“It was a five-star performance,” former Wales defender Danny Gabbidon told BBC Radio 5 Live. “Five goals. Clean sheet. A different variety of goals as well. It’s exactly how you want to start the tournament.<\/p>\n
“We’ve spoken about it coming into this – Spain are the favourites and rightly so. They haven’t won this competition yet so the pressure is on them to perform – and boy, did they perform, particularly in that first half.”<\/p>\n
Yet Spain have occasionally shown since beating England in Sydney to lift the World Cup that they can be got at.<\/p>\n
They suffered a shock loss to the Czech Republic in qualifying, while they were defeated by England in the Nations League.<\/p>\n
At the most recent major tournament, the 2024 Olympics, Spain failed to win a medal following defeats by Brazil and Germany.<\/p>\n
There are still some question marks about the ability of their first female manager, Montse Tome, for whom this is a maiden senior role.<\/p>\n
And much harder tests will come. This Portugal side who, scarred by recent heavy losses to Spain and the dreadful news from Zamora on Thursday morning, were outclassed.<\/p>\n
“I personally think Portugal made it easy for Spain,” former Spain international Vicky Losada told ITV. “If you want to do something in the Euros you have got to compete.”<\/p>\n
History does not indicate a procession for Spain. They have never won the Euros – indeed, the last time they went beyond the quarter-finals was in 1997. They have gone out in the last eight of the previous three continental tournaments.<\/p>\n
But if Spain do win Euro 2025, they will be only the second women’s team in history to win consecutive World Cup and European tournaments after Germany won five in a row between 2001 and 2009.<\/p>\n
Given the depth and youth of this Spanish side, similar dominance should not be ruled out. And this hugely impressive first half could be the first step.<\/p>\n
Favourites? Unquestionably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“It was a five-star performance,” former Wales defender Danny Gabbidon told BBC Radio 5 Live. “Five goals. Clean…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-235839","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114791645488715928","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}