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Women’s Euro 2025: Sweden v England buildup and the latest news – live

All the latest Euros news and quarter-final buildup

Schedule | Top scorers | Player guide | Mail John

England stars Chloe Kelly and Leah Williamson previewed tonight’s meeting with Sweden earlier this week.

Kelly said: “They are a team we definitely respect as England. They are maybe a team that does go under the radar but the consistency they have shown is impressive. They have so much talent. We have done our homework.”

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Reliable Sweden meet unpredictable England in a contest of razor-thin margins | Jonathan Liew

Sarina Wiegman’s side must respect opponents who smashed Germany and are a model of tournament consistency

The homeless man lies in the doorway of England’s team hotel every morning and every night. The players pass him as they go to training and pass him again as they come back at the end of the day. His shirt is unbuttoned as he sleeps, dirt-smeared bags perched under his resting arm. The hotel staff barely even notice him any more. Security do not move him on. After all, he’s supposed to be there.

And unless you decided to peer particularly closely, you might not even notice that the homeless man in the doorway of the Dolder Grand hotel in Zurich is not a human being at all but a hyper-realistic sculpture called The Traveler, created by an American artist called Duane Hanson in the 1980s and bought by the Dolder Grand hotel in Zurich in the late 2000s as a symbol of … well, what exactly?

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Sinner reaches for the sweets and comes away with the whole jar at Wimbledon | Jonathan Liew

The Italian was overcome with joy after learning harsh lesson from his French Open defeat at the hands of Carlos Alcaraz

As a boy, Jannik Sinner was a champion skier. As he stood on Centre Court match point up against Carlos Alcaraz, perhaps some of the old skills kicked in. Skiing teaches balance, it teaches flexibility and endurance, but most of all it teaches faith. There is a moment in every slide, before friction kicks in, when the body is basically at the mercy of powder and physics. And the greatest skiers learn that this is the moment to hold your nerve. When it feels like you’re falling, keep falling. When it feels like the edge of disaster, keep going.

Three match points against Alcaraz; take two. You’ve lost your last five matches against this guy. He’s the double defending champion. The last time you played, a few short weeks ago, he came back from two sets and three match points down to win. It was one of the most dramatic comebacks ever seen in a grand slam final, and here we are again. Alcaraz saves the first match point. He saves the second. The noise level is rising to a climax. When it feels like you’re falling, keep falling.

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Anisimova endures a hot Wimbledon nightmare after entering the Swiatek bakery | Jonathan Liew

American’s double bagel defeat was a meltdown that nobody saw coming but she can come back from heartbreak

This is what a scream with no vowels sounds like. This is the weight of the soul leaving the body. The arms are no longer connected to the legs, the legs have been severed from the lungs, the lungs have lost contact with the heart and the heart is getting ghosted by the brain. Amanda Anisimova sits on her chair, baking in the heat, stewing in sadness. She dabs her face with a towel and hopes people won’t notice she’s wiping away tears.

A faint voice from the outer edge of the universe calls time. She still has to go out there. She takes a deep breath. Lifts herself from her seat and takes the 18 long steps to her mark just behind the baseline. Ever found it a struggle getting up to go to work? Try summoning the strength to face Iga Swiatek when you’re losing 6-0, 5-0 in a Wimbledon final.

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No one ever got rich writing off Novak Djokovic, but even he can’t stretch time for ever | Jonathan Liew

We can’t tell how much is left for tennis’s ultimate champion, but semi-final defeat by Sinner could be the moment Project 25 was buried for good

The Moment comes at the start of the third set. Nobody in tennis can spot a Moment like Novak Djokovic. The Moment is where he lives, breathes, puts gluten-free food on his family’s table. What happened before was irrelevant. You can rattle and bully him. You can pummel him off Centre Court for an hour, as Jannik Sinner has done. Djokovic will still prowl the chain-link fence all evening, probing it, waiting for the one gap wide enough to let him squeeze through. The point of greatest weakness is where he finds his greatest strength.

