Wiegman: ‘We have a very interesting, exciting group’

Lionesses head coach Sarina Wiegman was excited by England’s UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 group stage schedule after attending the draw at the Swiss Tech Convention Centre in Lausanne.

Earlier this evening, the Lionesses discovered they would face France, Wales and the Netherlands in the group stage when the four teams will battle it out for a place in the knockout stages of the tournament when it gets underway next July.

With the defending champions drawn into Group D, it also marks a meeting between Wiegman and her former team.

Back in 2017, Wiegman’s Netherlands side were crowned European champions before going on to win the tournament again with the Lionesses in 2022, making the 55 year old the only manager to coach two different nations to the title.

“I think we have a very interesting, exciting group,” she assessed. “It’s a bit the same as the Nations League groups – it’s very tough. You just have to take it as it comes and be ready on 5 July. That’s how I approach it.

“I’m confident in these players. As we’ve seen, we have some very good, younger players coming in and having some playing minutes. Everyone goes to a tournament to win it and so do we. I’m confident in my team and excited about next summer.”

England will also lock horns with Wales, who qualified for their first major women’s tournament after overcoming the Republic of Ireland in the play-offs earlier this month.

“First of all, congratulations to them – they’ve qualified for the first time in their history which is, of course, amazing,” commented Wiegman. “There’ll be some rivalry in a nice when we go out on the pitch. I’m looking forward to that game.”

EURO 2025 will take place in Switzerland between 2 and 27 July 2025 – the first time the country has hosted the tournament after being chosen to do so in April last year.

And demand for tickets is already high, with England’s EURO win on home soil in front of over 87,000 fans at Wembley two and a half years ago setting the standard for future editions of the tournament.

“For this country, it’s a massive thing to grow the game here,” continued Wiegman. “As you see here, the welcome is really warm and they want to change women’s football in this country.

“You can see with the amount of tickets already sold, it’s more than in England when we started, so you see improvements all the time.

“There are so many good countries, so for us, we’re working every day to get things right, to support players as well as possible to be selected and be in their best form.”