This issue's argument is about a Thursday night in Leigh, a year old this week, and whether anything the women's team has done at Wembley beats it.
The biggest night Manchester United Women have had was in Leigh
Some of the Manchester United Women players' boots went missing on the way to Bergen in September 2025, as The Guardian and ESPN both reported. Replacements were found in time for the first leg of the Women's Champions League third qualifying round against Brann on the 11th, which is not the preparation any coaching manual recommends for a European tie.
United then spent the evening failing to beat Selma Panengstuen in the Brann goal. With 14 minutes left, Ingrid Stenevik headed in Signe Gaupset's free-kick, and Brann won 1-0 in front of 16,019, a record crowd for a women's match in Norway, per The Guardian and manutd.com.
One more tie won and United would be in the main draw of the competition for the first time. Their first attempt, two years earlier, had ended in qualifying against Paris Saint-Germain, 4-2 on aggregate.
The second leg was at Leigh Sports Village a week later, on Thursday 18 September. Elisabeth Terland needed nine minutes to level the tie with her left foot and four more to put United ahead on aggregate with a header. Nobody scored for the next 49 minutes, until Terland finished a counter-attack with her right foot on 62 minutes, for 3-0 on the night, 3-1 on aggregate and a perfect hat-trick, per UEFA's match data and The Guardian. It was her second hat-trick of the campaign, after three against PSV in Stockholm in August.
We think that night is the biggest the women's team has had. Our football account follows Manchester United, so allow for some bias.
The team has not had long to produce big nights, and the club is partly to blame. In February 2005 it announced that its part in the women's game would be limited to coaching girls up to 16, about three months before Women's Euro 2005 was staged in north-west England, per The Guardian and Goal. The women's team came back 13 years later. It played its first competitive match at Prenton Park in Birkenhead on 19 August 2018 and was promoted to the Women's Super League at the first attempt.
Anyone who disagrees will point at Wembley. On 12 May 2024 United beat Tottenham Hotspur 4-0 in the Women's FA Cup final there, in front of 76,082, for the women's team's first major trophy, per The FA, ESPN and manutd.com. A year earlier they had lost the final at the same stadium 1-0 to Chelsea in front of 77,390, then a world record for a women's domestic club match. The final they won drew 1,308 fewer people than the one they lost.
The case for Leigh is what came after it. On 12 November 2025 the women's team played its first European match at Old Trafford, against Paris Saint-Germain, the club that had knocked United out two years earlier, and won 2-1 in front of 14,667, per UEFA and manutd.com. That made three wins from three in the league phase, level with Barcelona and Lyon. United then beat Atletico Madrid 5-0 on aggregate to reach the quarter-finals for the first time, and went out to Bayern Munich 5-3 on aggregate after a first leg at Old Trafford.
So our answer is Leigh. Wembley gave the women's team its first trophy, but the 3-0 against Brann is the result that put it in the main draw of the Champions League for the first time and, 55 days later, on the Old Trafford pitch for a European night.
Tell us where you would put it. Reply with Birkenhead 2018, Wembley 2024, Leigh 2025 or Old Trafford 2025, and one line on why.
The week, in one screen
- Football. JJ Gabriel, 15, has stopped training at Manchester United, per Fabrizio Romano and NBC Sports. The club's position is that he is under contract to the end of the season. He turns 16 in October.
- NFL. Week 1's highest-scoring game in NFL history finished Chicago Bears 59, Carolina Panthers 37 on 13 September. The 96 combined points beat the record of 88, set in 2018.
- F1. After his eighth win of the season, at the Spanish Grand Prix on the new Madring circuit on 13 September, Kimi Antonelli leads the Formula 1 drivers' championship by 81 points.
- Tennis. Alexander Zverev beat Ben Shelton 6-3, 7-6(2), 5-7, 6-2 in the US Open final on 13 September, which leaves Andy Roddick in 2003 as the last American man to win it.
- Golf. The Biltmore Championship, from 17 September at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, is the PGA Tour's first event in the Asheville area in more than 80 years.
The close
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