Sinner’s at 30-30 on his own serve. A defensive backhand from Djokovic sits up invitingly in mid-court, pleading to be dispatched. The world No 1, utterly impeccable to this point, swings a giant fist at the ball and somehow sends it flying in the vague direction of Tooting Broadway. The crowd yelps in shock. Next point Sinner nets a weak forehand, Djokovic raises a fist of defiance, and in the space of a few minutes – plus a few extra for the now-traditional Djokovic treatment break – this particular Italian job has had its bloody doors blown off.

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Playing loose with virtue leaves questions for Arsenal to answer over Thomas Partey | Jonathan Liew

There were plenty of legally unproblematic options available to the club before their former midfielder was charged with rape

“We are courageous in the pursuit of progress.”

“We champion our community and each other.”

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Tension and tedium: welcome to the Wimbledon press conference room | Jonathan Liew

Anyone can ask any question of the players, leading to absurd inquiries, but it can sometimes serve a useful purpose

To spend even a little time at Wimbledon is to drown in the sheer scale of things. This is a place of mind-boggling numbers: the 40 miles of racket string, the 55,000 balls, the 300,000 glasses of Pimm’s, the 2.5m strawberries. But Wimbledon’s true staple good is none of these. The most abundant product every Wimbledon fortnight is the word. And even on a rain-affected, slow news day, the words must keep coming.

As with everything else, Wimbledon procures its words with a suitable reverence. Post-match interviews, in contrast to the more informal on-court setup at Melbourne and New York, are conducted at a respectful distance in front of a microphone stand, as if Jannik Sinner were actually a high-school student about to spell a very difficult word. But of course the majority of Wimbledon’s bluff and bluster takes place in a small windowless upstairs chamber that most tennis fans have never even seen.

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Raducanu justifies primetime billing even as Sabalenka’s superpower wins out | Jonathan Liew

Britain’s No 1 was outpointed when her opponent raised her game but showed why she merits the hype and spotlight that surrounds her

It’s a little after 8pm by the time the first ball is tossed. Karen Khachanov has just beaten Nuno Borges on No 3 Court and so even before it has started Emma Raducanu v Aryna Sabalenka is the last game on anywhere at Wimbledon: a standalone attraction, the roof not so much closed as hermetically sealed. We are locked in, under these hot lights, until nightfall.

And of course this is not simply a third-round game. At the behest of the broadcasters this is also a primetime television product, an item of light entertainment. Raducanu isn’t just battling the world No 1 here, she’s up against Gardeners’ World on BBC Two. The hill is packed. Brian Cox and Mary Berry in the Royal Box are transfixed. And to think Roland Garros would probably have put this match on in mid-morning.

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Carlos Alcaraz shakes off Tarvet from his back without inhibitions or regrets | Jonathan Liew

Defending champion is essentially a magic-eye puzzle you can read any way you want but has the inconsistency all but one of his rivals would dream of

There were negatives, of course. Shall we focus on the negatives? Shall we dwell on the frailties a little? The uncharacteristic errors, the double faults, an occasional scruffiness at the net, the frequent slumps in intensity? Shall we marvel at the fact that the lowest-ranked player in the tournament earned more break points (11) than one of the greatest players of his generation (10)? Shall we warn, in a tone of affected sternness, that the defending champion will have to raise his game on this evidence?

Of course we shall, because this is Carlos Alcaraz, and because there is an entire cottage industry built around maintaining the idea that Alcaraz is in a state of crisis at all times, a state of crisis so acute that it is necessary to feign round-the-clock concern for him. We just want to see all that rich talent fulfilled. That’s all it is. Sincerely and genuinely. And definitely not a weirdly prurient interest in his holidays to Ibiza, or whether him and Emma Raducanu are, you know. Just the talent. Thinking of the talent here.

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Women’s Euro 2025: countdown to kick-off as tournament begins in Switzerland – as it happened

Finland, Iceland, Switzerland and Norway fans lined the streets of Basel and Thun on the first day of Euro 2025 as football fever hit the nation

The narrative arc of women’s football in Switzerland is a familiar one: from apathy to hostility to mockery to inertia to change. Now the country will host one of the biggest events in the sporting calendar…

Speaking of predictions, be sure to let me know your picks for;

Tournament winners

Finalists

Top goalscorer

Player of the tournament

Dark horse

Breakthrough star