Lionesses set Wembley date for China friendly as Euro 2025 heroes return to action
The match will be the third of four friendlies for Sarina Wiegman's victorious team across the autumn, with the first two, in October, still to be announced, and pits the Asian champions against their European counterparts. It will also be the Lionesses' third Wembley fixture of 2025, following victories over Spain in February and Portugal in May.
England's autumn friendlies will help them prepare for their 2027 World Cup qualifying campaign, which begins in February. Wiegman's side were World Cup finalists in 2023 and will be hoping to go one better in Brazil in two years' time. England's most recent meeting with China came during their run to the 2023 final. They won 6-1 in Adelaide.
'After an incredible month and the celebrations this week, we are already planning ahead,' Wiegman said. 'It will be special to have a final visit to Wembley this year and something for us all to look forward to once the new season starts.
'There are not many opportunities for us to play non-European opposition in the calendar so I am happy we have been able to secure a top Asian side like China for this Fifa window.'
The fixture with China, who are ranked 17th in the world, will be a 5.30pm kick-off and broadcast live on ITV.
Meanwhile, the financial reward for winning the Women's FA Cup has been frozen for another year after the FA confirmed the competition's prize pot for the season on Wednesday, meaning it remains more than three times smaller than the men's prize.
There has been a slender increase in the overall women's pot, owing to the introduction of a preliminary round for clubs in the seventh tier. Winning teams will each receive £600, before the first round of qualifying. However, the money awarded to teams winning fixtures in all of the subsequent rounds of the competition remains unchanged.
The £430,000 reward winning the final is unchanged for a third straight year. By contrast, the winners of the men's FA Cup final take home £2m. Taking into account their cumulative reward for a successful cup run from the fourth round, when Women's Super League sides enter, a WSL team would receive £814,000 for winning the cup, whereas a cup-winning men's Premier League would accumulate £3,910,000.
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The prize for winning a women's first-round tie is £6,000, compared with £45,000 for men's first-round winners. The overall men's fund is some £20m whereas the women's sits at around £6m.
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