Latest news with #Euros2024
Daily Mail
10 hours ago
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Jay Stansfield's energy sparks England's Under-21 Euros bid to life as £15m striker steps out of the shadows with tireless display against Spain, writes NATHAN SALT
Jay Stansfield isn't much of a talker. A quiet, unassuming character, it was easy for the 22-year-old to blend into the background in the early stages of this tournament. That's been a place that's been hard for Stansfield to find at club level, what with a £15million move to Birmingham City making him the most expensive League One player ever. Jeered by opposing fans at every ground and labelled a 'waste of money' at every missed chance, going away with England has proved quite the departure. Stansfield touched down in Slovakia with just three England Under-21 caps to his name, his most recent in March 2024, and observers of Lee Carsley 's group noted how it took him a day or two to bring himself up to speed. That's not a knock on Stansfield either. Of all the outfield players in this squad it is Stansfield that was playing at the lowest-ranked level last season in League One. Here he quickly found himself in high-intensity training sessions with Champions League pedigree talent. But after thriving in the spotlight in his first start of the tournament, Stansfield's days in the background look to be numbered. Now he stands firmly centre stage in England's bid to win back-to-back Euros. This is Stansfield's first tournament for England and at 22 he knows there are no guarantees he will get another one. So to see him empty the tank across 81 minutes against Spain, an energiser bunny that was a complete pest all evening for the Spanish, was to see a player that has been waiting for his chance to make a point. Mail Sport can reveal that Stansfield covered 10.1 kilometres in Trnava, 1.2km of which was at 'high intensity'. Stansfield also recorded 194 intensive actions - determined as accelerations and decelerations - which was the most of any player in an England shirt on the night. His high intensity running was also a team high. Having been patient for his chance, Carsley got every last drop out of Stansfield. 'Jay was outstanding and more than deserved his opportunity,' Carsley said. 'Jay's a very, very unselfish striker, the way that he presses, the way that he puts defenders under pressure. 'You want him to have that much energy though when he's in front of goal because he can't do all the other side of the game and not get the rewards. But I thought he was outstanding.' Stansfield is understated, rarely one to hype up his own performances and that job once again fell on team-mates who were seen lauding him on the pitch and near the team bus after Saturday night's 3-1 win. 'He made everyone around him a better player,' Channel 4 pundit Joe Cole mused afterwards. Nobody in England's dressing room disagreed. There are Jamie Vardy-like tendencies to the way Stansfield presses like a man possessed at times and that has been a trait that England lacked in a group stage where they struggled to find any sort of rhythm in attack. No Liam Delap complicated things for Carsley. Operating two false nines in a 4-2-2-2 system was the decision he made and Marseille's Jonathan Rowe, who looks much more comfortable playing wide on the left, got the three group stage starts up top, all without a goal. Stansfield waited for his chance, coming on late in the 3-1 win over Czech Republic and in the 0-0 draw with Slovenia. He got a half to show what he was about in the 2-1 loss to Germany but found it tough. But the message being passed on during England training sessions has long been that big moments will arrive for every player and in his 50th appearance of the season for club and country, Stansfield answered the call just as Carsley knew he would. 'He's had a good season at Birmingham and one of the big things for me that's most impressive is the pressure he has had to deal with,' Carsley told Mail Sport. 'They paid a lot of money for him, got that promotion under his belt, scored a lot of goals so I think him bringing that to this squad is a big thing for us.' He answered the call against Spain and now a date with the Dutch awaits in Wednesday's semi-final.
BBC News
11-06-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Record scorer Hermoso left out of Spain Euro 2025 squad
Spain record goalscorer Jenni Hermoso has been left out of their squad for the upcoming European Championships in Switzerland. Hermoso, 35, has scored 57 goals in 123 appearances for her national side and played a key role as Spain lifted the World Cup in Australia in Tigres striker featured in all six qualifiers, but her last appearance was in October 2024. She is among 12 changes to the World Cup-winning receiving her World Cup winners medal, Hermoso was kissed by Spain's former football federation boss Luis Rubiales without her consent. Rubiales was. later found guilty of sexual coach Montse Tome gave a reason for her omission, saying: "I understand Jenni is an important player. I spoke with her about her situation and we've done the same work with her as everyone else."We have assessed her performances for Tigres and spoken with her coach. In her position, we have Patri [Guijarro], Aitana [Bonmati], Alexia [Putellas], Maite [Zubieta], Vicky [Lopez] and even Mariona [Caldentey] or [Claudia] Pina can come in there."It's hard to pick 23 players, but we do the job professionally. At the end of the day that is what we have chosen."Mariona Caldentey, who started in Arsenal's Champions League final win over Barcelona, and Manchester City's Leila Ouahabi have been included in the squad alongside two-time Ballon d'Or winners Alexia Putellas and Aitana Euros gets under way on 2 July, with Spain taking on Portugal in group B the following day.
