Rachel Corsie: Brave or naive? There are no easy routes in a major tournament

England may have avoided Germany and Spain – but the route to the final is no free ride

Does any team ever consider the “easy” route to the final?

It’s something Sarina Wiegman was asked straight after the final whistle last Sunday when her side made the quarter-finals as runners-up of Group D and therefore lining up a final-eight clash with Sweden. The result, and France’s 5-2 defeat of the Netherlands, meant England avoided Germany and Spain’s half of the Euro 2025 draw.

“I think that in tournaments that's really tricky to think ‘oh, we want to go that way, because then we might have this and this’. If you start thinking like that it’s very tricky.”

Wiegman may not be thinking about it, but England fans certainly are. I did ponder the question while watching Germany’s defending in their 4–1 dismantling by the Swedes in the final game in Group D. I decided that surely it could not have been the case.

Anyway, we are set to embrace the first battles of the knockout rounds, and all quarter-final ties look set to be fierce encounters.

England against Sweden and France versus Germany will speak for itself – four nations with rich history at the elite level. It feels like it’ll take a mercurial performance from someone in order for a winner to be decided in either of those games. Either that, or an error, but let’s not manifest that outcome.