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This is a week that will be forever remembered for the loss of Diogo Jota.
Suzanne Wrack sets the scene in Zurich, through the eyes of the captain and coach of the Lionesses.
“The team has been a bit in transition, of course,” the manager, Sarina Wiegman, said, “and we absolutely cherish what we have done before, and we never forget it, and those are lifetime experiences for us and for our families and also for the fans. But you have to move on and you have to be on top. Things are changing very quickly, so we have to, too. We came together in February and we said: ‘It’s a new challenge.’ The approach was there anyway, but we called it the New England.”
A shock result elsewhere in the world of women’s soccer.
There is, of course, another international tournament going on. Here’s the latest from the Club World Cup.
Here’s someone who knows the pressures – and might one day coach the Lionesses, Emma Hayes, The Guardian’s columnist for the Euros.
When you are the holders, the most important thing to get right is your internal hunger and understand you’ve got a target on your back in every fixture. To counter that, you have to find another level in yourself because a title cannot be won the same way you won it before.
Friday’s matches saw a couple of favourites win.
Preamble
Here’s where it all starts for the Lionesses. The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? A huge test awaits in the challenge of France. A new-look team, though one full of established stars, needs to get out of the group stage, and then perhaps the competition opens up for them. That’s all in the future, perhaps, but for Wales this is history, to quote in the news Noel Gallagher, the end of a long journey to be at a finals. Jess Fishlock leads her team against the Dutch, and Wales could be the wild card. So, a big day awaits, with news from the footbal industry as a whole coming in all day.
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