Swede Caroline: Lionesses secure Euros semi-final spot

There can be few players in English football history who can so thoroughly have proven to show up in the biggest moments.

Chloe Kelly revealed earlier in the week that she regularly rewatches her European Championship winning goal from 2022. The highlights reel from this quarter-final against Sweden might need to be added to her rotation.

England started atrociously in Zurich, conceding after only 90 seconds following an error from Jess Carter which Kosovare Asllani was quick to capitalise on.

They were defensively run ragged and it was little surprise that Stina Blackstenius made it two before the half hour. In truth, England offered almost nothing. They could barely keep the ball, failed to generate any clear cut chances and looked pretty out of ideas what to do about the whole situation. The biggest nod to changing anything came half an hour in when Sarina Wiegman switched around Jess Carter and Leah Williamson at centre-back.

It was not until 70 minutes had gone that Sarina Wiegman made her first substitutions. England have been far less predictable when it comes to their substitutes at this tournament but it is clear that they are no less important to the squad as a whole.

“We have a little group of us,” said Kelly before the match. “We have a group chat. We work really hard on the training pitch, in the gym. That sometimes goes unnoticed but it's about sticking together and being at our best when we are called upon.”

That group of ‘finishers’ as they call themselves had even come up with their own goal celebration, involving clicking their fingers, that was on show in the match against Wales where Beth Mead and Aggie Beever-Jones both scored.

Wiegman introduced Mead, Esme Morgan and Michelle Agyemang at the 70 minute mark. But it was when Kelly came on in the 78th minute that it actually changed. Within 30 seconds of coming on, she had sent a laserlike cross to the back post which Lucy Bronze headed in. Barely two minutes later, it was Kelly again causing issues on the left hand side as Sweden failed to deal with her cross and Agyemang ended up tapping in.

It always felt like England might have an advantage if they were able to find a way to still be in the game as it went on. With an average age of 29.5, Sweden are the oldest team at the tournament, and England exploited the spaces that began to open up as the game dragged on.

For all of the understandable doom and gloom that every England fan no doubt felt as the clock clicked down, the reality is this was a strangely familiar situation for the team on the pitch. England have seen their first knockout match of every tournament under Sarina Wiegman go to extra time. They only had six minutes left to play against Spain in 2022 at Brighton when Ella Toone equalised, in a game they won in extra-time. They held their nerve against Nigeria in 2023 to win on penalties.

This quarter-final match up was billed as a meeting between the two tournament specialists. Both sides had reached the semi-finals of the last three. In the end, the penalty shoot out looked like it was between two teams who had never seen a football before, let alone been used to dealing with pressure moments.

There were nine missed penalties until Lucy Bronze’s goal and Smilla Holmberg’s miss meant that it was England who are heading to Geneva to play Italy in the semi-final on Tuesday night.

Much as was the case in 2023, it has not been particularly pretty. But for the sixth time in a row, England are going to contest a major tournament semi-final. They do have Chloe Kelly to thank for this one.

Photograph by Alex Caparros – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images