Monday, December 16, 2024, 18:52
The Spanish women’s team already knows its roadmap for next year’s European Championship in Switzerland, a tournament in which it aspires to be crowned queen of the Old Continent for the first time and thus win a spectacular triple crown after winning the World Cup in 2023, and the first edition of the Nations League, in 2024. Italy, rival on the third day – on July 11 in Bern -, is emerging as the most difficult opponent towards the quarterfinals, which will reach the first two of a group of which Portugal and Belgium are also part.
The transalpine team, which Spain faced in October and December 2023 in the group stage of the Nations League that it conquered in Seville in February of this same year, is emerging as the biggest obstacle. Not in vain, the Azzurra defeated the Spanish team in Pontevedra (2-3), although they lost in Salerno (0-1). Both teams met again recently, in October, with a 1-1 draw in a friendly played in the Italian town of Vicenza.
The team led by Montse Tomé will debut on July 3 in Bern, against Portugal, which it has defeated in its three previous matches. Subsequently, they will play on July 7 in Thun against Belgium, whom they beat 0-7 in Leuven and 2-0 in La Coruña on the way to this Euro Cup. If in the most complicated match against Italy the Spanish team seals its qualification for the quarterfinals, fortune also seems to accompany it with a relatively comfortable match, against one of the two qualifiers from group A, made up of the host Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Finland. As it is, Spain avoids bogeymen like England, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and France until the semi-finals.
On paper, which does not always coincide with what ends up happening on the grass, the world champion did not fare badly in a draw held at the SwissTech Convention Center in the Swiss city of Lausanne and hosted by Swiss presenter Annette Ferscherin and the former English footballer Ian Wright. The Spanish Vero Boquete, Lara Dickenmann, Raphaël Varane, Caroline Seger, Xherdan Shaqiri, Sami Khedira and Jill Scott acted as innocent hands.
Spain, which qualified for the final phase of the tournament with ease after adding five victories and a single defeat in a qualifying group that it shared with Denmark, Belgium and the Czech Republic, was classified in pot 1. From its status as top of the series avoided top-level rivals that could fall into their group such as England, the current European champion and best team in Pot 2, or Sweden, which was the biggest threat in Pot 3.
-Group stage:
A: Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Finland.
B: Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Italy.
C: Germany, Poland, Denmark and Sweden.
D: France, England, Wales and the Netherlands.