Hope Powell
Playing Career
Position Midfielder
Clubs Millwall, Fulham, Croydon
D.O.B 08/12/1966
P.O.B London
Caps 66
Goals 35
Profile
Hope Powell was appointed as the first-ever full-time National Coach of the England Women’s team in June 1998.
An experienced international with 66 caps for her country and 35 goals, she is the youngest-ever England Coach and the first female.
Hope first played football with Millwall Lionesses at the age of 11 and has won The FA Women's Cup three times, including the league and Cup double as captain of Croydon in 1996.
Hope is a fully qualified ‘A’ Licence coach and in 2003 became the first woman to achieve the UEFA Pro Licence - the highest coaching award available.
Her achievements to date include taking the U19s to the semi-final of the 2002 and 2003 UEFA European Women’s U19 Championship and to the quarter-final of the inaugural FIFA U19 World Championship in 2002.
She also coached the senior team to qualification for the 2001 UEFA European Championship Finals in her first major championship as manager and in June 2005, narrowly failed to take the Three Lions into the semi finals of the European Championship on home soil.
In 2002, Hope was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list and became the first woman to acquire the UEFA Pro Licence coaching award in 2003.
Hope works to promote the women’s game and is patron of the Kick It Out campaign and the Women’s Sports Foundation and as well as managing the England Women's team, she oversees the whole set-up from U15s to the U23s, a coach mentoring scheme and The FA’s National Player Development Centre at Loughborough University.
In 2006 Hope lead England to qualification for the FIFA Women's World Cup, with the Three Lions topping their group and finishing the campaign unbeaten. England's place in China was secured in the last match of the campaign, with a heart-stopping 1-1 draw with France in Rennes.
After coming out of a group with Japan, Argentina and Germany - and being the only team to hold the eventual winners Germany to a draw - England reached the quarter-finals where they lost out to USA.
In 2009, Hope led a senior England Women's side to the Final of the European Championship for the first time since 1984. They qualified from their Finals group, losing their opening match 2-1 to Italy before recording a 3-2 defeat of Russia and a 1-1 draw with Sweden, the latter result sealing qualification. England then went on to defeat tournament hosts, Finland, in the quarter-final, with Holland the next nation to be put to the sword, in the last four.
Awaiting England in the Final was Germany, current Women's World Cup holders and the Germans added the European crown to their already impressive haul with a 6-2 victory over the Three Lions.
However, Hope believes her side have now had a decent break and are currently second in their qualifying group for the next World Cup, but will draw level on points with Spain by winning their two games in hand. Malta were dispatched 8-0 at Bloomfield Road in October and Turkey were beaten by three late goals in November.