Daily Mail
08-06-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
We should be excited about England a year out from the World Cup... instead Thomas Tuchel's team are dispiriting, lame and dull, writes IAN LADYMAN
A journey home from Barcelona was accompanied by a nagging question. When was the last time the England team played consistently well? That may seem a strange thought to have about a side ranked fourth in the world, a team that has lost narrowly in the finals of the last two European Championships. Nevertheless, it's pertinent. Three games under the national team's new head coach Thomas Tuchel have seen Latvia, Albania and now Andorra beaten. In terms of pattern and style and conviction, there have been as many questions left as answers. Tuchel deserves patience and will hopefully get some. But the wider worry is that England have been trending backwards – or at the very most flatlining – for quite a while now. We know what happened at last summer's Euros. On performances alone, England would have been home within a fortnight. They were lucky. The following experiment – if that's what it was – with Lee Carsley offered some hope and some early freshness. There was a bold opening 25 minutes against the Republic in Ireland. But over time, it all grew more difficult. England lost at home to Greece and were no more than satisfactory in Nations League tier two from that point on. Carsley's final game before handing over to Tuchel ended with a 5-0 defeat of the Republic but those of us who were at Wembley know what we saw, namely an England team struggling lamely until a sending off offered them a penalty, the lead and a one-man advantage early in the second half. So back we go, perhaps, to 2023 and home and away wins over Italy in Euro 2024 qualifying. Maybe that's the last time we saw the light, the last time we saw an England team play with the purpose and devilment that we expect. Before that was a productive World Cup in Qatar – England could well have beaten France in that quarter-final – and the conclusion we reach from all of this reflection and analysis is that it's all been far too long. For the truth of the matter is that this is an England team in grave danger of getting stuck in treading water mode, a group of players struggling to impose their undoubted qualities on modest opposition just a year out from a World Cup in America that continues to feel ever more daunting the closer it gets. England's efforts against Andorra in Spain on Saturday were lame, for sure. Has there even been a more dispiriting watch? Perhaps there has but Andorra are ranked 173rd in the world – just ahead of Nepal – and as such what Tuchel's players gave him in the sparse surroundings of the largely empty …… Stadium was wholly unacceptable. Stronger words are available without risk of contradiction. Tuchel was asked afterwards if he had taken a risk in being so critical of his players in his post-match analysis. It was a fair point – such candour is becoming a theme of the Tuchel tenure after just three games – but his reply equally hard to counter. 'What else do you expect me to say?' he asked rhetorically. More broadly, it is clear that Tuchel is already developing very real expectations of how he expects this England team to play. He has clearly worked it out already. Playing 4-4-2 next summer is already in his head while he has mused about the importance of set pieces and throw-ins. Very quickly the outlook is becoming pragmatic rather than ambitious as the former Chelsea manager walks headlong into the same problems that plagued his predecessor Gareth Southgate. No natural number 6, reservations about Trent Alexander-Arnold's defending, no senior left-back and no real alternative to Harry Kane as the England captain and centre forward continues to slow down. Add to that the fact that a central defensive pairing that served England well for some time has fallen apart on the back of waning form and fitness and Tuchel's problems are clear. The manager has hopes of a return to prominence for John Stones – he hasn't ruled out the Manchester City man playing in midfield – but is less optimistic about Harry Maguire. We shall see. Certainly, England's relegation from the top tier of the Nations League has hurt Tuchel's team more than we perhaps thought when Southgate's version endured that miserable campaign against Italy, Hungary and Germany in the run up to the Qatar World Cup in 2022. Spain and Portugal were due to tussle for the Nations League title in Munich last night but that's not the issue. No, it's the fact that England have been deprived of the chance to play top opposition over the course of the last season that matters. While Carsley's England were banging their heads against the low blocks of unambitious opponents in Dublin, Helsinki and Athens last autumn and winter, the rest of European football's elite nations were facing each other in games of real substance. How damaging this will be for England in the long run remains to be seen but the danger is clear. With the greatest of respect to World Cup qualifying opponents Serbia – ranked at 31 in the world – England will reach America next summer having not played a seriously top level opponent in competitive play since losing to Spain in last year's Euros final. It will have been 23 months, then, since England were able to engage in a proper toe to toe football match. This is Tuchel's problem to solve and it's significant. The 51-year-old needs to bring this group of players to the boil next summer while at the moment he is struggling even to get them to simmer. It really is difficult to do that at the end of a long and tiring domestic season against opponents who