Football’s history is a graveyard of echoes. Legends never really leave us — they linger in statues, in chants, in the way a crowd inhales when a striker lines up a shot.
At Everton, one name has always towered above the rest: William Ralph Dean, the man they called Dixie. Sixty goals in a single league season. Thirty hat-tricks. A bronze monument outside Goodison that greets every supporter like a ghostly doorman.
For nearly a century, no one in royal blue had matched him in the one place it matters most — the Merseyside Derby. Until now.
On a humid Sunday in September, inside an Anfield swollen with almost 12,000 fans, Ornella Maria Vignola Cabot, 20 years old and barely three months an Evertonian, wrote her name into history. Three shots. Three goals. A 4-1 demolition. A Player of the Match award. And, crucially, the resurrection of Dean’s myth in the women’s game.
Everton didn’t just beat Liverpool that day. They rebranded destiny.
The Weight of Place and Time
The derby was already loaded. Everton Women were stepping into a historic season, their last before permanently moving into Goodison Park. A new home, a new hierarchy under The Friedkin Group’s money, and nine new signings to prove this wasn’t the cash-strapped Everton of old.
Liverpool, meanwhile, arrived with Gareth Taylor fresh in the dugout, new blood in the XI, and the weight of Anfield’s stage pressing down. Their fans roared with early confidence — Cornelia Kapocs’ thunderous opener seemed to confirm their optimism.
But derbies don’t reward dominance. They reward ruthlessness.
Liverpool owned the ball, 58% possession, 23 touches in Everton’s box, two shots against the woodwork. By half-time, they should have been out of sight. Instead, they trailed 2-1, their heads bowed, their fans muted. And the reason for that reversal wore number 18.
Ornella Vignola: An Origin Story
Born in Montevideo in 2004, Ornella Vignola was carrying multiple footballing cultures inside her before she could walk. Uruguay gave her street steel. Spain, where she moved aged one, gave her technique. Barcelona, who signed her at 16, gave her ambition.
She had drifted through Málaga B, Barcelona’s fringes, Sevilla, Alavés, Granada. Always good, never iconic. Always with the potential, never quite with the stage. Everton, with its open arms and desperate hunger for stardom, became her canvas.
Brian Sorensen trusted her with the No. 9 role in pre-season. She repaid him with two goals before the derby. But even Sorensen admits he didn’t see this storm coming. “Not three goals from her… I expected her to score, but this? She was superb. She has set the benchmark now.”
The Hat-trick Itself
🕐 24 minutes — Against the run of play, Vignola received the ball on the counter. She slipped past her marker, cut inside with the calm of a matador, and curled a spectacular left-footed shot beyond Faye Kirby. One chance. One goal. “Magic,” Sorensen called it. The game tilted.
🕐 54 minutes — Mayumi Pacheco thundered down the wing, slung in a cross, and Vignola climbed like Dean himself, head meeting ball with ferocity. It cannoned off the bar and in. Anfield gasped. Everton led 3-1.
🕐 56 minutes — Two minutes later, Vignola pounced again. A deflected strike slid past Kirby, and the hat-trick was complete. Three goals from three shots. Efficiency that would make even Dixie nod in approval.
In 32 minutes of football, she had achieved what no Everton player — man or woman — had done since Dean himself in 1931: a Merseyside Derby hat-trick.
Dixie Dean’s Shadow
It’s tempting to dismiss comparisons between a 20-year-old newcomer and the most revered striker in English football’s pre-war history. But you don’t get to control history. Sometimes, it controls you.
Dean scored his derby hat-trick at 24, a centre-forward colossus in a game still finding its professional identity. Vignola, at 20, replicated the feat with a modern twist: one goal of artistry, one of aerial power, one of opportunism. Dean’s ghost lingers at Goodison, his statue engraved with Footballer, Gentleman, Evertonian. That Sunday, it felt like the spirit reached across Stanley Park to anoint a successor.
Bill Shankly once said Dean belonged with “Beethoven, Shakespeare and Rembrandt.” Swap those for Beyoncé, Messi, and Scorsese, and Vignola might not be so far behind.
The Blueprint of a Legend
Vignola has the raw materials. Pace that unsettles defenders. Technical balance that makes her unpredictable. A hunger Sorensen describes as “so relentless she works until she almost passes out.” A humble character that her teammates adore.
Martina Fernandez calls her “unbelievable with the ball, fast, strong, everything.” BBC’s Karen Bardsley labels her “exceptional… an exciting focal point with loads of potential.”
The trick now is to stretch a derby into a dynasty. Dixie didn’t become immortal on one hat-trick. He did it by rewriting numbers season after season, racking up 383 goals in 433 appearances, sculpting time itself into Everton’s favour.
If Vignola keeps this standard, she has the chance to do for Everton Women what Dean did for the men: define an era.
Everton’s New Era, Written in Blue Fire
This wasn’t just one player’s triumph. It was a declaration from the entire club. Six debutants started the derby. Ruby Mace, their record signing, came on to shore up midfield. Rosa van Gool rattled the woodwork. Yuka Momiki lurked with menace. Sorensen, now one of the WSL’s longest-serving coaches, read the game with surgical clarity, his half-time subs flipping the script.
The Friedkin Group’s investment has transformed Everton from survivors into aspirants. Last year’s eighth-place finish looks like a relic. Goodison Park, now their permanent home, waits like a cathedral for its first sermon. And who better to lead the procession than a 20-year-old who just summoned the ghost of Dixie Dean?
Liverpool’s Nightmare, Everton’s Dream
Liverpool’s numbers don’t lie: more possession, more passes, more box entries. But football doesn’t pay out in possession charts. It pays in goals, and Everton were merciless.
Taylor called it “mixed emotions,” admitting four minutes around half-time destroyed them. The fans called it something harsher: “Anfield Nightmare.”
Everton, meanwhile, basked. Katja Snoeijs scored her third consecutive derby goal. Brosnan saved brilliantly when needed. And Vignola left the pitch smiling, clutching the match ball, already rewriting the folklore of Merseyside.
And one striker — Ornella Vignola — just set foot on a path that leads straight into Everton immortality.
Dixie Dean once said only a man who walks on water could break his record. Ornella is no man but she may walk on water yet.
doragon sports 