'Beautiful craziness!', British media hails England victory in crazy shootout
The Zurich shootout featured 14 penalties before England prevailed 3-2 with Lionesses goalkeeper Hannah Hampton emerging as the unlikely hero having been thrust into the spotlight in her first major tournament.
"Beautiful craziness!" trumpeted the Daily Mail, while The Sun led with "Cats With Nine Lives" and The Times declared "Hannah Hampton the England hero in ridiculous penalty shoot-out".
"If this team was a cat, seven of nine lives would have been used up on this rollercoaster ride, but here they were: still standing, still fighting," Dominic King wrote in the Daily Mail.
The Times said it had looked like England were on their way out when they trailed 2-0 after 25 minutes before goals from Lucy Bronze and teenager Michelle Agyemang sent the game to extra time.
"Yes, England were abysmal for 70 minutes, but who cares?" Kit Shepard wrote.
"Once Sarina Wiegman finally made some substitutions in this epic quarter-final, they recovered from 2-0 down, held on heroically in extra time and prevailed in a ridiculous penalty shoot-out. The Lionesses' Euro 2025 hopes are, somehow, still alive."
England's valiant effort also drew praise in The Guardian.
"Even as an utterly shambolic England trail Sweden 2-0 and the obituaries for their Euro 2025 campaign are being scribbled, there is a little knot of refusal there, a team with an entirely unwarranted calmness at its core, a team that against all the available visual evidence still trusts that everything is going to work out eventually," Jonathan Liew wrote.
The Telegraph said Bronze's winning penalty would go down in English football folklore.
"It was a penalty hit with fury, a strike of pure mental and physical strength," Luke Edwards wrote.
"Bronze roared, a scream into the night air, a scream that said England will not surrender, they will not go down without a fight while she had oxygen left in her lungs."
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