Latest news with #SarinaWiegman
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
England set new international record in EUROs final ⏱️
England have done it again at EURO 2025. The reigning holders took down world champions Spain in Sunday's final and even before winning on penalties, they already etched their name into folklore. Sarina Wiegman's Lionesses needed an additional 30 minutes to get past Sweden, with the aid of penalties, as well as seeing off Italy in the tournament's semi-final. They are now the first international team in the women's game to have gone through a hat-trick of extra time clashes at a major tournament. Third time proved to be a charm again! 📸 Matthias Hangst - 2025 Getty Images
New York Times
13 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
England team received 3,000 ‘hostile or concerning' posts during Euro 2025 final, report finds
Three thousand social media posts containing 'hostile or concerning content' were directed at the England team during the 2025 European Championship final on Sunday, a report has found. Moonshoot, a UK-based threat monitoring service, analysed threats of violence and abuse targeting England's players and head coach Sarina Wiegman during the victory over Spain, and found social media platforms have failed to take down the majority of abuse targeted at the Lionesses. Advertisement The company assessed 73,400 posts during the final across 30 social media platforms. They found that 3,000 contained 'hostile or concerning content' such as non-targeted abusive language or misogyny. Moonshot reported 95 posts which specifically targeted a player or the head coach to the platforms, as they were classified as abuse and clear violations of the platforms' terms of service. However, 99 per cent of those posts remain online. 'Moderation is reducing,' Catriona Scholes, director of insight at Moonshot, told The Athletic. 'There are fewer moderators being recruited and retained by the platforms to take this kind of content down. I think that the experience of the players is a reflection of that reality. 'We are seeing the Online Safety Act in the UK showing a real intention to crack down on that. But what we aren't seeing is an associated significant reduction in that content online.' Those 95 posts included racist abuse (42 per cent of posts), misogynistic sentiment (29 per cent), sexual objectification (12 per cent), and anti-LGBTQ+ abuse (11 per cent). Michelle Agyemang was the most targeted player in the dataset. Agyemang, the most junior member of Wiegman's squad at 19 years old, was voted young player of the tournament and scored two late equalisers that were crucial in England's progress to the final. The Arsenal forward only came on in the 71st minute in the final but was the target of 18 per cent of abusive posts during the game, which were primarily of a racist nature. Before the semi-finals, England defender Jess Carter stepped back from social media after receiving racist abuse during the tournament. Following her statement, the team decided to stop taking the knee before their matches. 'It is clear we and football need to find another way to tackle racism,' the Lionesses squad said in a statement. 'Those behind this online poison must be held accountable.' 'It feels like there can be a place where we can control abuse online, especially racism online, because everything's monitored online,' England defender Lucy Bronze said in a news conference, 'so it just doesn't make sense to us.' According to Moonshot, moderation standards are declining across social media platforms. Last year, it recorded a 28 per cent take-down rate for all posts which violate the platforms' terms of service or community guidelines on X, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and Facebook. By July 2025, this take-down rate declined to 6 per cent. Advertisement 'The social media companies can improve their proactive identification capabilities so that more content is identified through automated means and then goes through assessments by moderators,' Scholes added. 'They can also do more to actually apply their own terms of service as they're written. 'It's not even that they need to change the policies … it's actually that they need to put in the enforcement and implementation steps. 'We're seeing a decline (in moderation), so we can also say that they were better than they are now. So that's probably a reflection of there being less focus on moderation in the large tech companies right now.' Scholes explains that there are more sophisticated threats which are 'challenging' for moderators, such as using AI-generated content that promotes disinformation about a player and sparks abuse, or using emojis, misspelling and coded language to disguise abuse. The company says the volume of abuse and threats during the final was lower than expected, which it believes is due to England's victory. However, the report says the figures demonstrate 'a systemic failure in platform moderation, where even the most explicit violations of stated community guidelines remain visible and accessible'. The report added that the failure in platform moderation was 'particularly stark in the context of the UK Online Safety Act which designates much of this content as 'priority illegal content'.' After Carter's statement, anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out said: 'Social media companies have failed to prevent exposure to this toxicity, and football must continue to use its collective power to hold them to account. We have been working with the government and the regulator, but we know that more urgency is needed from everyone involved.'
