by The Letzigrund looks beautiful under a pale pastel evening sun. The sound washes over the sporty route, on which Carl Lewis and Asafa Powell once broke the world record and where Sweden now flies out of the blocks and left England behind in their dust.
We do not yet know that this is simply the prologue in many ways that this devastating early two-goal flood is actually relatively harmless compared to the following slaughter.
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Related: England 2-2 Sweden (closely won 3-2 for punishments): Euro 2025 players ratings
We still don’t know that Lauren James will play in a double pivot point for almost an hour. We do not yet know that Lucy bronze wear the captain’s bracelet on the wrist and that there is a huge credit card advertising. Hannah Hampton, his nose was still bloodless, has no idea that this will be the greatest night of her career.
But they all know something. Even if they are not quite aware of it. Even as an extremely Shambolic England England Trail Sweden with 2-0 and the death ads for their Euro 2025 campaign, there is a small knot of the rejection, a team with a completely unjustified calm at the core, a team that still trusts against all the available visual evidence that everything ultimately works.
Which makes a rather important leap of faith after half an hour of Swedish dominance. Alessia Russo was hardly into the game. Georgia Stanway snuggles manically like a dog at a family grille. Jess Carter, based on her hunting and postponement and death, to touch the ball, clearly trains for a future career as a referee.
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Ok, you may not have underestimated Sweden. But maybe they just overestimated each other. And maybe this was the inevitable result of an structure that concentrated almost exclusively on the directness and physicality of Sweden, to show the need for England, “real English” properties. There was no clear plan for the ball and precious little quality in any case: an entire team that was absorbed so that they had forgotten to trust their technical skills.
Sweden has now come a completely transparent strategy: the ball to the right, aim with long balls over the left -backs in England and just wait to collect your jackpot. England has no runners from deep, no flying full -back, no real intent to create overcharge, and exactly the same hopeless balls that caught the channels.
Nevertheless, they know something. You know the depth that you own on your bank. You know that you have three backs to withdraw, different combinations and attack angles. You know that you have your legs that last 90 minutes and 120 if necessary. And above all, you know that you compete against a team that is already starting to anchor yourself, whose tournament history indicates a certain, firmly wired weakness that you can produce and exploit if you can perform this game deep enough.
And so the delay of Sarina Wiegman’s replacement, almost a kind of willful stubbornness, a blind belief that things would eventually become good without being confirming evidence. The lively patterns of Chloe Kelly transform the right flank of England and the fresh legs by Michelle Agyemang alongside Russo a new threat. Bronze now appears with main characters, appears at the back post to convert Kelly’s cross. Less than two minutes later, Agyemang comes across Kelly’s header to be the game.
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Even if Sweden survives until the extension, even if it continues to make opportunities on the counter, there is an almost irresistible impulse building behind England when the punishments approach. Even in the middle of the farce and fragility of this penalty shot, it is Sweden that collapses under the pressure while bronze, Kelly and Hampton keep their nerve.
In a way, you can hardly hope to see a better example of the power of self -distortion in tournament football. England so often has no more sophisticated strategy than just doing a virtue to do just enough, just hanging there and trusting in her intrinsic family to look through it. It was a strategy that a faulty team competed until the last World Cup final and may be good enough here to do this again.
It is a bit banal to the conclusion that great teams win when they play badly. Perhaps the trademark of certain large teams is to feel almost unconsciously if they are allowed to play badly and if this is not the case if the level has to be increased if the inserts are most sharpest. It will probably be good enough against Italy; It will probably not be good enough against Spain or France. But for the time being, the egg of a team of this curate rolls to the next Grand climax.
