By Tony Leighton. Saturday, 04 June 2005.
It will be a confident England team who step into the UEFA European Women’s Championship Finals with Sunday’s opening group game against Finland.
After winning nine of their last 10 matches, England’s best run for 18 years, skipper Faye White and her team mates will be looking for yet another victory to set them up for the following Group A games against Denmark and Sweden.
“We’re confident and excited at the same time,” said White as she looked ahead to meeting the Finns, “we know a lot about them. We've been looking at videos of them, stats, reports and so on from other games.
“I like to know the name of my opponents, how many caps they have and so on. It builds it up for me and gives me something to rise to," she explained.
"You don't want to overload yourself with information, but it certainly gets your mind switched on.”
Under National Coach Hope Powell, England have made meticulously thorough preparations for what will be the biggest women’s football event ever staged in the UK.
As she prepared to put her players through their final preparations for the tournament’s opening match, Powell said: “We’ve had Finland watched on numerous occasions, as with everybody else.
“They are hard-working, physically strong and they have tidy players – they can all play and it will be a tough game, even though it was a huge surprise Finland got through to the tournament.
“We like to pass the ball but it depends what their strategy is during the course of the game - and if we have to change it we will.”
Women’s Euro 2005 will certainly be a different prospect to Euro 2001 for England, who failed to make it through the group stage of the tournament - held in Germany.
This time around expectations will be high on Powell’s team following their recent run of results and also the fact that they have home advantage for the tournament.
Will that add to the pressure on the players?
“Maybe,” said White, “but we know this is a great opportunity to do well. Everyone within the set-up is going to give everything they can to make that happen.
“We're in our best position to do that. Back in 2001 we were thinking it would have been great just to win a game.
“Our last few games may have been friendlies but they were also competitive. We made changes, brought new players in and changed it just as much as other teams, but still got the results. Now we have to take that into the tournament.”
The start of the tournament is set to be a tremendous occasion, with 21,000 tickets pre-sold meaning a new European attendance record should be set for a competitive women’s football match.
A crowd of over 18,000 watched Germany beat Sweden in the final of the Women’s Euro 2001, while the best previous attendance for a competitive game in England was the 14,107 at Selhurst Park for a World Cup qualifier against Germany in May 2002.
“The fact that 21,000 tickets have already been sold is amazing,” said White. “It’s going to be hard to communicate with each other on the pitch, purely with the noise factor - but it's going to be an incredible experience.”