Daily Mirror
15 hours ago
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
Sarina Wiegman: Lionesses boss tipped to get Premier League job with future up in the air
Sarina Wiegman has now won the Women's European Championship three times after guiding England to glory in Switzerland, but she is now being linked with a shock move to the Premier League Sarina Wiegman has surprisingly been tipped for a Premier League role after masterminding the Lionesses' triumph at the Women's European Championship. The 55-year-old Dutch coach, who also led England to glory three years prior in the same competition and to the final of the Women's World Cup in 2023, is now being talked about as a potential trailblazer in English football. Despite no current vacancies in the Premier League, ex- Tottenham Hotspur star Jamie O'Hara is adamant that Wiegman has the credentials to transition from women's to men's football, even if Wiegman herself remains nonchalant on the idea. Speculation has gained momentum after FA chief Mark Bullingham remained coy regarding Wiegman's future, despite her having signed an extension last January to stay on until after the 2027 World Cup in Brazil. When quizzed about securing Wiegman's services beyond her current contract following her latest accomplishment, Bullingham said: "It's a bit early for that. We are delighted she is with us for the World Cup, and we will have that conversation at an appropriate time." However, speaking on talkSPORT, O'Hara suggested that the FA's hesitation might just be a blessing for a top-flight club. The 38-year-old pundit is convinced that Wiegman possesses the necessary skills to take on the challenge, reports the Express. "Unbelievable from the Lionesses. They've made it happen. Unbelievable from Sarina Wiegman as well," O'Hara said on The Sports Bar. "She plays great football, style of football. We want to play out from the back. We want to move the ball quickly. She's very calm. She's collected. She's done the business at the highest level. "Tactically, she gets things right. She knows when to make subs. In tournament football, it's different. I understand. I get that. I don't think it's different pressure. It's only pressure because she'd be the first [woman to manage in the men's game]". Jermaine Pennant, O'Hara's co-host and ex-Arsenal and Liverpool star, said: "It's a good question. The thing is, Premier League or the WSL [Women's Super League] is totally different from tournament football. Like I said, you can play not at your best and manage to scrape through. "Over 38 games in the Premier League, you can't do that. There'll come a point where you'll get found out and you'll end up in a dogfight, in a relegation battle. So it's a different test." Yet, former Spurs midfielder O'Hara stood firm in his opinion. He continued: "If you gave her the right infrastructure, you gave her the right football club, you know, with the players who would respect what she's about and respect what she's done, and I think you get that from Premier League footballers. "I genuinely believe that she could handle it tactically. She's amazing in the press. Everyone loves her, what she's about as a manager. She knows what she's doing. She's got a really good team around her. The modern-day footballer, I think doesn't want a Mick McCarthy anymore. They don't need someone to come in and give them a grilling and get on their case." When Pennant was asked whether he would have welcomed Spurs appointing Wiegman instead of Thomas Frank during their recent managerial hunt, he replied: "I wouldn't be against it. Yeah. I genuinely wouldn't be against it. I'm being serious. Because respect is earned, and she's earned it." The Euro 2025 victory marks Wiegman's third consecutive European Championship success, having previously guided the Netherlands to glory in 2017. But what does Wiegman herself think about stepping into men's football? In 2023, she insisted there was no progression to be made. She said: "My thoughts now are totally not in men's football, my thoughts are with the women's game and what we can do. I am just really happy in the role I work in now and I am really enjoying it... I really love my job for the FA and with England. This is the highest level."
