{"id":242395,"date":"2025-07-28T09:42:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T09:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/242395\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T09:42:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T09:42:12","slug":"a-huge-boost-for-the-game-heroic-lionesses-bring-football-home-again-and-change-womens-football-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/242395\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A Huge Boost For The Game\u2019 Heroic Lionesses Bring Football Home Again And Change Women\u2019s Football Forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

And the Lionesses<\/a> have done it again. England women’s football team were crowned champions of Europe last night in Switzerland once more, winning against Spain in a nail-biting penalty shoot-out at the Women’s Euros 2025. Sarina Wiegman’s team put in their best performance of the tournament and in doing so retained the UEFA Women’s Championship title they won in 2022 at Wembley.<\/p>\n

There was an electric atmosphere in Basel’s St. Jakob-Park despite the summer rain. Both teams looked sharp and focused, but it was reigning world champions Spain who went in front with a header from Mariona Caldentey in the first half. The Lionesses fought back, defending their goal thanks to the resilience of Jess Carter and Lucy Bronze, and stellar saves from goalkeeper Hannah Hampton<\/a>. Who knows what manager Wiegman said to the team at half time, but they came back with a goal in the 56th minute after a cross from Chloe Kelly and superb header from Alessia Russo.<\/p>\n

Tension filled the night as the game went to extra time with no more goals scored. And so, we may have only just recovered from those dramatic penalties against Sweden in the quarter finals, but the teams lined up for another shoot-out, this time in front of England’s roaring travelling fans.<\/p>\n

Once more it was Hannah Hampton (who started this tournament as number one goalkeeper for the first time after Mary Earps’ retirement) with her penalty ‘cheat sheet’ homework taped to her arm, who made the title-winning saves. Chloe Kelly put away the penalty that had the whole team running onto the pitch in victory. ‘Sweet Caroline’ never felt sweeter as the stadium erupted and fans couldn’t quite believe what an amazing game it had been. Hampton was later named player of the match, with another new star Michelle Agyemang named best young player. <\/p>\n

There’s no doubt that England’s victory will be a boost for women’s football, which has seen huge growth in the past decade. The sold-out final, with an attendance of 34,203, rounded off a hugely successful tournament which broke records as the highest-attended Women’s Euros in history. Stats from sponsors VISA showed that it’s not just viewing figures but also spending power that continues to make an impact and drive economic growth around the game, with the fans of first-time qualifiers Iceland showing the largest increase of overseas spend in Switzerland. As the women’s game continues to grow globally it will only attract more and more investment at all levels ahead of the Women’s World Cup in Brazil in 2027.<\/p>\n

When ELLE UK interviewed Hannah Hampton<\/a> in May she said, ‘We want to go and bring the trophy back home if we possibly can…But it’s going to be a tough tournament, we know the standard everyone’s brought now and countries are just getting stronger and stronger so it’ll be tough but we’ll go give it our best shot.’ They did just that and once more we’re celebrating the Lionesses and everything the team show us about grit, determination and never giving up.<\/p>\n

\"Headshot<\/p>\n

Hannah Nathanson is Features Director at ELLE. She commissions, edits and writes stories for online and print, spanning everything from \u2019Generation Flake\u2019 to cover profiles with Dua Lipa and Hailey Bieber. One of her most surreal moments as a journalist has been \u2018chairing\u2019 a conversation between Jodie Comer and Phoebe Waller-Bridge from her living room. The word she says most in the office is \u2018podcast\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And the Lionesses have done it again. England women’s football team were crowned champions of Europe last night…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[48874,48876,7322,7,34599,48875],"class_list":{"0":"post-242395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-content-type-default","9":"tag-contentid-f3c25640-eafe-4748-9009-7922b348fba2","10":"tag-displaytype-standard-article","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-locale-gb","13":"tag-shorttitle-heroic-lionesses-change-womens-football-forever"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114930211174490551","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}