This was the litmus test for both nations – heavyweights in the competition – to see where they were at against a top-ranked opponent.<\/p>\n
It was France, ranked 10th in the world, who came out on top quite convincingly, showing they mean busy in Switzerland and England have work to do. <\/p>\n
A lot of the pre-match focus centred around both teams’ attacking quality and the Lionesses were boosted by the inclusion of James in the starting XI.<\/p>\n
She was instantly involved, firing a shot over the bar after sneaking into the box and being teed up by Russo inside a minute.<\/p>\n
A few moments later, James’ silky feet created space on the right and her cross sailed inches over Hemp’s head at the back post. <\/p>\n
But France’s attacking line-up stole the show after that – causing havoc out wide and testing goalkeeper Hannah Hampton in her first start at a major tournament.<\/p>\n
Baltimore enjoyed her battle with Lucy Bronze on France’s left-hand side, while Elisa de Almeida was a threat at right-back, catching England defender Jess Carter out of position too many times. <\/p>\n
If there were any doubts as to whether France are contenders in Switzerland, they put that to bed with a commanding and confident display, while England will be under no illusions as to the challenge they face if they are to defend their title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This was the litmus test for both nations – heavyweights in the competition – to see where they…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":41804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-41803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}