Sarina’s Amazing Multicoloured Crisis
Maybe I’m too emotional, but it kind of feels like England have one.
Albert Einstein said it best: insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. And this was the rationale by which France manager Laurent Bonadei axed some of the team’s most popular players from the squad for EURO 2025, including captain Wendie Renard, who has appeared more than 150 times for her country and is one of the most decorated female footballers at club level.
She caught my Dad’s eye when he watched Les Bleues lose to Germany in the EURO semi-final back in the summer of 2022 (I was reminded, recently, by an Instagram video of Germans dancing in the changing room, that this historic event happened in Milton Keynes). She looked then, by my Dad’s reckoning, the team’s best player.
“Where is she now?” he asked me on Saturday night, when the forest fire which Bonadei bravely started began to look like a good idea as France flattened the European Champions.
France were a team. Slick, familiar, and comfortable in their own skins, confident to attack together, confident to bully England off the ball.
Meanwhile, after a bright-ish start and an unlucky brush with the absurdity of VAR, England began to look drippy and ineffective. Hardly able, even, to complete one successful pass, not least put together the fluid sort of play that would be needed to level the game after Marie-Antoinette Katoto put the Frogs ahead.
The Lionesses looked lost and, once again, Lucy Bronze took it upon herself to fix things in a frenzy, refusing to break the cycle of insanity.
Out of position when France launched another attack, Bronze raced back as Leah Williamson was fending off Sandy Baltimore. The rescuer blundered in, interfering with the fatigued Williamson’s management of the situation, causing disarray and ending up flailed on the floor, where one hapless dinked assist set Baltimore up to rifle the ball into the roof of the net. 2-0.
It was Olga Carmona in Sydney again, Bronze’s gung-ho altruism opening doors for England’s opponents.
Criticising Bronze in this way sickens me, because she’s a good footballer with plenty still to contribute — despite critics’ claims that she is not young enough, fast enough, defensively-minded enough. But you would expect more level-headed decision-making from a seasoned player competing at her seventh major tournament.
It was little wonder that Bronze’s niece and nephew spent much of the night with their heads buried in their iPads.
I am intolerant to children of all ages making a public ruckus through the tinny speakers of tablets and phones, but I would sooner be stuck inside an Alpine gondola listening to the mini Bronzes watching the same episode of Peppa Pig on separate devices at a discordant five-second delay than watch another five minutes of the Lionesses attempt to leave their own half.
It’s hard to pick out any redeeming qualities of this showing. I suppose the fightback was nice, when it finally arrived 87 minutes too late. And before the hideousness truly set in, I recall Hannah Hampton making an impressive save that will have Mary Earps grinding her teeth. Off the pitch, I enjoyed seeing England boss Sarina Wiegman slam her notebook in the run-up to half-time, sassily clipping her multicoloured retractable pen onto the front after putting the finishing touches on her team talk: ‘keep the fucking ball’, in four different shades.
Second-half subs Grace Clinton and Michelle Agyemang escaped my wrath — as they were likely to do, as newbies, who do not yet have the power to truly let me down. Can you imagine being some of the only guys in the room who do not know what winning the tournament feels like? Everyone swapping tales at breakfast on camp. The most horrific FOMO since you couldn’t afford to attend that hen do in Santorini. It’s no surprise the pair came on and showed a bit of eagerness to become a European Champion.
I’m inclined to think that their greenness is good. Sarina has done well to fend off suggestions that her team are in crisis after Earps and Milllie Bright decided they wanted out of the whole thing so last minute. But was she bullshitting, are they all so weary, and is this, in fact, a crisis? Maybe I’m too emotional, but it kind of feels like one.
In her post-match interview, captain Williamson came across utterly defeated. I felt guilty for my exasperation as she explained how defending can get loose when you’re fighting fire after fire. She looked upset, shattered, far from determined. Fair enough. But if she’s not leading, who is?
PinkNews shared a jubilant accolade this week: "Wales are officially the gayest team at the 2025 Women's Euros."
Right, well, judging from a photo of them, they must surely also be… the whitest?
There was a bit of chat following the last European Championship about the lack of diversity within the England squad. Only three of that 23 players who lifted the trophy were not white.
"Young girls who cannot see anyone who looks like they do lack heroines to emulate – and that matters," Anita Asante wrote in the Guardian, citing scarce scouting resources and ‘a lack of imagination’ from scouts as part of the problem.
The FA responded by revising their performance pathway last year, removing barriers such as travel distance to training centres.
It will take some time for these steps to have a visible effect in the make up the Lionesses, but for now, the number of non-white players at EURO 2025 is at least up… to four.
On Friday afternoon, Stade de Genève was awash with boos as a VAR check entered its fifth minute during EURO 2022 semi-finalists Sweden's opening game against Denmark. Early in the game, Swedish forward Madalen Janogy was in the frame for handling the ball in her own box. A handball is usually a rough one to take, but in this scenario, poor Janogy was falling to the floor and would probably have had to accept a face full of turf in order to put her hands anywhere else but in the path of the ball.
It wasn't clear whether the Stade de Genève boos were for the officiating or the an unimpressive rendition of Lay All Your Love On Me which sparked up as Janogy awaited her destiny.
The sound reminded me of when Radio 4 newsreader Charlotte Green absolutely lost it laughing while presenting a news item about someone dying because someone in the studio had said off-microphone that the previous item, the earliest recording of a human voice, sounded like a bee stuck in a jar.
It was hard to say whether the acapella karaoke emanated from a drunk Swede with a megaphone, or whether the ghosts of Abba Voyage had followed Swedish Arsenal defender Amanda Ilestedt across Europe from London.