At this point, all evidence points to one fact: Sarina Wiegman is the Women’s Euro Whisperer.
An England team will play for the title in the European Championship final that it’s hosting for a second straight summer after Wiegman’s Lionesses routed Sweden 4–0 in the first semifinal on Tuesday. Either Germany or France will join England at Wembley Stadium on Sunday, and whichever one emerges from Wednesday’s meeting will try to accomplish something no team has in the last two such competitions: Beat a Wiegman-coached side.
After guiding her native Netherlands to the title on home soil in 2017, Wiegman is a win away from taking another host nation to the promised land. Her all-time record as a manager at the Euros 11-0-0. Her teams have outscored opponents 33–4 combined. And more importantly, she has appeared to instill the unquantifiable “winner’s mentality” at her two stops, where crossing the final hurdles had previously been unachievable.
Jon Super/AP
England has been close to winning major silverware before. It reached the semifinals of the last three major tournaments, falling in the 2015 Women’s World Cup to Japan in the ’17 Women’s Euro to Wiegman’s Netherlands and in the ’19 Women’s World Cup to the U.S. And that history loomed over the tournament host, with Wiegman tasked with molding its multitude of talented individuals into a cohesive champion.
“I don’t want to be another player that loses in another semifinal and doesn’t get to a final of a major tournament with England,” veteran forward Fran Kirby said in the build-up to Tuesday’s match. “We spoke about the semifinals we have lost previously and it takes a long time to recover from losing a semifinal like that.
”I don’t want to experience having to take a month to get over not getting to a final. It would mean everything to reach a final with this England team.”
To Kirby’s delight, England has done just that, and it’s beaten a quality team in impressive fashion to get there.
Rui Vieira/AP
Seconds in on Tuesday, it looked like it might go another way, though. Goalkeeper Mary Earps was forced into making a kick save in the game’s opening sequence after Sofia Jakobsson was played through following a turnover at the midfield line, and Sweden was on the front foot from there. This is a Sweden side that has won silver at the last two Olympics (it lost to Canada on penalties last summer and to Germany in 2016) and is ranked second in the world. It’s the kind of team that would have taken that early momentum and made England pay for it in the past. But, as England showed in its dramatic quarterfinal comeback against Spain, this isn’t a past England team, it’s a hardened one that can take opponents’ best shots and win different ways. After absorbing that early pressure, a goal against the run of play changed everything.
Beth Mead gave Sweden its first deficit of the competition in the 34th minute, side-volleying in after settling Lucy Bronze’s cross for her tournament-leading sixth goal. Bronze then scored one of her own two minutes into the second half, with a header off a corner kick making its way through traffic and being upheld by VAR, and from there, it was effectively over.
But it became emphatically over in the 68th minute, when supersub Alessia Russo scored perhaps the goal of the tournament. After having a clear look saved, she pounced on the rebound and then instinctively hit a back-heel on frame, which nutmegged goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl and gave England a 3–0 lead.
Kirby then put the finishing touches by chipping Lindahl, who got a hand on the shot, but not enough to keep it out. By then the result was academic.
“This result will go all over Europe and the world. It was such a performance that tomorrow everyone will talk about us,” Wiegman said after the game. “I think we have shown that we are very resilient. I don’t think we started the game well, but still we found a way.”
Sunday will mark England’s third Women’s Euro final, and the first since 2009, when it lost to Germany. A rematch could be in the cards, just like Tuesday’s game was a rematch of both the ’19 Women’s World Cup third-place playoff (won by Sweden) and a rematch of the two-legged 1984 Women’s European Championship final (won by Sweden in penalties). If the theme of this tournament is England exorcising past demons to emerge triumphant, then the script is being prepared. And as for Wiegman, England remains undefeated since she took charge, now 17-0-2 and outscoring its opponents an audacious 104–4 in the process, taking advantage of some lopsided World Cup qualifying matchups to pad the overall stats.
But the level of accomplishment needs no dressing up. This is a title-worthy England guided by a coach who has the wherewithal and knowhow to provide what had previously been lacking. And on Sunday, we’ll find out whether the Women’s Euro Whisperer can ensure the title is “coming home” for a team that has been so close yet so far from breaking into the global elite.
