Sarina Wiegman's England can join greats by retaining their Euros title

The Guardian

2 days ago

Twice in the past week, England's Lionesses have rolled the dice, ridden their luck, and performed sleight of hand worthy of the magic circle. The question now, as they prepare to face Spain in Sunday's Women's Euro 2025 final in Basel, is can they pull yet another rabbit out of the hat?
Perhaps the only thing we know for certain is that the country will be watching. More than 10 million saw England's women claw their way past Italy in Tuesday's semi-final, a figure that brought in ITV's highest viewing figures of the year. After that, though, everything is up for grabs.
The former tennis player Brad Gilbert wrote Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis, about how to emerge victorious when not playing well or facing a superior opponent. In Switzerland, the Lionesses have often served up the football equivalent. Yet they are just 90 minutes away from planting their size 6s in the pantheon of great England sports teams.
That may raise some eyebrows. But make no mistake, Sarina Wiegman's side are a staggering success story hiding in plain sight. Since she took over as manager in September 2021, England's women have won 34 of their 47 competitive matches, drawing six and losing seven – an impressive win percentage of 72.5%.
That record, as sports data company Opta shows, compares favourably with the 'golden generation' of the England's men's team between 2001 and 2010, led by David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard. They won 45 out of 67 matches – a win percentage of 67% – although they never got beyond the quarter-finals of a major tournament.
It is also better than Gareth Southgate's record of 61 wins from 102 matches between 2016 and 2024, a win percentage of 59.8%, although England did reach two Euro finals and a World Cup semi-final along the way.
In fact, perhaps the closest parallel with the Lionesses is with the heyday of Sir Alf Ramsey's World Cup winners, who won 26 out of 36 competitive matches between 1966 and 1971, a win percentage of 72.2%.
Incredibly, Sunday will mark England's fifth final in as many summers, with the men having reached the Euro finals in 2021 and 2024, and the women having lifted the Euros in 2022 before losing to Spain in the 2023 World Cup final. As a nation England gone from expecting heroic failure to being almost blase about a golden age.
It is also easy to forget just how far women's football has travelled. Just before the London 2012 Olympics, for instance, organisers withdrew 500,000 tickets for the football tournament from public sale because of a lack of interest – with Team GB women's first game against New Zealand filling just a third of what was known then as Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, which has a capacity of 74,500.
'There will not be many events over the coming two and a half weeks with so many no-shows and the attendance of 24,549 was a clear disappointment,' the Guardian wrote. 'But to put it into context, the crowd was almost five times the number that watched Arsenal play Chelsea in last season's women's FA Cup final.'
In a quirk of fate the 2025 Women's FA Cup final, between Chelsea and Manchester United at Wembley, was watched by 74,412 people. Enough to pack out the stadium in Cardiff. If you had predicted that in 2012 you would have been sneered at.
Of course, England's latest European adventure has been far from smooth. They were outplayed in their opening game against France. Then, in the quarter-finals against Sweden, they first came from 2-0 down with 11 minutes remaining to make it 2-2, before winning the penalty shootout after the Swedes missed two chances to knock them out.
If that wasn't fantastical enough, England also appeared to be going out in their semi-final against Italy until a late equaliser from the substitute Michelle Agyemang in the final minute of injury time. And there was then even more drama as Chloe Kelly scored the winner deep into extra time.
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Afterwards, Wiegman was asked for her secret. 'I don't know,' she replied. 'I am the lucky one – to work with so many people, good players and good staff. I can't believe it myself.'
Speculating how they compare with other great England and British national teams is one for the pub or posterity. However, to these eyes, they do not have the dominance of the England men's Rugby World Cup winners in 2003, who won 42 of their 47 competitive matches between 2000 and 2003, a success rate of 89.4%. Many of the same players made it to a second World Cup final in 2007 too, though with a much poorer win record after their 2003 triumph.
The England team who won the 2019 men's Cricket World Cup, led by Eoin Morgan, will also have their supporters. Not only did they win 48 out of their 63 completed one-day matches between 2016 and 2019 – with one tied – for a win percentage of 76.2%, they attacked with rare fire and freedom.
Those of an older vintage would probably also point to UK Athletics during the golden era of middle distance running in the 70s and 80s, when Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram won Olympic gold medals and world championship titles and smashed 20 world records between them. Especially as Daley Thompson, Tessa Sanderson and Fatima Whitbread were regularly winning medals too.
But for sheer achievement, the extraordinary performance of Team GB Olympians takes some beating. In 1996, Britain won a solitary gold medal, along with eight silvers and six bronzes, finishing 36th in the medal table. Yet thanks to a huge injection of government and lottery funding, they have won more than 60 medals in each of the last four Olympics – including finishing second in the table at the Rio Games in 2016.
Yet the Lionesses' achievements should also not be underestimated. And they still have plenty of time to strengthen their case, starting on Sunday.
It could yet be a classic. Spain like control, England thrive in chaos. The Spanish have the Ballon d'Or Feminine holder, Aitana Bonmatí, and another two-time winner in Alexia Putellas. And while England have great players too, they also have something much harder to define: that mystical combination of luck, fate, randomness and sheer bloody-mindedness. They couldn't, could they?