Michelle Agyemang hailed after 'fearless' teen gives Sarina Wiegman Euro 2025 final headache
Lucy Bronze heaped praise on humble-but-fearless teenager Michelle Agyemang after the tournament debutant saved England's bacon once more. Arsenal striker Agyemang forced extra-time against Sweden in the quarter-final and repeated the trick against Italy with a crucial stoppage-time strike.
Chloe Kelly went on to win the game for the Lionesses deep into extra-time, sending them through to Sunday's final. Both players will be pushing for more involvement despite excelling as 'finishers' under Sarina Wiegman, and Bronze was effusive in her praise of the pair.
"What a tournament from Michelle, especially coming in with the seniors just a couple of months ago," Bronze said. "What a great player, what a bright future she's got.
"She's such a humble, lovely down to earth girl. Honestly couldn't think of a nicer person and then Chloe's just attitude, sass, confidence, I think Chloe's one of them players when she's on the pitch, no matter what the moment of the game is, or how she's feeling how the crowd is, no matter what, she's going to push her shoulders back, big up her chest and she's going to go for it. They're both key players in this team, obviously they haven't started in this tournament but it just shows the the strength of our team that we've got these players that we can rely on off the bench because I don't know many teams that have that."
Agyemang might well have won it for England shortly before Kelly stepped up to the plate, sending an effort against the crossbar. The Arsenal starlet has yet to make her first senior start for her country, but the Lionesses' defenders know all about her from the effort she shows in training.
Bronze agreed when asked if she shared some of Agyemang's fearlessness in her own early career. "Yeah I think so because nobody knows anything about you, people can analyse her game but she's played a few minutes against Belgium, a few minutes in the season as well with Brighton," the right-back said.
"She's a little bit of the unknown and she brings something different to our other strikers and our attackers, which maybe other teams aren't used to playing against, especially in an England shirt. So I think it gives her a lot of confidence and the team give her a lot of freedom, Sarina does.
"We want her to be confident and just play good football and try and score goals, when she scored the first one, we were like, go and do it again. And you saw that in the rest of the game. She was going on by herself, she had two or three good runs in extra time where she was like, I'm going to take this team to the final. It's amazing to see and I think that gives the rest of the team confidence."
She added: "I think she had a few comments early on, not from players but from the outside where they said she's quite aggressive [in training] but I love it, what a great player to train against every single day in training. And you see it when she comes on, like defenders are petrified of her, coming up against her.
"She comes on [and] a defender's played 90 minutes and then they have to come up against Michelle. I sure as hell wouldn't want that to be me. She's so powerful, so aggressive, she really let us breathe a little bit in the game and helped get rid of some of the pressure in the game as well."
Despite Agyemang's impact from the bench, though, manager Wiegman played down the suggestion the youngster is at risk of forcing her hand when it comes to team selection. "She's not forcing me. She is very grateful that she gets minutes," Wiegman said.
"She's ready for it. Her growth and development went so quickly. From not starting at Brighton and being on loan, to getting lots more minutes, showing how good she is, and coming into our team, as things go it has been pretty smooth for her and I think she feels very good about that."
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7 minutes ago
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Yet when the men's World Cup was held in Brazil in 2014, Germany's triumph showed that a northern European team could still thrive in unfamiliar team who would be expected to flourish in that climate would be hosts Brazil, who will also have the added boost of home had a disappointing tournament two years ago, failing to make it past the group stage as Jamaica finished ahead of them. But just 12 months later they were impressive at the Paris Olympics, knocking out hosts France and Spain on their way to the final, and where better to end their search for a first international title than on home soil?When it comes to major tournaments it is also hard not to mention two-time champions Germany, while perennial underachievers France and former winners Japan are capable of competing with the world's best.
