Lauren Hemp hails first £1m transfer fee as ‘proof women’s footballers are great’

The England winger Lauren Hemp says the women’s game being on the verge of its first £1m transfer fee is good for the sport and “proof women’s footballers are great”.

The Guardian revealed on Thursday that Liverpool had accepted a £1m offer from Arsenal for the Canada forward Olivia Smith, which would break the seven-figure barrier 46 years after the men’s game got its first £1m deal, when Nottingham Forest signed Trevor Francis from Birmingham City.

Hemp was speaking from England’s hotel base in Zurich as they prepare to meet Wales in Group D at Euro 2025 on Sunday, and although the Manchester City player admitted the Lionesses had not been fully up to date with transfer news while focusing on this tournament, she reacted positively to the landmark fee.

“It’s the direction the women’s game is going in, and it’s great to see,” Hemp said. “As players, we’re sort of in a bit of a bubble at the moment, so we’re not really seeing much of that [news], we’re just focusing on the tournament. But it is great to see and it’s proof that women’s footballers are great, and that is the way that game is going, so long may that continue.”

Smith is poised to join Arsenal after their Women’s Champions League triumph and the Lionesses have the defence of their own European crown firmly in their sights, after their confidence-boosting 4-0 victory over the Netherlands on Wednesday.

An England win on Sunday in St Gallen would guarantee a place in the quarter-finals, while Wales must beat England by at least four goals and hope France beat the Netherlands. The major-tournament debutants have lost both matches but Hemp is wary of complacency.

“It’s a great rivalry,” Hemp said, “and these are the games you want to be involved in … It’s a derby, we want to win, end of. We’re going to do whatever we can to do that. It’s going to be a really tough match. We’ve got so much respect for Wales.”

The Lionesses’ chances of going through were greatly enhanced by their much-improved performance against the Netherlands. “That just proves when this team are at their best what we can achieve,” Hemp said. “That has shown confidence in everyone, everyone played to their strengths, everyone did their job and did it really well.

“Leading into the game no one was fazed. Everyone was calm, relaxed and we knew what job we needed to do. It didn’t scare anyone and you definitely didn’t see [anyone scared] on the pitch. It made everyone excited and it made the fans excited hopefully from that performance we put in and that is the England we want to show every single game we play.

“We’ve felt that [France] loss, we’ve felt it as a team, and we’ve tried to turn it around and we have done, and looking back on the last game, how well we’ve done, we’re hoping to take that momentum into the next … I think everyone is just so positive and so confident and, when this team is like that, we play really well.”