England retain Euros title after dramatic penalty shootout win over Spain
Chloe Kelly scored the decisive kick in a shoot-out which saw three Spain players, including reigning Ballon d'Or Aitana Bonmati, all fail to convert.
Mariona Caldentey had earlier headed Spain — who beat England 1-0 in the 2023 Women's World Cup final — into the lead at St Jakob-Park in Basel, but Alessia Russo equalised early in the second half.
More to follow.
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– © AFP 2025
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The 42
a day ago
- The 42
Watching Euro 2025 from afar, Ireland's missed opportunity, and future focus
I WAS IN Naples the day after Italy's Euro 2025 quarter-final win over Norway. Amid small talk about SSC Napoli, our taxi driver tried to capture the love of football in the city. 'God first, football second,' he said. It may have been the language barrier, but he seemed oblivious to Italy's landmark victory the pervious night. As we tore through the narrow cobblestone streets, with tributes to the late Diego Maradona at every corner, I tried to explain the significance of the win. A first semi-final since 1997. A meeting with defending champions England. Legendary striker Cristiana Girelli. Perennial underachievers Norway. I gave up when we were nearly ploughed into at a typically chaotic junction. (Junction? Questionable. If you've ever been to Naples, you'll understand.) Having previously been glued to the early group stage action, I missed the majority of its latter half due to a pre-planned holiday with friends. Ireland's absence brought one silver lining, at least. A Mediterranean cruise meant I didn't get to see a whole pile of live football, and a return to solid ground ended the famine. England and Sweden were in the next quarter-final, and thankfully, RTÉ Player was accessible on Naples Airport's WiFi. A monthly phone bill of €91.50 was a harsh lesson to turn off data roaming, but catching up on Wales' defeats may have been worth it. Not bitter. Half time neared as I boarded the flight home. Sweden 2, England 0. The result which greeted me in Dublin? Sweden 2, England 2. England win 3-2 on penalties. Advertisement Perhaps the best, worst shootout in history was watched almost immediately. England's path to glory continued in that manner. Marathon matches, incredible fight backs, and dramatic penalties. As they broke Italian hearts in the 119th minute of the semi-final — after a 96th minute equaliser forced extra time — I wondered if our Naples taxi driver was watching somewhere. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Back on duty for The 42, I also thought of Ireland and what could have been. Last February, they drew 0-0 in an international friendly in Florence. They may have even won but for Leanne Kiernan's second-half goal being disallowed for a borderline offside call. A tweet from former Ireland manager Eileen Gleeson caught the eye. 'Heartbreak for Italy, but reaping reward of investment into domestic game. Fully professional league from 2022, 21 of squad home based, competitive in Champions League, sustained performance in Nations League A, and moments from reaching the Euro 2025 final.' Katie McCabe made similar points in a sit down interview this week as she offered an honest assessment of women and girls' football in Ireland. 'We don't want to be left behind,' the Irish captain and Arsenal Champions League winner said at one point. 'We need to keep doing more.' Issues have been detailed by The 42 in recent months. Failure to qualify for Euro 2025, and an alarming 4-0 defeat to Slovenia, have highlighted deeper problems threatening future success. It's a stark contrast to England, our nearest neighbours celebrating back to back European titles. While population, playing numbers and investment levels are incomparable, the current juxtaposition lays bare the widening chasm. The impact and legacy of Euro 2022 has been well documented, from the growth of the WSL on and off the pitch right down to grassroots and recreational level. Will this tournament be as impactful? Can there be a knock-on effect on these shores? Surely there's bits and pieces worth looking at in England's blueprint and policies. There's inspiration and motivation, if nothing else. Denise O'Sullivan and Katie McCabe after last year's Euro 2025 playoff defeat to Wales. Nick Elliott / INPHO Nick Elliott / INPHO / INPHO We wrote about the conflicting feeling of watching a tournament without Ireland before it all kicked off. Regret, enjoyment, hope. It will have been a painful experience for the players, the sense of missed opportunity deepening with the action in full flow. What could have been. What should have been. But it must have also sharpened the focus for October's Nations League A/B promotion/relegation play-off against Belgium, who impressed at the tournament themselves. Ireland must now channel the hurt of watching from afar, and use it as motivation to qualify for the 2027 World Cup in Brazil. The journey continues at the Aviva Stadium on Friday 24 October. If you enjoyed watching the madness of Euro 2025 in Switzerland, give it a go. McCabe said as much this week. 'This is a massive tie so we want the Aviva absolutely rocking. Even if people are fans of the men's game but are football fans, we'd love for you to come and support us.' If you have misgivings about the way the FAI is run or the depth of quality, fair enough. But in the meantime there are teams that need our support as we try to regain some momentum, from the ground up.
