England have reached a second consecutive Euros final, so I think we might need a thread. The final's on Sunday, and England will face Spain, or possibly Germany if they win the other semifinal tomorrow night. Then we can all ignore women's football until the next World Cup in 2027, just like everyone else will.
England keep squeaking past opponents this tournament, which doesn't fill me with optimism, but perhaps this is actually a sign of tremendous grit and determination, and maybe we will steal a third result and take home the trophy again. On a side note, while this is the third consecutive final that England's women have reached, it's the fifth consecutive final for manager Sarina Wiegman, who also won it with her native Dutch team before taking over England for a new challenge.
Michelle Agyemang is definitely our player of the tournament this time, since she's scored late goals to keep us in the tournament twice in a row now, but I've also been impressed by Lauren Hemp's enthusiasm, and Lucy Bronze is a mentality monster. But Spain are the favourites, and I don't expect that to change until the doping scandal that I suspect them of becomes public.
>>10380 The final will, it says here https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c335vljlxdyo, be shown on both the BBC and ITV. Kickoff is at 17:00 UK time, on Sunday, so you can pick and choose whichever pundits you hate less and watch them, probably from about 16:00ish.
>>10383 England and Spain were the two favourites before the tournament started, and Spain were much bigger favourites than England. But hey, you never know. We didn't deserve to beat the last couple of teams we played either. Luck plays a big part when you reach the later stages of tournaments like this.
There was a player on the German national team once whose name was Kuntz. Except it was pronounced more like "Koonts".
At one of my old jobs, the building's caretaker was a Polish lad by the last name "Wanka". Jokes abounded, but he didn't mind, although he always insisted the correct pronunciation in his language was closer to "Vunka".
Lauren James was terrible while she was playing, but then she went off injured after less than 40 minutes so perhaps that's an acceptable excuse for playing so badly.
Currently, as I type this in the 62nd minute, it's 1-1 and the beautiful Alessia Russo scored, after being relatively poor all tournament. We cannot be stopped! Just imagine how brutally Spain will be overpowered once we bring our good players on in another 20 minutes.
We won! On penalties, again, because Spain might be the #1 women's team in the world, but they are shocking at penalties.
This means that Sarina Wiegman has managed the winning team for the past three women's Euros. This is an undeniably incredible achievement, although Tina Theune managed Germany to three consecutive Euro titles in 1997, 2001 and 2005 as well.
>>10390 Yeah, s'pretty good I guess. Watched about 30 minutes with Dad, very minor tussle about difference between women and men (sorry) but I did instigate it. We wound down into rating looks (He's into the English Manager).
Penalties seem to lackluster - they're mostly ever passing it into the goal. Never saw them smash it.
There were a few decent plays that I saw - Spanish. Rarely saw the ball at their goal.
Might think to bet on Spain next year, or whenever the fuck it's on.
The end was a bit naff. Sweet Carline got a chant but it it felt hollow.
Coming from my earliest football experience of singing Three Lions all weekend roaring at penalties in the pub with Brother and Dad. You can barely scream "Kahm on you Kants!" at women. I really hope to hear fanfare on the radio tomorrow.
>>10393 I actually don’t follow the Women’s Super League at all. It’s only the international tournaments that I watch. And for my madly obscure manager trivia, I had to look that up because I was about to say Sarina Wiegman was the only person to do this achievement, but then I remembered that Germany used to win every single women’s Euros, so I had to go through all their past managers to see if any of them had also done this. And someone had! I had never heard of Tina Theune until I found her on Wikipedia.
Another impressive fact that was mentioned in the press conference after the match: Lucy Bronze, who was one of our best players, played most of the tournament with a fractured tibia.
