For the third time, England was trailing in an elimination game at Women’s Euro 2025. For the third time, the Lionesses managed to come back and snatch the victory. A few days after Gurinder Chadha announced a sequel to Bend It Like Beckham, women’s soccer has now grown beyond what Jess Bhamra and Jules Paxton could have ever dreamed in 2002. England has now won two straight Euro tournaments, a feat only matched by Germany’s six consecutive wins between 1995 and 2013. Lazy pundits will chalk that up to good old-fashioned British resolve and determination, but we here at FanSided know better. Here’s who’s really responsible for England’s win.
WOMEN’S EURO WINNERS
Chloe Kelly
How clutch is she? Her record in an England jersey now includes the winning goal against Germany in the 2022 final, the penalty that kept England alive in the quarterfinal shootout against Sweden, the penalty that won it against Italy in the semis, and the penalty that cinched the shootout against Spain. To think, this past winter she was thinking of giving up the sport entirely because she was having trouble getting playing time for both Manchester City and England. Now even most City fans are happy that the team let her go to Arsenal so she could play enough to make the Lionesses. Kelly’s year shows how fortunes can turn.
Sarina Wiegman
That’s three straight Euro titles, then. It’s also five straight finals in major international tournaments. No coach in men’s soccer has matched either feat in a sport that has run much longer. You can argue that England frequently looked second-best to their opponents during this knockout run, or that the offense was stodgy without Kelly and Michelle Agyemang. That doesn’t take the shine off three consecutive European championships. The thought of a matchup between her England and Emma Hayes’ USA at World Cup 2027 already has us salivating.
Hannah Hampton
Mary Earps retired from England before this tournament after having been named the best goalkeeper of World Cup 2023. Indications are that Hampton might have taken her spot between the sticks anyway. Regardless, the Chelsea netminder stopped two shots during the penalty shootout from Mariona Caldentey and Aitana Bonmatí and prevailed in two shootouts during England’s run. Weirdly enough for a British player, she came up through Villarreal’s youth academy in Spain. She’s only 24. How good will she get?
Lucy Bronze
She was culpable on Caldentey’s bullet header that opened the scoring in the final, but we’ll cut her a little slack considering her admission that she had a broken tibia for the last two months. That’s something to pull out if you ever hear people questioning the toughness of women players. Her 36th cap in a major tournament breaks the England record held by the great Jill Scott, and she now has a second Euro winner’s medal to look at while she recuperates.
WOMEN’S EURO LOSERS
Salma Paralluelo
She came in in the 90th minute for Esther González and had numerous chances to win it for Spain in the extra periods. I’m specifically thinking of Ona Batlle’s cross in the 106th minute that fizzed between her legs Bill Buckner-style, but the Barcelona winger had others that went begging as well, and then she dragged her penalty wide during the shootout. (Even had the shot been on target, Hampton would have likely stopped it.) Spain would not have won its World Cup title without the goals she scored two years ago, but on Sunday, she couldn’t find the target.
Penalty kicks
Five missed spot kicks in the final plus nine misses in the England-Sweden quarterfinal helped contribute to a historically low rate of penalty conversions in this tournament. It wasn’t just the English and their opponents, either, as Spain missed two PKs in their quarterfinal against Switzerland and Germany missed one that would have won their quarterfinal against France. Of course, a great deal of it comes from great goalkeeping by Hampton, Ann-Katrin Berger, and Jennifer Falk, and the numbers over history suggest that this year’s biffs from the spot are just a blip.
Me
I stated in my last entry that I was looking forward to the third-place game, only to later find out that there was no third-place game here, just as there was no third-place game in the men’s Euro tournament last year. It’s a feature that’s confined to the men’s and women’s World Cup tourneys. I should check these things more carefully.