Five tactical themes that defined Women's Euro 2025: More systemised, less individualistic

Yahoo

5 days ago

Euro 2025 was, put simply, a very good tournament. There were no goalless draws nor genuinely bad games. Every side scored — in fact, every side scored in the final round of group matches alone.
A paucity of draws in the group stage, which suggested a clear difference in quality between sides, gave way to a knockout stage where five of the seven matches were all-square after 90 minutes, bringing tension and drama to proceedings. But on a deeper tactical level, what was the tournament all about?
The main theme is an extension of the one from the 2023 World Cup: the women's game is becoming more systemised and less individualistic with each passing tournament.
In 2023, Aitana Bonmati was the rightful winner of the tournament's player of the year award, even though she'd actually been marked out of a couple of knockout matches, and her contributions had been modest.
In this tournament, she assisted the opener in the 2-0 quarter-final win over Switzerland with a brilliant backheel and scored the winner in the 1-0 semi-final win over Germany by blasting home at the near post. But this wasn't Bonmati anywhere near her best — in part because she only recovered from viral meningitis shortly before the tournament — and she still won the player of the tournament award again.
But who else was there? Her two midfield colleagues presumably run close. Alexia Putellas started the tournament brilliantly before fading. Patri Guijarro would have been a deserved winner, too. Aside from that, it's difficult to think of many contenders. Given her penalty shootout heroics and her fantastic pass against the Netherlands, England goalkeeper Hannah Hampton, perhaps?
In other words, it was difficult to name a single attacker who had a truly outstanding tournament. Spain's Esther Gonzalez finished as the top goalscorer with just four goals. Only three others — Cristiana Girelli, Alexia Putellas and Stina Blackstenius — scored more than twice. Germany's wingers, Klara Buhl and Jule Brand, were hugely exciting but not decisive against strong opposition.
By and large, big matches weren't won by superstars. They were won by cohesive attacking (Spain), the effective use of substitutes (England), solid defending (Sweden), and penalties (England and Germany). Maybe Italy, who reached the semi-finals largely because of a kind draw, were the most reliant on one individual, 35-year-old Girelli, who feels a bit like a hangover from the days when nations had one superstar in the Birgit Prinz mould.
The most telling sign was that Germany, with arguably the most fearsome individual attackers, looked completely unsuited to being tournament winners at the start of the competition — they were just too open — but after dropping Lea Schuller for the more functional Giovanna Hoffmann and being forced into a safety-first approach against France when down to 10 players, they suddenly looked like contenders.
The second theme is that a clear gulf remains between the top six sides (England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden) and everyone else. At Euro 2022 and Euro 2025, those sides were P28, W27, D1, L0 against the other nations, and the sole draw came in a dead rubber of a final group game three years ago, when the stronger team could probably have won had they needed to.
Everyone is progressing, but the established order also feels clearer than ever. With those results, the only hope of an outsider reaching the latter stages was based on the draw, rather than a giant-killer. There wasn't a single genuine surprise result at this tournament, with Italy coming closest in their semi-final loss to England. With most of Western Europe — which is home to the dominant nations in the men's game — putting serious resources into women's football these days, it is difficult for anyone else to compete, except Sweden, who had something of a head-start having invested in women's football from an early stage.
The third theme is the number of goals. 3.42 is a very high average goals-per-game rate; significantly higher than the 3.06 from 2022 and the highest since the competition expanded to eight teams in 1997. And there was no real 'cheating' here. Only two goals were scored in extra time. The level of goalkeepers, traditionally a weakness of the women's game, has increased enormously. There weren't a crazy number of thrashings.
Why is this? There wasn't an increase in the number of shots overall. The average shot was taken from very slightly further away from goal, with a slightly lower xG value. So there's no particular explanation here. While being wary of the small sample size, maybe players were simply better at shooting in this tournament.
That would tally with the fourth theme: a general improvement in the technical side of the game.
Actually, the overall passing numbers aren't overwhelmingly different from 2022, but an eight per cent rise in pass completion rate from Euro 2017 is significant.
What has changed dramatically is what teams do at goal kicks.
In 2017, it wasn't yet allowed to pass the ball to anyone positioned in your penalty box — the law was changed in 2019. At Euro 2022, 21 per cent of goal kicks were passes that stayed in the box. That figure was 37 per cent at this tournament, and now the most common location is keeping the ball in deep, central locations, whereas it used to be kicking long to the halfway line.
The final theme was summed up by England head coach Sarina Wiegman after the final.
When she'd answered all the questions from the assembled journalists at the press conference, she asked to say a few words. She praised UEFA and Switzerland for the quality of the organisation, and also praised the quality of football. 'The level went up again,' she said. 'The intensity of the games went through the roof. We've seen it in the games, and also in the data we have.'
But it is intensity in the right way — in terms of quick technical actions, without matches becoming scrappy, or overly physical, or dirty. Some Women's World Cup matches did spill over into overly physical play. That wasn't the case here.
Spain are celebrated for their technical play, but throughout the tournament it was also notable how physically strong they were, how aggressively wingers Athenea Del Castillo and Claudia Pina got their bodies between ball and opponent, how Gonzalez battled against defenders, how the midfield charged forward to press. These are not players picked primarily for their technical rather than their physical skill. But their athleticism shouldn't be overlooked.
There were no huge tactical surprises at the tournament, no grand revelations, no game-changing innovations. That doesn't happen anymore in an era where the availability of data and video means everyone knows everything about everyone else.
But it was impossible not to watch, say, the interplay for Spain's goals in the group stage, Delphine Cascarino's wing play for France, the tactical tweaks in England versus Sweden, or the resilience of Germany in their triumph over France, and not marvel at how far the women's game has come in the last decade or so.
The technical, tactical, physical and psychological parts of the game have all improved immeasurably, without any of the four becoming too dominant. It's exactly what top-level football should be all about.
That said, there's clearly still one thing to work on: taking penalties.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
England, Spain, Women's Soccer, Women's Euros
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