England Women manager, Sarina Wiegman has urged her players “to keep the momentum” after qualifying for UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 Quarter-Finals.
Wiegman’s Lionesses mauled Wales 6-1 to finish as Group D runners-up after Georgia Stanway’s penalty opened the scoring, before Ella Toone, Lauren Hemp, Alessia Russo, Beth Mead and Aggie Beever-Jones also netted despite Hannah Cain’s consolatory strike for the Welsh.
France meanwhile won the group with a comeback 5-2 victory over Wiegman’s home country, Netherlands, in which Delphine Cascarino’s brace plus goals from Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Sakina Karchaoui turned the tie around, after Victoria Pelova cancelled out Sandie Toletti’s opener prior to Selma Bacha’s own-goal.
“Of course, [I’m pleased] that we won, that we scored six goals, and big parts of the game we dominated,” explained Wiegman, as she now wants her team to continue their form heading into a difficult Quarter-Final against Sweden in Zurich on Thursday 16 July.
“And it was very clear we were going to win the game but of course, you need to keep the momentum but it was a very good game.
“We knew ahead of this tournament we knew this group was really hard, and then when you lose the first game of course there is a massive urgency to win the other two.
“Now, with the score between France and the Netherlands, that wasn’t that urgent but you want to keep it on your own hands.
“So it gave us a lot of learnings again with the team and it brought us together after that first loss, so I think that is pretty good.”
Wiegman however is wary of Sweden’s quality despite the fact that she led the Lionesses to a ruthless 4-0 victory over the Swedes in the semi-finals of the 2022 edition, en-route to the eventual title as she acknowledged their counter-attacking threat.
“They are always a team, they are always very powerful, they have speed up front and on the counter-attack, they are really good,” noted Wiegman on how tough Sweden will be to beat in the Quarter-Final.
“I think it is a hard team to beat, they have done really well in the group, they have won three games.
“We’ll see, we’ll get ready, first recover from this one and then we go again against Sweden in Zurich.”
In terms of fitness with no injury concerns to report post match, Wiegman was “happy” to go into the knockout stages with a fit squad.
“I am very happy. As far as I know everyone came fit out of this game, that is very important as we have three days to recover.”
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