Everton might not have had any players in the Lionesses’ squad as they lifted the European Championship title this past summer but the Toffees’ influence on England’s success was certainly significant. Chloe Kelly, who made her breakthrough on Merseyside, was the most prominent example, after reprising her role as a national hero on more than one occasion. However, it is the more recent cases of Aggie Beever-Jones and Jess Park that have helped Everton carve out a glowing, and growing, reputation as the place to be right now if you are an aspiring Lioness.
Loan spells with Everton helped those two young forwards eventually make a name for themselves at Chelsea and Manchester City respectively, with both keen to stress how important their time with the Blues was to their development. "Everton helped me massively,” Beever-Jones told after developing into a key player with the Women's Super League champions. “Everton gave me that trust and game time I needed.”
It's clear that other Lionesses prospects have taken note as well, as more and more are looking to the blue half of Merseyside to further their development, with two young England internationals snapped up by the club just this summer. It’s something Everton and their head coach Brian Sorensen are leaning into massively, too. “We are aligned with the ownership to make us attractive to the Lionesses,” he explained.
Getty ImagesA good place to develop
Those comments from Sorensen came after Everton completed the signing of Ruby Mace, one of the most highly-rated young midfielders in the country, for a club-record fee. Mace came through the Arsenal academy before spending time at Man City and eventually getting regular WSL minutes at Leicester, which would lead to her senior England debut last December.
She joins Katie Robinson, a player she knows well from the youth national teams, at the club, after her loan switch from Aston Villa. Robinson has five England caps to her name and was a member of the squad that reached the 2023 Women’s World Cup final, aged 20.
However, she hasn’t been called up by Sarina Wiegman for over two years now and is hoping this switch can bring the best out of her again.
“I saw the progress that those girls made at Everton,” Robinson told GOAL, referring to Beever-Jones and Park. “[Brian] is hopefully the type of manager that can improve me as well. That definitely played a part [in my decision].”
“We showed it before with Jess and Aggie,” Sorensen added. “We give them the platform and the learning to take those next steps and that's the plan with Katie, if we can get her back to that level and maybe also reach higher than what she was on before.”
AdvertisementGetty ImagesGetting creative
Positioning themselves as a club where young homegrown talent can thrive also allows Everton to have a unique selling point in the transfer market, meaning they are able to compete with the WSL’s best on the pitch, even if they can’t necessarily do so off it.
That’s not to say the club isn’t investing in the women’s team – far from it, in fact. The new owners, the Friedkin Group, have shown incredible commitment since taking over, not least by making Goodison Park the permanent home of the women’s side. Mace’s arrival for a club-record fee is another great indication of as much, as is the notable deepening of a squad that was extremely thin in previous years.
But Everton are still one of the smaller fishes in a pond that includes big-spenders such as Chelsea, Arsenal and the newly-promoted London City Lionesses – all of whom completed deals that surpassed that £1 million mark in a monumental summer for the women’s game. It means there is a need for Everton, among others, to get creative.
“There are still eight teams in this league that spend more money than we do. We're trying to be very smart with what we're signing,” Sorensen admitted.
“Where we probably have advantages is that players can actually see themselves playing in our team. That's also for young players to think about. 'Where is the platform for me, actually, to take the next step, to shine?’ I feel that we've proven that we have that platform.”
Getty ImagesFocus on the future
Those platforms are becoming increasingly difficult to find in the WSL – that’s just the reality of playing in one of the best and most competitive leagues in the world.
“I say that when I talk to the young academy players, 'You want to break through in probably the hardest league in the world to do so,'” Sorensen notes, “because of the competition level and because every team has almost 20 something internationals, because that's the standard if you want to compete.”
Sorensen and Everton, though, are using the investment from the Friedkin Group to focus on developing those aspiring internationals, rather than signing ready-made stars.
“Our aim [in the transfer window] was to lower the average age of the squad,” Sorensen explained. “We got a lot of good young talents in. We know they will take time to adapt to the league – because it's a very competitive and hard league – but I think it secures the future maybe a little bit, whereas the last couple of seasons, we haven't been able to do that that much because we had a smaller squad and just had to find players that could go in and do something right here, right now, with limited budgets and so on."
GettyA great track record
Such an approach only works if the manager is capable of developing these young talents properly. Fortunately for Everton, Sorensen has that gift, as underlined by his success with Park and Beever-Jones.
Park won her first England call-up during her time on Merseyside and were it not for a shoulder injury right towards the end of the campaign, she may well have been in the Lionesses’ World Cup squad. By the end of the following season, Park was a key starter for Manchester City.
“My year at Everton was a special one,” she noted recently. “I was playing week-in, week-out in back-to-back games, which really helped me develop as a player. That was a breakthrough season for me."
Beever-Jones was on loan at the club at the same time and was so thankful for what Sorensen and the Toffees did for her that when she scored against them the following campaign, having broken into the Chelsea first team, she went as far to say that she actually “felt a bit bad”. It was later that season that Beever-Jones followed Park into the Lionesses’ team, with neither having fallen out of favour since.