Winning Euro 2025 final would seal Lionesses' place in history books

Twice in the past week, England's Lionesses have rolled the dice, ridden their luck, and performed sleight of hand worthy of the Magic Circle.

- Sean Ingle

The question now, as they prepare to face Spain in tomorrow's Women's Euro 2025 final in Basel, is can they pull yet another rabbit out of the hat?

Perhaps the only thing we know for certain is that the country will be watching. More than 10 million saw England's women claw their way past Italy in Tuesday's semi-final, a figure that brought in ITV's highest viewing figures of the year. After that, though, everything is up for grabs.

The former tennis player Brad Gilbert wrote Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis, about how to triumph when not playing well or facing a superior opponent. In Switzerland, the Lionesses have often served up the football equivalent. Yet they are just 90 minutes away from planting their size 6s in the pantheon of great England sports teams.

That may raise some eyebrows. But make no mistake, Sarina Wiegman's side are a staggering success story hiding in plain sight. Since she took over as manager in September 2021, England's women have won 34 of their 47 competitive matches, drawing six and losing seven - an impressive win percentage of 72.3%.

That record, as the sports data company Opta shows, compares favourably with the "golden generation" of the England men's team between 2001 and 2010, led by David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard. They won 45 out of 67 matches - a win percentage of 67% - although they never got beyond the quarter-finals of a major tournament.

It is also better than Gareth Southgate's record of 61 wins from 102 matches between 2016 and 2024, a win percentage of 59.8%, although England did reach two Euro finals and a World Cup semi-final along the way.