England to be challenged in ‘exciting’ Women’s Nations League draw

By The Independent (Sports) | Created at 2024-11-07 17:31:55 | Updated at 2024-11-15 11:35:14 1 week ago

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England manager Sarina Wiegman said the Lionesses will relish the opportunity to face world champions Spain home and away before Euro 2025 as part of an “exciting” Women’s Nations League draw.

England were grouped with Spain, Belgium and Portugal in Nations League A3, setting up the first meeting with the world champions since last year’s World Cup final in Sydney, settled by Olga Carmona’s winner.

The Lionesses will face each team in the group home and away between February and June, with England’s European Championship defence getting underway in Switzerland in July.

The Lionesses will face Spain and Ballon d’Or winner Aitana Bonmati twice before Euro 2025

Wiegman’s side were beaten by Belgium away from home in last year’s inaugural Nations League campaign, while they drew 0-0 with Portugal in the build up to the World Cup, offering the chance for some revenge.

Wiegman was pleased to face more “world-class” opposition ahead of the Euros, with a friendly against Olympic champions the United States at Wembley to come next month.

“It’s an exciting draw,” Wiegman said. “We have Spain – a top, world-class team – which I think is exciting because it’s another opportunity to play at that level.

“It’s really good that we play Belgium because in the last Nations League we lost when we played them away and we really underperformed. We can prove to ourselves now that we can do much better than that in the two games. I’m happy with that one, they’re tough.

“Portugal are a very talented team. We played them before we went to the World Cup and we drew with them. We had a lot of the ball but we couldn’t score and they were very dangerous on the counter-attack. They have a lot of technical players.

The Lionesses lost the World Cup final to Spain 1-0

“There are different opponents and I’m really looking forward to it because we’ll be challenged in different areas of the game. And of course we’ll give them challenges too.”

Last year’s competition saw England finish second in Group A1 after the Netherlands finished top with a better goal difference, but Scotland finished bottom of that group after only picking up two points.

Scotland have since earned promotion back to League A after finishing top of their Euro 2025 qualifying group earlier this year and will meet the Netherlands again in their group, while they were also drawn alongside Austria and Germany.

Although they finished bottom of their group last year, Wales also secured promotion to the top league after finishing first in their Euro qualifying group and will come up against Italy, Denmark and Sweden in Group A4.

France finished as runners-up in last season’s Nations League and were drawn in Group A2 alongside Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.

In League B, Northern Ireland were drawn alongside Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Romania in Group B1, while the Republic of Ireland will face Turkey, Slovenia and Greece in Group B2.

The league phase of the competition is set to take place between February and June 2025, while the finals and promotion and relegation games will be staged between October and December.