start every game seeking merely to limit damage. Senegal at the City Ground on Tuesday should be more engaging than what we sat through on Saturday, even though it's a friendly fixture. The City Ground has not hosted an international since the 1996 European Championship and so the stadium will be full and the crowd hungry. The very least they should expect is a team that mirrors that. To hear Tuchel question attitude late on Saturday night was as alarming as had been his team's football. This England team has a few high rollers in but that doesn't mean these players have nothing to prove because they do. They are still to win anything. Selection for the game will be interesting. Giving Ivan Toney a run up front felt like a no-brainer until Tuchel refused to talk about him on Saturday. Three times the manager was asked to discuss the Saudi-based forward and three times he refused, choosing instead to extol the virtues of Kane as one of the few to have passed muster against Andorra. This may mean something and it may not. If Toney doesn't start on Tuesday, however, then we will have our answer. Tuchel likes to talk straight and as such some early frustrations are clear. He certainly should have started the job earlier. He and the FA have never really explained the delay. But that chance has gone now and the fact is that somebody must light a fire beneath this England team before it's too late. As ever in football, the spark is going to have to come from within the dressing room. WINNERS HARRY KANE Goal number 72 for the England captain and one of the few who kept going until the end. An example in terms of attitude if nothing else. REECE JAMES Super pass in the first half for Noni Madueke to run on to. That should have led to the first goal. Good to see a gifted player back after injury. NONI MADUEKE Played well when given a run in Athens against Greece under Lee Carsley and was progressive again here. Now he needs to do it against much better opponents. LOSERS COLE PALMER Thomas Tuchel loves the Chelsea man and he should be a player the German can build a team around. But his fallow spell of form goes on. CURTIS JONES Asked to play the Trent Alexander-Arnold role while the man himself sat on the bench. A square peg placed needlessly in a round hole. Not his fault. JORDAN HENDERSON
Hindustan Times
05-06-2025
- Sport
- Hindustan Times
Spain vs France Live Streaming UEFA Nations League semifinal: Where to watch ESP vs FRA live match online and on TV
Spain vs France Live Streaming UEFA Nations League semifinal: European giants Spain and France are set to collide in a high-stakes semi-final at MHPArena in Stuttgart, Germany. The winner of this blockbuster encounter will go on to face Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal in the final. Lamine Yamal will be back in action and take on a familiar foe from La Liga, Kylian Mbappe, in the all-important clash. Yamal consistently outperformed Mbappe in every clash between their respective clubs last season, emerging as the standout player whenever the two faced off. The 17-year-old also got the better of Mbappe's France in the Euros 2024, when Spain emerged victorious in the semifinal courtesy a brilliant goal from the Barcelona winger. Launched in 2018, the Nations League may not carry the legacy or prestige of football's traditional international tournaments and has faced criticism for congesting an already packed schedule. However, as Spain and France have demonstrated in recent years, it can serve as an ideal platform for building momentum toward bigger successes. France are missing first-choice defenders Dayot Upamecano, William Saliba and Jules Kounde, along with Real Madrid midfielder Eduardo Camavinga, while six players will be involved after Saturday's Champions League final. Spain vs France, UEFA Nations League 2025 semi-final will be played at MHPArena in Stuttgart, Germany. Spain vs France, UEFA Nations League 2025 semi-final will start at 12:30 AM IST on 6 June 2025. Spain vs France, UEFA Nations League 2025 semi-final will be broadcast on Sony Sports Network in India. Spain vs France, UEFA Nations League 2025 semi-final will be live-streamed on SonyLiv in India.
BBC News
04-06-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Millie Bright: Chelsea captain withdraws from selection for Euro 2025 squad
England defender Millie Bright has made herself unavailable for selection for the Lionesses ahead of next month's 31-year-old said she made the decision as she was unable to "give 100% mentally or physically."The Chelsea captain recently withdrew from this month's Nations League squad, with the FA saying the centre-back was taking "an extended period of recovery".She becomes the third senior player unavailable for the tournament in Switzerland, after Mary Earps and Fran Kirby both announced their retirements from international football. Making the announcement on social media, Millie said that it was one of the "hardest decisions" she's ever had to explained: "Football has given me so much, and representing my country has always been my greatest honour."My pride and ego tells me to go, but I think the team and the fans deserve more. Right now I am not able to give 100 per cent mentally or physically."Millie Bright has been an important player for England since making her debut for the senior team nine years was vice-captain during England's successful Euros 2022 campaign, where the team lifted their first major trophy on home soil.A year later, at the 2023 Women's World Cup, Bright replaced the injured Leah Williamson in captaining the team made it all the way through to the final, where they finished the tournament as runners-up after losing 1-0 to Spain.
