Sweden<\/a> in the quarterfinals and one more to Italy in the semifinals. England\u2019s equalizing goals by Agyemang in the knockout games came in, respectively, the 81st and then the sixth minute of stoppage time.<\/p>\n\u201cI think we\u2019ve nearly killed her twice this tournament!\u201d England\u2019s Ella Toone said of coach Sarina Wiegman. \u201cShe says we\u2019ve definitely aged her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spain midfielder Patri Guijarro said of England’s resolve: \u2033There\u2019s no fragility. And I think that above all, their competitiveness, is what has got them this far. But what they\u2019re doing is not easy.\u2033<\/p>\n
Trading wins <\/p>\n
Spain and England each beat the other when winning their recent titles, and they traded wins in a UEFA Nations League group this year. <\/p>\n
England eliminated Spain 2-1 after extra time in the quarterfinals of its home Euro 2022. Does this sound familiar? England trailed into the 84th that day before two substitutes \u2014 Alessia Russo and Toone \u2014 assisted and scored to force extra time.<\/p>\n
Spain got a deserved 1-0 win in the 2023 World Cup final played in Sydney, Australia. <\/p>\n
Spain is now on a run of 13 wins in 14 games and the blip was a 1-0 loss to England at Wembley in February. Spain won the return game 2-1 on June 3, rallying with two Cl\u00e0udia Pina goals in the second half.<\/p>\n
Winning women coaches <\/p>\n
For the eighth straight edition, the title-winning coach will be a woman.<\/p>\n
England\u2019s Wiegman and Spain\u2019s Montse Tom\u00e9 were in a minority of seven female head coaches with the 16 teams that started in Euro 2025.<\/p>\n
They are the last coaches standing to extend a winning run started in 1997.<\/p>\n
Wiegman won the past two, with England in 2022 and her native Netherlands in 2017. Germany coaches Silvia Neid and Tina Theune won the previous five. Spain never reached the final in 13 previous editions since 1984.<\/p>\n
Penalty shootouts <\/p>\n
That first final 41 years ago is the only one decided by a penalty shootout.<\/p>\n
Sweden beat England in a rain-soaked, near-empty stadium in Luton after a two-leg final ended 1-1. The scorer of Sweden\u2019s decisive penalty, and its goal in the first leg, was Pia Sundhage, who coached Switzerland to the quarterfinals here, losing 2-0 to Spain.<\/p>\n
England\u2019s second shootout in Women\u2019s Euros history also was against Sweden, last week in the quarterfinals. A madcap affair saw only five of 14 spot kicks scored and Sweden fail twice when scoring would have sent England home.<\/p>\n
Spain was involved in just one Women\u2019s Euros shootout, losing to Austria in the 2017 quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-293229","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\/114919436719869930","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293229","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=293229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}