Metro
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Lionesses gave us a world of joy – try to block it out and we'll sing louder
A sea of fans turned out to celebrate England's European champions in London (Picture: PA) I managed not to cry when the little boy in a Leah Williamson England shirt toddled smilingly towards me on Tuesday lunchtime, but it was close. The Lionesses trophy parade had just wrapped outside Buckingham Palace with ecstatic dancing from England manager Sarina Wiegman to a Burna Boy set. Crowds were filtering out in search of sustenance. Streams of England, Arsenal, Manchester United, Sunderland and even Tottenham strips thronged all the way down to Victoria station. Williamson shirts were big on the Mall, Russo and Kelly popular, a Beever-Jones sat behind me at the station. But actually it was the widely represented Lineker and Kane shirts that made me catch my breath. Fans of men's football who had come – some as families, many just with mates – to recognise England's back-to-back European champions in the heart of the capital. The collective giddiness in central London felt like Marathon day or even the 2012 Olympics. Strangers chatting, exulting, politely moving aside to enable better CHAMPIONS BUS photos. Kate enjoying the parade (Picture: Kate Mason) The fascinating thing about fandoms in 2025 is how they are increasingly intense and increasingly siloed. Lioness lore is made mainstream as the women win on bigger and better-broadcast stages but in corners of the internet it is obsessed over year-round. Equally, it is still possible to exist and be almost completely unaware of the devotion these players inspire. Assuming you weren't trying to walk to work in Mayfair on Tuesday, that is. All of which means we may think of Lioness fans as being exclusively girls and young women. And it is true that the Sweet Carolines sung up and down the Mall were less bassy than I'm accustomed to. Young fans are core to the women's football movement and that's smart, because they are crucial when you are building community. But at the parade I counted every age, creed and colour of person. The enthusiastic men were more than represented. And yet it is not the many voices of those supportive male members of the public we usually hear in the conversation around the women's game. Which does us all a disservice. We know the feelings of the men we tend to hear from when it comes to women's football. Their theory is: football is definitely a man thing, we must act when women claim a right to it. A delighted Sarina Wiegman sings with Burna Boy at the parade (Picture: Getty Images) Watching the final in the pub on Sunday, one guy nearby overcame the threat with the comfortable, decades-old expedient of advising the girls on screen of how they should play, in a tone varying from patronage to incredulity, with rolled-eyed glances towards likely allies. The LBC caller who went viral demanding the world stop 'shoving women's football down our throats' asserted that his 'wife' agreed with him that women were unwatchable, their voices unlistenable. Hearing these men it was clear they feel they speak for the majority. Disrespecting women is still safe ground. But as Tuesday shows, they do not. Chloe Kelly and Michelle Agyemang enjoy the taste of success (Picture: Getty Images) And gazing around, surrounded by fans, eyes brimming yet again, I could not help compare it with the disdain I've seen heaped on women's football – not just this week but in my 30 years of loving it. And I couldn't think of a stronger counter to those voices who must even now know they have wasted their time. The joy in that space was a solid thing. It was passed around, shared – and magnified. Sure the audio didn't really work, meaning Heather Small's rendition of Proud was largely lost. But some at the front could hear it and picked up the melody and passed it back in one joyful wave. That's what the Lionesses bring: joy, self-confidence and, yes, the aura of success. If you want to shut yourself out from that, that's okay, how much happiness you'd like in your life is up to you. If you want to stand in its way? Well, we will just sing louder. Seven thousand in 2022's parade, 65,000 strong in 2025. In future? Who can dare to imagine. Arrow MORE: Labour's school guidance is Section 28 all over again for LGBTQ+ people Arrow MORE: I was burned by 'check-in chicken' – heed my warning
The Guardian
a day ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
Lionesses set Wembley date for China friendly as Euro 2025 heroes return to action
England will play China in a friendly at Wembley on 29 November, their first confirmed fixture following the Lionesses' Euros triumph at the weekend. 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. Sign up to Moving the Goalposts No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women's football after newsletter promotion 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.
