England captain Williamson believes ‘relentless’ Sweden are threat at Euro 2025 | OneFootball

The England captain, Leah Williamson, has said Sweden deserve more respect and that their strong record at major tournaments should be spoken about more frequently, as the two sides prepare to meet in Thursday’s Euro 2025 quarter-final.

Sweden have reached the knockout stages of every Women’s European Championship since 1995 and have been in the semi-finals at three of the past five Euros. They have also finished third in the past two World Cups and claimed silver medals at both the Rio and Tokyo Olympics.

Williamson, however, feels Peter Gerhardsson’s side go under the radar and are often underestimated. “Sweden are a fantastic team, they’re relentless in the way they go about their game,” the Lionesses centre-back said. “I think they sort of avoid the expectation of every tournament, and nobody really talks about them, [which is] slightly disrespectful, I think, because they always show up and they always seem to pose a threat to most teams, and normally come out with a medal or [be] a semi-final team, so they’re a strong team. We’re looking forward to the fixture.”

England have scored 10 goals in their past two games to qualify for the quarter-finals in style despite losing their opening match against France, and Williamson admitted it had been an “emotional group stage, [with] lots of ups and downs” for the defending champions, but added: “It’s been a great display of our attacking football [against Wales] and obviously that’s how you win games.”

Sarina Wiegman’s side had six different goalscorers against Wales, including Williamson’s Arsenal teammate Beth Mead, who said England had watched Sweden’s victory over Germany on Saturday. She said: “They [Sweden] pose a very different threat and it’s a team we have played a lot in the past and hopefully we can nullify what they’re very good at and bring our strengths into the game.”

Before their upcoming meeting in Zurich, England and Sweden shared two draws in 2024, but their most recent meeting in a major tournament ended in a 4-0 victory for England at Bramall Lane in their Euro 2022 semi-final.

“We’ve got a lot of experience against them,” added the England midfielder Georgia Stanway, whose penalty opened the floodgates against Wales on Sunday. “Obviously they’re tough, they’re physical, they’re more direct. I’m not sure we’ve faced that so far in our group.”

Asked if she felt England had the upper hand against the Swedes, the Bayern Munich midfielder Stanway replied: “Not necessarily. It’s tournament football. Anything can happen in 90 minutes. I think we just need to continue where we’ve been. If we have the intensity that we had against the Netherlands, if we press the way that we pressed, if we win the ball back as much as we did … we can only control what we can do.

“Today we focus on what the result that we’ve just had and how proud we are to get out of the group. There’s been many days in this tournament where we could have actually been going home. So to be in this situation to be staying a few more days is something that we can proud of.”

Header image: [Photograph: Maja Hitij/Uefa/Getty Images]