ST. GALLEN, Switzerland -- England head coach Sarina Wiegman and defender Alex Greenwood are welcoming the challenge posed by a passionate Wales side on Sunday, and are embracing the pressure as they prepare for their final Group D match in Euro 2025.
The Lionesses started the tournament with a 2-1 defeat to France, but followed that up with a commanding 4-0 win over the Netherlands. And up next are Wales.
Wales are all but out of the tournament after back-to-back defeats, but coach Rhian Wilkinson said they are looking to "spoil" England's party when they meet on Sunday.
Wiegman said England are fully aware of the traditional rivalry between the two teams, but are ignoring the outside noise around the fixture.
"For them it's of course a big game, but for us it's a big game too because we have to win," Wiegman told a news conference on Saturday. "We want to get through the group and that's on ourselves. Of course we've heard about rivalry and yeah, they want to do really, really well, but we do too. And yeah, there's passion, but we have passion too and we just want to play really well."
Alex Greenwood said England are well versed in playing teams who want to knock them down.
"It's something we're probably used to; that's a pressure we've invited because we've been successful and we should be actually quite proud of," Greenwood said. "I think as a team we don't really focus too much on that, we focus on ourselves and our game plan and the objective. We enjoy pressure, and we thrive in that moment. Tomorrow is a high pressure game and we're looking forward to it."
And on the question of pressure, Wiegman said: "There's always pressure on England but we have that from expectations. There are expectations on ourselves to play a good game and that we are tight on the ball and hopefully we can have it a lot to exploit spaces."
Wiegman said every England player can play 90 minutes after several of the squad came into the tournament low on minutes. Wiegman made one personnel change and one positional shift from the France defeat against Netherlands but she would not be drawn if she's settled on her preferred XI for the rest of the tournament.
"That's hard to say," Wiegman said. "Things develop during the tournament and like things of course have developed even from France to the Netherlands. And what we also do is then look forward to the next game with Wales, and what do we think is best in this moment and the best team for Wales."