Match preview for England v Wales
Lauren Hemp is relishing England renewing their “great rivalry” with Wales when they meet in their Group D finale at Euro 2025 on Sunday.
Having slumped to a surprising 2-1 defeat to France to start the tournament, the defending European champions responded in style by thrashing the Netherlands 4-0 in Zurich on Wednesday.
Stunning goals from Lauren James and Georgia Stanway gave England command before a second from James and a late Ella Toone strike wrapped up a dominant win.
It means England need only to match the Netherlands’ result against France to progress to the quarter-finals, and they will be heavy favourites to do so.
England and Wales are familiar opponents, having been drawn together in qualifying for the 2015 and 2019 Women’s World Cups.
The Lionesses won three of the four meetings across those qualification campaigns, drawing the other, and did not concede a goal to the Dragons.
While much has changed since then, history is firmly on England’s side against the tournament debutants, though Hemp is taking nothing for granted.
“It’s a great rivalry,” Hemp told a press conference on Friday. “These are the games you want to be involved in … It’s a derby, we want to win, end of.
“We’re going to do whatever we can to do that. It’s going to be a really tough match. We’ve got so much respect for Wales.”
Ready to go again on Sunday 💪 pic.twitter.com/5VljqYt35d
— Lionesses (@Lionesses) July 11, 2025
Of the performance against the Netherlands, Hemp added: “That just proves when this team are at their best what we can achieve.
“That has shown confidence in everyone, everyone played to their strengths, everyone did their job and did it really well.
“Leading into the game no one was fazed. Everyone was calm, relaxed and we knew what job we needed to do. It didn’t scare anyone and you definitely didn’t see [anyone scared] on the pitch. It made everyone excited and it made the fans excited hopefully from that performance we put in and that is the England we want to show every single game we play.
“We’ve felt that [France] loss, we’ve felt it as a team, and we’ve tried to turn it around and we have done, and looking back on the last game, how well we’ve done, we’re hoping to take that momentum into the next … I think everyone is just so positive and so confident and, when this team is like that, we play really well.”
Wales are on the brink of elimination following their 4-1 defeat to France.
That was still an historic game for Wales, for whom Jess Fishlock scored their first major tournament goal in netting the equaliser.
And coach Rhian Wilkinson was thrilled with what her side showed despite a result that will mean they will almost certainly be heading home after facing England. Wales need to beat the Lionesses by four goals and hope France beat the Netherlands.
“Results are secondary to performance, I say that all the time. I’d rather lose 4-1 and play and show courage than lose 1-0 and just sit and not actually give our fans something to cheer, and boy did we cheer,” Wilkinson told BBC Sport Wales after the France loss.
“It was a big, big improvement performance-wise from the first game. I guess once again it’s just little errors, individual mistakes, and at this level obviously you’re punished to the fullest extent.
“Wales is a minnow on the world stage and they’ve earned the right to be here and to represent our amazing country and now we get to see the difference. The difference between the top teams and where we’re at.
“This is a very new nation to the football world and we showed everyone how proud we are to represent Wales.”
With nothing to lose and plenty of pride to play for, Wilkinson will be hoping her players show the same courage as they look to pull off a huge shock and end England’s defence.
