans want.
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Still, how Sarina Wiegman gets round the fact that all of England's opponents have worked out how to keep Keira Walsh out of the game pales next to the problem facing Ms Alessia Russo who made the mistake of doing THIS after she gave the Lionesses the lead on Friday:
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Yep, that's right, she's accepting a tap on the head and a hug from Arsenal and England teammate-turned-bestie Lotte Wubben-Moy!!
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'Hang on, what do you mean, bestie?'
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Well, quite. Where does Ella Toone fit into all of this? Last week, Toone went on the Saving Grace podcast to give her thoughts on the friendship which has blossomed since Russo left Toone behind for new horizons last summer as she swapped Manchester United for Arsenal.
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"Less left to Arsenal, then when we played Arsenal, they were chanting 'Lotte and Lessi Russo," she said, leaving a suitably dramatic pause before clarifying, "and it wasn't me."
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"...WHAT?" the horrified podcast host said.
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"Do you know what I mean? They changed my name out. I was like, 'oh'. That hurt," Toone admitted.
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Sung to the tune of Status Quo's Rockin' all over the World, the chant formerly incorporated 'Tooney' when she and Less were rockin' all over Manchester and the Euros together, feeling like life would always be sweet, that they'd be young forever.
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But since Tooney scored the opener on 31/7, her international career has never been the same again, while Russo's performances for England keep getting better. Russo's won the hearts of a new domestic fanbase, too, while Tooney struggles on in front of fans who are too busy hating on failing Man Utd manager Marc Skinner to love her the way she deserves to be loved.
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That Arsenal should also be home to an old flame of Russo's only makes things worse. Russo and Wubben-Moy go way back, having spread their little footballing wings together over in North Carolina, playing college soccer for the same 'Tar Heels' that Lucy Bronze and Sarina Wiegman once represented.
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Tooney has moved on, it seems, doing her utmost to form bestie-ships with Man Utd teammates Millie Turner and Maya Le Tissier. But it's just not the same, and she clearly has no qualms letting Russo know how she feels.
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Looking for a way out of the mess, Russo's latest effort to appease Elluh looks like this:
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Note, crucially, this is not A bestie. This is THE ONE AND ONLY. Have that, Lotte.
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Football is full of cliches and jargon, words which become tired through overuse and phrases which don't really make sense but you learn to understand by prolific exposure. It's nice, then, when someone finds a fresh way to describe an event which has happened thousands of times throughout football history.
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Usually goal frames are struck or the woodwork 'only found' by a striker. If you're lucky, the crossbar will be rattled.
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On Saturday, Scotland failed to beat Serbia, ranked 10 places below them by FIFA, as the sides settled for a goalless tie in a European Championship qualifier in Leskovac. The process of Euro 2025 qualification is complicated and boring but, essentially, Scotland need to not finish last in their group — battling Israel, Slovakia and Serbia to advance to two rounds of play-offs contested at the end of this year.
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Defences are supposed to win you titles, but I don't think Sir Alex Ferguson ever passed comment on how to get from Group B2 to the finals in Switzerland next summer. I'd say you need a few goals, as well, but with Israel having been defeated by Slovakia, Scotland could feasibly qualify for the play-offs now without scoring, only keeping back to back clean sheets.
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Where failing to score will leave them from then on, though, remains doubtful, and at the moment the source of Scotland's attacking threat is unknown. Spurs striker Martha Thomas has had a banging domestic season, but is currently hamstrung by a pesky hamstring injury.
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Experienced Rangers forward Jane Ross might be the answer, BBC reporter Amy Canavan tells me. Scotland manager Pedro Martinez Losa didn't bring Ross on until half time against Serbia, and Ross didn't wait around to make her point. Canavan's report reads: "The 34-year-old left the crossbar shoogling with a ferocious effort."
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I turn to the Scotsman, who listed 'Shoogle' as their 'Scottish word of the week' a decade ago. "Though the contemporary English equivalent of the word is to shake, shoogle implies a gentler action," it says. "You wouldn’t really shoogle a can of deoderant, nor would you shoogle someone awake if you needed them to be up urgently (though you can certainly shoogle someone to sleep)."
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Apparently, 'shoogle' also describes unsteady furniture. Just as you wouldn't want to sit on a shoogly chair, you wouldn't hang your coat "on a shoogly peg" which is an idiom Scots use to describe a person who is on the verge of being told off or fired.
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Scotland are without a win in eight games, so you wonder whether that would translate to Madrid-born gaffer Martínez Losa.
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On Tuesday afternoon, Jess Fishlock became the first Welsh player to reach 150 caps as the Dragons thrashed Kosovo 6-0 in a European Championship qualifier.
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Assisting two, the 37-year-old played to the sound of travelling fans chanting "four more years" from the stands. Last week, Fishlock explained that she nearly retired after Wales missed out agonisingly on a place at last summer's World Cup, before waking up one morning with a sudden energy to complete "one more campaign" — Euro 2025.
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Fishlock started her career at her hometown club, Cardiff City, but her footballing ability has taken her all over the world. I can't think of many players who have played for clubs so far apart as Lyon, Melbourne, Seattle and Frankfurt. She's even been to Reading! Despite the fact that, as a child, she went to bed with a football (so claims her dad), this crazy adventure was not always on the cards.
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"When she was a 14-year-old girl and she used to say 'I want to be a professional footballer'." Fishlock's sister Kathryn told BBC Sport Wales. "And I used to mock her as older sisters do because there was no such thing as a professional footballer at that time."
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Fishlock turned 14 in 2001, eight years before central contracts were first offered by the FA to 17 players representing England. Then, professional full-time football was a far-off dream for the likes of Rachel Yankey, even, never mind a small Jessica from Llanrumney.
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It's little wonder, then, that her century-and-a-half of international appearances have left her with a feeling of "disbelief". Here's hoping her final campaign is one to remember.
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Making friends in Division One North
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When you just want to make friends, but the referee keeps giving free-kicks.
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