Sophie Bradley-Aukland: “It Will Be A Massive Honor” To Captain The Liverpool Women At Anfield

It’s an exciting day on Merseyside. For the first time ever, the Liverpool Women will be able to call Anfield home, and in a local derby to boot. Liverpool’s captain, Sophie Bradley-Aukland, is excited to lead the Reds onto the Anfield pitch for the first time.

“It will be a massive honor to lead the girls out but just to play at Anfield is amazing,” said the captain. “It means so much to so many of the players because we not only play for Liverpool but we support Liverpool as well and what better game than a derby.”

A derby match against Everton at Anfield is the stuff of dreams (or at least my dreams), and the buzz around the game has show an excitement from the Liverpool community. All tickets allocated for the game have been sold or given out to local youth clubs.

Sadly, though not surprisingly, Liverpool management did not seem to expect the excitement and demand for tickets, and capped the ticket allocation at 20,000. That’s less than half of the 54,007 capacity of Anfield. Hopefully, however, the crowd will make up for the smaller numbers allowed in with the same vociferous support that has made Anfield a fortress for the men to provide the boisterous atmosphere you would expect for a derby match.

Hopefully a boos from the crowd, coupled with the fact that the game is a local derby, will help lift the squad, who are currently in last place. According to Bradley-Aukland, they’re up for the challenge.

“Whenever you play in a derby there’s always that extra bit of fight and energy going round the pitch and it’s always a different buzz so it’s a fantastic that this game will be played at Anfield,” said the skipper.

A good crowd and a good showing will hopefully go a long way to showing the Liverpool brass that the support is there, and they should start investing in the women at a higher level (like pretty much everyone else). Let’s hope this is just the start of something bigger for the Liverpool Women.