by By Laura Howard, Sportsbeat
Alessia Russo insists that England’s potential does not give a limitation after the lion women have implemented their campaign from Euro 2025 with a strong 4-0 victory over the Netherlands.
Russo collected three templates in a dominant England display in the Letzigrund stadium in Zurich when they gave a reaction to their opening defeat against France.
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While the lion women were examined against their below -average performance against Les Bleues, they answered the critics on Wednesday with an excellent display.
Russo was firmly convinced that England has no upper limit at Euro 2025 to defend its European crown.
“After the France game, we saw ourselves as individuals and as a team how we can all be better,” she said.
“When we go into this game, we wanted to start starting up the standards, and we did that. If this is our standard as a team, the sky is the border.
“As a team of our best, when we hold together, we are good on the ball, we create opportunities and we dominate our backs and we did it all.”
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England had become the first defending champion to lose his opening group stage play in a 2-1 defeat against France at a European Championship in France, which also made his first defeat in this round of the tournament since 2015.
Critics doubted whether the lion women could turn their shape against a Dutch team that is equipped with world-class talents such as Vivianne Miedema and Daphne van Domselaar.
But Russo says that despite the unknown territory in which they were, their side never doubts their ability.
“I knew that we were able to do such performances and I know that we are still. We want that. We have now set the standards,” she said.
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“We were obviously really disappointed after the result against France, but we knew that we had to jump back and we knew that we had to win at least two of the group games so that the job did not change.
“Today we definitely achieved a performance that we were all proud of and with which we want to continue.”
While Russo received the player of the game for their hat trick from Assists, it was Lauren James who really stole the show in Zurich.
The Chelsea striker only started her second game since April and scored the opening goal of the game in a breathtaking way.
She received the ball from the Russo on the edge of the box and drove into it before shot a shot from her weaker foot into the upper right corner under pressure from two defenders.
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“We see that she is doing this all the time in training. If you see her in the areas, you can also knock them out at both feet,” said Russo.
“I want to find LJ as much as possible in these areas and as soon as she hit it, I think we all knew that it was going in. She is a special talent.”
James made it a clip in the second half when she was well positioned to make Ella Toones recovered shot from the middle of the box.
The goals of Georgia Stanway and Toone rounded off the victory, while Russo also put the ball online, but it was excluded in the construction away from the sidelines.
It was a dominant performance for England that Andries Jonker’s team made it look weak in their efforts to win three points, and Russo believed that the goal line for the Dutch might have been even worse.
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“We worked really hard, we were really dominant in the first and second balls, recorded the balls in the right areas and were really clinical with our chances we had and probably would have more points,” she said.
“This is our standard and our DNA as a team. We saw that today from the first minute to the last time.
“We wanted to return to our roots and know that we are able to do such performances.”
