Alessia Russo, Chloe Kelly and Lauren James Among Six Lionesses Given MBEs | OneFootball

Alessia Russo, Chloe Kelly and Lauren James are among six England Lionesses players to be awarded MBEs in the King’s Birthday Honours, with BBC Sport reporting that Hannah Hampton, Jess Carter and Michelle Agyemang are also recognised. That matters because the honours formally acknowledge England’s successful defence of their European title at Euro 2025 in Switzerland and the growing institutional weight of this Lionesses era.

What the honours actually cover and who the six players are is now clear, and the BBC report gives the clean record

According to BBC Sport, goalkeeper Hannah Hampton (25), defenders Jess Carter (28) and Michelle Agyemang (20), and forwards Chloe Kelly (27), Alessia Russo (27) and Lauren James (24) have all been made Members of the Order of the British Empire, or MBEs, for services to football. The awards come through the King’s Birthday Honours list, the annual state honours system used to recognise achievement and service across public life.

The football-specific significance is straightforward enough. These MBEs are tied to England’s Euro 2025 triumph in Switzerland, where the Lionesses beat Spain in Basel to retain the title first won in 2022 and complete a back-to-back European championship run.

According to BBC Sport, the honours also come with public praise from FA chair Debbie Hewitt, who said the group were exceptional off the pitch as well as on it and had helped inspire future generations. That matters because the citation here is not only about final results or medals won; it is also about visibility, leadership and the role these players now occupy in the English game.

There is club-level pride in it too. Russo and Kelly in particular arrive on the list as players whose domestic and European standing is already central to the WSL conversation, as She Kicks has reflected in our recent coverage of Beth Mead’s major move to Manchester City and the way England stars continue to shape the league’s biggest stories.

What an MBE means for players of this generation says more than the ceremony itself

This is not just a tidy honours note dropped into the summer diary. That decision says plenty about which faces and which careers now define England’s post-2022 era, and why recognition has landed on this group now rather than earlier in the cycle.

Russo’s inclusion feels especially inevitable. She comes into the honours list after being voted England Women’s Player of the Year for 2023-24, and her standing now stretches well beyond goals alone; she is one of the national side’s reference points, and one of the players through whom both club and country attacks are increasingly understood.

Kelly’s case is different but no less obvious. She has long carried the symbolism of the Euro 2022 winner, but the wider point is that she remains a decisive figure in England’s biggest moments and one of the most recognisable players in the women’s game. James, meanwhile, represents the pure top-end talent piece: a player whose technical level and star power have made her central to every serious discussion about England’s ceiling.

Hampton, Carter and Agyemang broaden the picture. Hampton’s rise to this point, alongside the wider movement among England’s elite goalkeepers covered by She Kicks in our look at Mary Earps’ move to London City Lionesses, underlines how visible the position has become in the women’s game. Carter’s honour recognises reliability and tournament importance rather than noise, while Agyemang’s inclusion signals how quickly a young player can become part of the national story when performances demand it.

That matters because honours can flatten footballers into symbols. This group resists that a bit. It recognises different kinds of contribution.

This fits a wider pattern She Kicks has been tracking in how the Lionesses’ legacy is being formally recognised

England’s Euro 2022 win changed the sport in this country, but the honours system did not exactly move at the same speed. Only a relatively small number of players and staff were recognised in the immediate aftermath, and that prompted a fair criticism: women footballers were still being honoured more cautiously than male counterparts with similar competitive records and cultural impact.

That fits a wider pattern She Kicks has been tracking. The game’s visibility has surged, crowds have surged, commercial interest has surged, but official recognition has often followed late, and sometimes only after public pressure makes delay look awkward rather than neutral.

In that context, this year’s broader spread matters. According to reporting from outlets including The Independent, there has been a wider argument about women athletes still being overlooked in state honours compared with men. According to The Standard and other mainstream coverage, the latest list places these Lionesses alongside some of the biggest names in British public life, which is itself a marker of changed status.

Fine in principle, but the harder question is whether this kind of recognition reaches deep enough or fast enough. Why did it take another major title run for a wider group of Lionesses to receive this level of formal acknowledgement, and what does that say about how the establishment still values women’s sporting achievement?

That is the part worth keeping in view even while welcoming the awards. Honours matter. Timing matters too.

It is progress.Delayed progress.

What comes next will show whether this recognition translates into something more durable for women’s football

The immediate football context does not pause for medals or ceremonies. England move on to the next tournament cycle with Euro 2027 qualifiers ahead, and several of these players will remain central to selection debates, tactical structure and leadership within the squad, as we have already seen in our coverage of Sarina Wiegman’s response after England’s defeat by Spain.

There is also the wider ecosystem piece. Players with MBEs attached to their names will inevitably be used even more heavily in grassroots initiatives, FA campaigns and commercial work aimed at growing girls’ participation, and that is fair enough so long as the burden is not only symbolic.

The game should not ask these players to carry everything. But it should recognise what they have already carried.

This honour reflects where the Lionesses now stand in British sport.The next step is making that normal.