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Irish Times
Marcus Rashford arrives at Barcelona with the club teetering on the edge
Dani Olmo was Barça 's marquee signing last summer, coming off the back of his role helping Spain win the Euro 2024 championship. In January, his temporary licence to play for Barça – along with the registration of another summer signing, Pau Víctor – was revoked because the club contravened La Liga's financial rules. It meant Olmo missed Barça's Spanish Super Cup semi-final against Athletic Bilbao. An extraordinary intervention by the Spanish government, however, overturned La Liga's ruling, and Olmo was permitted to play out the remainder of the season. Olmo and Víctor's ordeal spooked their team-mates. When quizzed, Raphinha, the team's Brazilian forward, captured the feeling in the dressingroom: 'Seeing the situation with Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor, if I were at another club I would think twice about signing for Barça.' Six months later, and it looks like Marcus Rashford hasn't paid heed. Rashford has left Manchester United and signed for Barça on a one-year loan deal, with an option to buy. He has not, though, been licensed by La Liga to play. Barça must clear out several players from its wage bill, or generate more income, to find space for him to register and play next season. Nico Williams (23) was Barça's preferred option to beef up their attack this summer. Williams got cold feet, though, and pulled out of a deal at the 11th hour. Personal terms were agreed. Barça were ready to pay a €58 million transfer fee, but they refused to insert an exit clause in the player's contract, at the behest of his agent, Félix Tainta, in case Barça couldn't register him. Williams signed a 10-year renewal deal with Athletic Bilbao in early July instead, leaving Rashford to step into the breach. READ MORE Since Joan Laporta returned to Barça as president in 2021, the club has played Russian roulette with La Liga's strict financial fair play regulations, pulling numerous stunts to get players registered for the start of the season. In the summer of 2021, with Lionel Messi bidding a tearful goodbye as he was shoved out the door on a free transfer to Paris Saint-Germain, his old team-mate Gerard Piqué agreed to a pay cut so several new players, including Eric Garcia and Sergio Agüero, could be registered. There was more drama in 2022 (Ferran Torres, Jules Koundé), 2023 (Gavi, İlkay Gündoğan) and for the 2024-25 season with the high farce involving Olmo and Víctor. Each year, Barça found a way, but Laporta is running out of lives. He manages by the seat of his pants. Everything is improvised, left to the last minute. Laporta is a populist leader, who defends Barça's interests defiantly like an ultra , or he tries to disarm critics with his charm. In mid-July, for example, there was a furore over the club's new icon, Lamine Yamal, and his 18th birthday party. It drew criticism because of the presence of dwarf entertainers. Also, a Spanish model, Claudia Calvo, posted on social media claiming she was approached by the party organisers to help gather 12 women for the party, and that their criteria focused 'mainly on breast size or hair colour, whether they were blonde'. In an interview with Mundo Deportivo , Laporta was given an open goal to join in some moral outrage but purposefully rifled his shot into the stands: 'For me, he threw an 18th birthday party, and what I regret is not having gone.' Barcelona's team president Joan Laporta celebrates with the trophy after winning the Spanish Super Cup final. Photograph: Haitham Al-Shukairi/AFP via Getty Laporta cannot, however, use attempts at humour to distract from Barça's economic woes. The club's financial problems are well publicised, but the scale of their mounting debt – in comparison to other top clubs – defies belief. As it stands, Barça, according to Football Benchmark, carries the biggest debt of any club in football – €1.26 billion, ahead of Real Madrid (€1.05 billion) and Tottenham Hotspur (€937 million), although Spurs debt is long-term, owing to stadium repayments, and