Now everything changes at Euro 2025 – but will we see a different England?

Independent

a day ago

Both England and Sweden have been in Switzerland for almost three weeks but there's now a fresh feeling about Euro 2025. You'll even sense it in the coverage. Where less consequential group games had been competing with Wimbledon, the Club World Cup and so much more, Thursday's quarter-final is a prime-time slot of its own. It's the event such a fixture should be.
Sweden's Kosovare Asllani, who Sarina Wiegman has been figuring out how to stop, summed it up nicely. 'It feels as if the tournament really gets going when the group stage is over,' the veteran forward said. 'We've been at this stage in almost every championship, so it feels familiar. The fun starts now.'
There's certainly nothing like proper tournament knock-out football in that respect. The games have that exquisite heightened tension, the feeling of being on the knife edge between making memories that live forever as you make your way through a tournament, or sudden death.
Asllani knows that better than most, given that this is her eighth Euros or World Cup, to go with three Olympics. She doesn't know it as well as Wiegman's England, though, at least in terms of successfully navigating such knock-outs. Very few do.
Spain might be seen as the best team in the world right now but it is England who have the best recent knockout record. It's actually remarkable, and something that even Lucy Bronze marvelled at before this match, as she stated how 'insane' it is that England hadn't even beaten Germany until 2015.
Against that, the only knockout that England have lost since 2019 is that 2023 World Cup final against Spain. That stat should also be tempered by how a final is a clearly very different kind of event. It's a destination in itself, when this is just about getting through.
England have generally managed that through a canniness that Wiegman has instilled with the squad's talent. Bronze spoke of the team's own journey in that regard.
'England used to have to dig deep all the time,' the defender said. 'England of the past, it was that you had to dig out performances and it was that you were maybe the underdog, not the favourites. Whereas this England team has developed, football has changed. We're a very talented team, a lot of technical ability, tactics, all that comes with it but we don't want to ever forget that we are England, we are proper England, and if push comes to shove, we can win a game by any means possible.'
That can be seen in Wiegman's very willingness to drastically change up formations. It shouldn't be underestimated. If you don't have a deeper tactical ideology like Spain, that is exactly how you do tournament football. That's maybe what "proper England", to use the term everyone around the squad is saying, also represents. It is really a description of tournament football. A team's resolve amplifies all that, and England showed in 2023 they have plenty of that.
They might well have needed it here, after that opening 2-1 defeat to France. That result did have the effect of turning this tournament into a knockout run right away. England were at least primed for that battle, but they didn't end up needing to be. Rather than digging in, they soared.
The 4-0 win over the Netherlands was probably their best attacking performance in a tournament, since the 4-0 semi-final win over Sweden in Euro 2022. Swedish manager Peter Gerhardsson believes both are 'better teams, better in shape overall' since that match. England certainly are in terms of attacking flow.
Such visible confidence and brio was all the more impressive after the uncertainty that preceded the France defeat. It was as if that result had the effect of setting minds right, of bringing a necessary focus and 'urgency'.
That is something else that can represent classic tournament football. While the longer history of the men's game means there are more examples there, like Spain 2010 and Argentina 2022, Spain themselves arguably displayed this in the World Cup. The 4-0 group defeat to Japan forced a key tactical change that ultimately propelled them to victory.
And yet the nature of England's Euro 2025 group games so far shows that their very approach is so different to previous runs. This is a much more expansive team.
The great question with this game, consequently, is how Wiegman ends up setting up. Given how good Sweden are on the wings, and how susceptible England looked to those specific areas against France, it's hard to see them being quite so front-loaded as the last two games. Wiegman did proactively seek to solve that problem by moving Jess Carter inside, which has had a transformative effect.
Sweden are going to pose different challenges, though. They also have a youth complementing the experience of Asllani and Stina Blackstenius, and the 4-1 win over Germany displayed an ability to rise into a match. It might be looked back on as one of those statement performances, if they do manage to beat England.
Some of the Swedish team are certainly talking about that 4-0 defeat in 2022, and how they want 'revenge'. 'We have that game in the back of our mind,' Magdalena Eriksson said, 'Knowing that if we're not ready, if we're not 100 per cent there, they can punish us.'
The Germany match did show a few flaws that England can get at. That's all the more ominous for Sweden given that Lauren James is clearly growing into this tournament herself, and Wiegman's team really do have goals coming from all angles. Ella Toone had warned Sweden that 'they should be scared'.
If she tempered that with due respect for Thursday's opposition, it is in-keeping with some of the emotive language around this quarter-final. That's what a knockout can bring out. Wiegman needs to ensure it keeps bringing the best out of her team. If this is where the fun starts, as Asllani put it, best not to let it end.