How Monopoly and jigsaws helped Lionesses refocus

England’s defensive duo Lucy Bronze and Jess Carter have revealed how the Lionesses’ approach between their opening EURO 2025 defeat to France and Wednesday’s 4-0 win over the Netherlands played a big role in the outcome.

Following Saturday’s 2-1 defeat in their opener, England knew they needed a result against the Dutch to give themselves a realistic chance of progressing to the knockout stage so the pressure was on.

And both players, two of the more experienced heads in Sarina Wiegman’s squad, knew how important it was to put in an improved performance in Zurich.

“I felt like it was just England, we’ve spoken a lot about what being England means and for us that was the performance today,” said Carter.

“The game against France was not an England performance, so we just knew that whatever happened today, we were going right to the end and would do it together and that is what you guys got today.

“For me, after that France game, it is a bit of doubt, are you good enough? Are we good enough? But after we analysed the game and moved on from it, it was like ‘this is where we all deserve to be’ and winning today just showed what we can do.”

Bronze added: “I think we started the game really well. We put the Netherlands under a lot of pressure, and I think it maybe caused them to doubt themselves a little bit, and we just continued that.

“In the France game, we started well and then we maybe eased off a little bit. France are a top team, like the Netherlands, but we just kept going and going. Even the scoreline, you know, we went for more goals, we kept going for more in the end.

“But it was a performance that we knew we had in us, and we just had to stick together and show that today.

“We finished the game against France and we got cameras and microphones shoved in our face telling us how bad we are, so it was important that we changed the narrative for ourselves, we stuck together.

“I think drawing on experiences is obviously a huge part of that. Getting the noise out of your head and getting a different noise in, I guess, is a good thing.

“It was obviously myself and Alex [Greenwood] who went through that. A couple of older Lionesses messaged me to remind me of the same kind of experiences that we went through, and told us that everybody's believing in us.

“Jill Scott's obviously hanging around, she's a very positive influence. Toni Duggan was also someone who texted me straight away after the game, sharing experiences.

“But yeah, there's plenty of them. We actually still have the group chat from the last EUROs. They always put in messages to say good luck, to keep going, people like Millie Bright, Fran Kirby, loads of them are messaging.

“I think that was the most important message, about sticking together, and that's how we played from the first minute.”

Bronze also revealed how the players managed to regroup after the France game as part of their preparations for the Netherlands and as well as the training pitch, the build-up to matchday was centred around a relaxed vibe in camp.

“I think it was really calm before the game, to be honest,” added the Chelsea defender.

“It was like, I think Leah, Keira, Tooney, Less, Beth, they were playing Monopoly. I was building a jigsaw with Micha and Maya all morning.

“We were pretty calm, we knew what we had to do. We couldn't dwell too much on the French game, we trained really well, we listened to what the coaches had to say and then today it was calm.

“We were confident and all we could do was give our best. That's exactly what you saw from the first minute and it paid off.

“It feels like there's a mess of a jigsaw, but we'll come back to that!”

The Lionesses will now avert their attention to their final group game against Wales in St. Gallen on Sunday evening (8pm BST), when they know that a victory will be enough to take them into the last eight.