it's at favourable interest rates. Barça's stadium rebuild has yet to be added to its debt figure. The project was budgeted at €1.5 billion, but, according to Diego Torres at El País , it has ballooned to €2.8 billion, putting the club's total debt north of €4 billion. This is a staggering sum, about 35 times the debt it carried before the Covid pandemic, which was €112 million in 2019. This excludes the economic 'levers' Barça pulled in 2022 when it sold off assets to fund a squad rebuild, including the sale, for instance, of 25 per cent of its La Liga television income for the next 25 years to an American investment firm, Sixth Street, for €552 million, meaning its down €40 million a season in TV revenues. Barça's immediate problem is that it's leaking €100 million a season, by conservative estimates, while exiled at the city's Olympic Stadium in Montjuïc, where the team has played since 2023. Some analysts suggest Barça's matchday income is down €180 million a season from its glory days with Messi at the Camp Nou. (Real Madrid's president, Florentino Pérez, bemoans the fact that Real Madrid and Barça are no longer as attractive to commercial sponsors as they were during the days of peak Messi-Cristiano Ronaldo rivalry.) Barca's return to the Camp Nou – in keeping with Laporta's chaotic leadership style – keeps getting postponed. Originally, it was due to be in November 2024, to coincide with the club's 125th anniversary celebrations. Then May 2025, at the time of Barça's clásico match against Real Madrid, was touted. Then mid-September – at 60 per cent capacity – when the 2025-26 Champions League group stages kick off. Now it seems it will be pushed back to the new year, at the earliest. It's a ticking bomb – a debt of €4 billion, mounting interest, scrambling to refinance payments, further matchday income losses, with the 2028-29 season earmarked to close the Camp Nou stadium so its new roof can be put on, to shelter patrons from the rain, in Spain. FC Barcelona's Lamine Yamal celebrates during preseason match. Photograph: Jung Yeon-Je/AFP via Getty With the recklessness of a gambler hanging on to the rails, Laporta is spending like there's no tomorrow. La Liga is shocked by the contract renewals Barça has unveiled over the last several months, including bumper long-term deals for Pedri, Gavi, Koundé and Lamine Yamal, whose salary has increased tenfold to approximately €40 million a season. Barça also spent €25 million in June on Joan García, the first player to cross the city's great divide from rivals Espanyol in 31 years. He's the most expensive goalkeeper signing in Barça's history, and a key personality in a simmering soap opera. Barça's plan is that García will unseat club captain, Marc André ter Stegen, who missed most of last season through injury, but Ter Stegen isn't playing ball. Ter Stegen is keen to fight for his place and is determined to play for Germany in next summer's World Cup finals, but after playing two games for Germany in the Nations League in June, he returned to preseason training in July with a repeat back injury that required surgery. Conscious that Barça were trying to nudge him towards the exit door – as the club has signed a deal with Wojciech Szczęsny, who excelled last season, as a backup goalkeeper for next season – Ter Stegen published an open letter online to Barça fans maintaining his operation will require three months of recovery time. It was seen as an act of retaliation, knowing that if he is out for four months or more, La Liga rules allow Barça to use 50-80 per cent of his salary to register other players, including García. It's a dirty war. Barça have leaked press stories about Ter Stegen refusing to travel to Milan in May for Barça's Champions League semi-final defeat to Inter because he wasn't included in the squad, and that a decision about whether to strip him of his captaincy will be made when the club returns from a preseason Asian tour. Marc-Andre ter Stegen of FC Barcelona. Photograph: Alex Caparros/Getty Barça are desperate to get Ter Stegen (33) off their books. They owe him approximately €42 million in