Youth football expert demands investment in women's game after Euros triumph

We’re delighted to welcome the founder of Kinetic Academy Harry Hudson as our exclusive columnist. Each week the youth football expert will be giving his views on the biggest talking points on wonderkids across the UK…

England’s victorious Women’s Euros campaign sparked wild scenes at Wembley on Sunday and the impact on youth football could be enormous.

Chloe Kelly’s extra-time winner against Germany saw the Lionesses win their first ever major trophy and the first for England since the 1966 World Cup and Kinetic Academy founder Harry Hudson thinks it could be a springboard for women’s sport as a whole.

The Sevenoaks manager, who started the foundation in 2011, is readying a new program which will focus on youth girls football in South London (where he is based) having already seen 60 mens players go on to earn a professional contract.

“It’s a really important opportunity for women’s football across the whole country to have a legacy off the back of this,” Hudson said exclusively to The Football Wonderkids. “Seeing the attendance figures is just amazing.

“Fie years ago, we would never be hitting those kinds of numbers and it’s incredibly exciting. We would love to use the buzz surrounding the Euros to springboard and launch our own program but that is bigger than us.

“I think this is going to propel women’s sport to the forefront of people’s minds and even more so, it’s important that, like the Olympics, a lot of investment is done to follow up a major tournament in a timely fashion.”

The growth of the sport is already being put into practice with the USA set to play England in a friendly at Wembley in October and many more WSL games to be shown on TV and at Premier League grounds.

In other Kinetic Academy news, Hudson believes that a gaping gap in class in the United States of America is what is holding back the emergence of the country in mens football.