Women's Euro: Cupello Blog 2

So, second Phase now done and I feel my predictions so far pretty much on track. With England’s momentous victory being applauded but also being discussed in the media for other reasons which I understand but is not the fault of this management team or this squad.

The issues are at development level and again many players potentially being stifled in their development due to the lack of opportunities in the WSL with the recruitment of overseas players.

I have said more than once that we should be more than capable of producing enough talent to not have to do this if our infrastructure is working correctly.

Penalty miss

However, I digress as I hinted the Germans gained another fairly comfortable victory confirming their progress as did France with what was a scrappy win by their standards against Belgium who put up a decent fight.

The Renard Penalty miss near the end was possibly justified as was another harsh decision and certainly did not warrant a red card for the Belgium player. Earlier Iceland are still in with feint chance though will be disappointed not to have capitalised on their early lead missing a couple of sitters before Italy gained a deserved and well worked equalizer utilising a more centralised attacking tactic with lots of combination play.

Iceland’s Jonsdottir is impressive in her wide play and has good speed actually looks like she could fit into any top side. A draw probably a fair result on the balance of play.

Denmark gave themselves a lifeline with their narrow win over a departing Finland team and Sweden put themselves in a good place to qualify with a win over Switzerland.

Van De Donk winning goal

Netherlands with a weakened squad almost suffered the same fate as the Swiss after taking a lead against Portugal who once again showed great character to pull back a two-goal deficit before Van De Donk hit a winning third goal in the 62nd minute.

But three points meant that the last group games will decide who tops the group with based on the opponents I could see the Netherlands if back to full strength just about doing it. But Sweden will be confident going against Portugal who can be proud of their input and have nothing to lose but to go for it in the last game.

England to stay the same

School of thought seems to be that England’s line up will not change drastically if at all for the N/ Ireland game. N/Ireland will I am sure want to depart their first Euro competition with a fighting performance, be interesting to see how England approach the game but can’t see anything short of a convincing victory with a record to be broken.

England’s quarter final opponents look at this point likely to be Spain but not 100% certain as yet. However, it would be a major coup should this be any different. On we go to the last group games.