salary payments until his contract expires in 2028. Ter Stegen, with justification, is miffed because the reason his salary is so high is because he agreed to defer payments in previous years, in a typical kicking-the-can-down-the-road manoeuvre by the club's accountants. Meanwhile, Rashford, who is on the same salary scale as Ter Stegen, is waiting in the wings. The mood music in Barcelona about Rashford has an optimistic beat. He is box office, part of a recent wave of English imports to Spain, including Jude Bellingham – who had a sensational first season at the Bernabéu – and Trent Alexander-Arnold at Real Madrid. Barça fans think of Rashford as a bet largely without risk – a season on loan, with a cheap option to buy at €30 million, a joker in the pack who could be a viable alternative, if he hits form, to the ageing Robert Lewandowski. For Rashford (27) it's a last chance saloon to prove himself in the big time, an opportunity to resurrect his career. At a personal level, it's a dream move, somewhere sunny to find his mojo again away from Manchester United's haunted house, provided he's registered to play. Brits at Barça Remarkably, Marcus Rashford is the first British player to sign for Barça since the 1980s. When he signed for Barça in 1984, Steve Archibald had the cojones to take Diego Maradona's vacant number 10 jersey because his team-mates felt, in Archibald's words, like it was 'infected'. The jersey fit – he scored on his league debut against Real Madrid in a 3-0 win that propelled the Catalan club to its first La Liga title in 11 years. Barcelona striker Gary Lineker gets in a shot as Hugo Sanchez of Real Madrid looks on. Photograph: Simon Bruty/Allsport/Getty Archibald, a fan favourite at the Camp Nou who still lives in Catalonia, got the nickname Archigoles . Mark Hughes – who joined in 1986, increasing his salary ninefold by leaving Manchester United – was called El Toro because of his bullish style of play but failed to assimilate. After scoring only four goals in 28 league games, he left through the back door on loan to Bayern Munich before returning to Old Trafford. Gary Lineker signed for Barça the same summer as Hughes but fared much better over three seasons – he learned the language, worked on his tan and loved the long lunches. It helped, too, that he hit the ground running, scoring twice on his league debut, and, memorably, a hat-trick later that first season in a gripping 3-2 win against Real Madrid's Quinta del Buitre side in front of 120,000 ecstatic Catalans at the Camp Nou.
Irish Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
England star lost family member on morning of Euro final
Ella Toone has revealed her grandmother died on the morning of England's Euro 2025 final victory over Spain. The 25-year-old played the opening 87 minutes of Sunday's match in Basel as the Lionesses retained their title thanks to a penalty shoot-out win following a 1-1 draw. The Manchester United midfielder lost her father Nick to prostate cancer last September, three days short of his 60th birthday. He had been diagnosed the day after watching his daughter score in the Euro 2022 final as England beat Germany 2-1 at Wembley. Toone previously revealed her grandmother placed a bet on her to one day play for England when Toone was around six years old. 'Even in the highest of highs life can hit you with the lowest of lows,' she posted on Instagram. 'My Nana Maz took her last breath on the morning of our Euro final. I have comfort in knowing she got to watch from the best seat in the house with Dad, her favourite person.' Toone, who also helped England finish runners-up to Spain at the 2023 World Cup, started five of her country's six games in Switzerland. 'I'll miss you forever nan but I'll cherish the special memories we made, there isn't enough words I can possibly say to sum up the person you were, but I'm grateful you were my nanna. My football loving, crazy, funny Nan,' her post continued. 'All those years ago when you put a bet on at the bookies that I would play for England one day & on the day you leave us we bring it home again. You always knew it.'
