Phillip Spakouskas is a 48-year-old St. Gallen native who will be supporting England because his father is English.<\/p>\n
“I was buzzing knowing England would be coming here and seeing all the fans, even Welsh fans on Tuesday and Wednesday – they were fantastic – and I’m really looking forward to Sunday as well,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I saw the France v Wales game [in St. Gallen] and I thought the Welsh girls were quite good but the French were better and I think England will be massive favourites.<\/p>\n
“I thought they [England] weren’t up to it against France but against the Netherlands they were really good.”<\/p>\n
Phillip said the people of St. Gallen had embraced being a host location at Euro 2025 and hopes there will be a legacy in place for women’s football, especially in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
“It started slowly then the first game was Germany v Poland and from then on it really has been buzzing,” he added.<\/p>\n
“I’ve met a lot of fans in St. Gallen – German, Polish, French and Welsh. They all say it’s a nice city, not big but it has nice architecture and it’s clean.<\/p>\n
“For women’s football it’s the next step, England was buzzing three years ago [when they hosted the tournament] but this is another step.”<\/p>\n
Birmingham couple Mike and Carol Adams, 67 and 70 respectively, follow the Lionesses across the world and have high hopes of qualification for the knockout stages despite the early tournament defeat to France in Zurich.<\/p>\n
“It’s massively important to be here and fingers crossed for a win,” said Mike.<\/p>\n
“When you look at the draw, it has certainly favoured other people hasn’t it? Because we are in the toughest group there’s no doubt about that.<\/p>\n
“She [England coach Sarina Wiegman] changed the tactics. The first game she just seemed to allow them to sit back and Hempo [Lauren Hemp] and Bronzey [Lucy Bronze] never ever went down the sides and the French just came on to us and realised they could beat us.<\/p>\n
“I’d like to think we can win the tournament but Spain are really hot aren’t they?”<\/p>\n
Carol has enjoyed meeting Welsh fans since arriving in St. Gallen, saying: “It’s wonderful. It’s what you want, everybody here from the United Kingdom, so it’s great to have Wales here and the banter is brilliant.”<\/p>\n
Mike added: “We are on a campsite not too far away surrounded by Welsh fans and we were sat drinking with them last night. Everyone wants a good game.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phillip Spakouskas is a 48-year-old St. Gallen native who will be supporting England because his father is English.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-261195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114845154232916460","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261195","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=261195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}