A MONUMENTAL Uefa Women’s Euro tournament in England got the record-breaking final it deserved at a sold-out Wembley Stadium on Sunday evening, a match watched by 17.4 million people in the United Kingdom, the highest television audience of the year — with a further 5.9 million streaming on the BBC Sport website and iPlayer.

Ahead of the match, Georgia Stanway spoke of the game being a “big-girl battle” and talking to me after the Lionesses’ fraught 2-1 win after extra time, she felt her opinions had been justified.

“It was a massive game. It literally could have gone either way. Germany are a very, very strong side.

“We matched them and obviously we put our chances away. We’re very, very happy to be in the situation that we are in but we also respect the football that they played.”

After a first half of unrelenting tension and physicality, it was Manchester United’s Ella Toone who broke the deadlock with a sublime piece of skill, chipping German goalkeeper Merle Frohms while running at full pace to score the 500th goal in the history of the Uefa Women’s Euro.

She told me: “I’ve seen her coming out and I thought that’s what I’m going to have to do, I’m going to have to chip her.

“I started celebrating before it even went into the net. I was confident that it was going in and then the whole stadium erupted. Honestly, the best feeling of my life.”

Fifteen months after rupturing her anterior cruciate ligament, an injury which cost her a place in the Great Britain squad for the Olympics, Chloe Kelly’s first international goal with nine minutes of extra time remaining etched her name forever into the annals of English sporting history.

Her celebrations revived memories of United States player Brandi Chastain who whipped off her shirt after scoring the winning penalty in the 1999 Fifa Women’s World Cup final, an image which similarly went around the world.

Kelly revealed to me: “No, it weren’t planned, I just thought, I’m going mental here!” 

Kelly had not played for her country for over a year until her end of season comeback at Manchester City earned her a call-up into Sarina Wiegman’s final pre-tournament squad in June.

“This whole year has been tough, but throughout it, I never gave up. I kept fighting, I kept pushing.

“I’m very grateful for everyone who worked with me throughout my rehab.

“This moment would not have happened without them. I think it just shows that an ACL doesn’t define someone’s career, just keep pushing through that rehab.

“If there’s a young girl out there going through an ACL currently, it is tough but you can see all the benefits of all the hard work in the gym.”

At the end of their first senior tournament with England, Toone was able to celebrate with her childhood friend, Manchester United team-mate, Alessia Russo, whose four goals earlier in the competition also marked her out as a global star.

Toone told me that to be able to share her moment of glory with Russo was “unbelievable. I started crying. I’ve just experienced every single emotion in the past hour. To celebrate with Alessia, it’s a dream come true for both of us and I’m so proud of her in this tournament.”

The record attendance at the Wembley final of 87,192 took the competition’s aggregate beyond half a million to 574,875 for the 31 matches played in July, over double the total attendance for the last finals in the Netherlands five years ago.

The average attendance for the finals was 18,544 also more than double the previous best of 9,000 set back in 1989.

Then, the victorious German players including current head coach, Martina Voss-Tecklenburg, were strictly amateur and unable to receive any monetary compensation.

Instead, they received a commemorative tea-set from their federation for winning the competition.

Now, both finalists were fully professional and negotiated the highest bonus payments of any of the 16 teams at the finals. 

Speaking to me ahead of the game, Voss-Tecklenburg talked about how much things have changed since then and what still needs to be done to improve the women’s game.

“We have players all over the world who have the chance to make football their profession. These are values that are bigger than whether the bonus is €20,000, €40,000 or whatever, that doesn’t change our love for the sport, our attitude.

“What we want now is more equality: better stadia, more spectators, more television coverage, better kick-off times, a more attractive league.

“We just want to make the next steps and I hope that the sport in general will have a bigger importance in schools, in education and in politics.”

Sunday’s match was not even the largest Wolfsburg’s Felicitas Rauch had played in front of this season.

“It was huge, the whole season was huge. You could sense it in the Champions League, where we played in Camp Nou with over 90,000 people. This year has just been different. I think it is the beginning.

“I really hope so many kids will start playing football because they have role models. I think we just need a platform and today the platform was huge.”

It can only be hoped that the outpouring of coverage since the Lionesses’ victory on Sunday can translate into sustainable investment into the women’s game but for the time being it is enough to bask in the glory of the country’s first international football trophy for exactly 56 years and one day.

As Georgia Stanway put it: “I think it’s a just massive, massive proud feeling for absolutely everybody that wears the badge, supports England, whether you’re at home or whether you’re in the stands. I think we’ve just changed people’s lives forever.”