England women will play Iceland in Reykjavik on Saturday at 17:30 BST, and the match will be the 500th fixture in the history of the senior women’s team. The occasion also carries real weight in the present: England need the result as they push to secure qualification for next year’s World Cup in Brazil.
That number, 500, lands differently when set against where the game began. In 1921, the Football Association banned women’s football and described it as “most unsuitable for females,” a judgment that shut out generations before the ban was overturned in 1971. England’s first proper Women’s Football Association side then played Scotland in November 1972, winning 3-2 at Ravenscraig Stadium in Greenock, before a first official home match a year later brought an 8-0 victory over Scotland in Nuneaton.
By 1984, England had reached its major tournament debut, competing in a Uefa competition for national representative women’s teams and beating Denmark 3-1 over two games to reach the final, where Sweden awaited in a two-legged tie. That path from exclusion to competition helps explain why the 500th game matters beyond the calendar: it is a marker of how long England had to wait to be taken seriously, and how far the women’s side has come since then.
The milestones have kept coming in the past decade, with England collecting a first tournament medal, a first major trophy and a first title defence on foreign soil. Saturday’s match in Iceland is another step on that same line, and the 500th fixture comes with the added burden of keeping Brazil in reach.
What makes the day more than a celebration is the contrast at its heart. England are being asked to mark a historic number in a match that still has consequences, underlining that the team’s past is no longer separate from its present. The 500th game is not just a tribute to progress; it is a checkpoint in a campaign that still has to be finished.