Would a still-developing US women’s team have won Euro 2025?

The US owns a good recent record against Euro 2025 teams, but the transition to a new generation under Emma Hayes could be limiting for now

Sunday in Switzerland, England's Lionesses clawed their way to a second straight Euro title after defeating the reigning world champions, Spain, 3-1 in a penalty shootout. With a record 1.35m watching stateside, at least one wondered if, in some alternate universe in which they could play in the Euros, they would have won it.

Asked that question on a recent episode of The Women's Game podcast, US captain and OL Lyonnes midfielder Lindsey Heaps suggested that they could. While debriefing England's wild quarter-final comeback against Sweden with retired World Cup champion Sam Mewis, Heaps began by noting the difficulty of comparing Emma Hayes' program in transition to mid-tournament teams: It's so hard because we're obviously missing a lot of players," she said. But we have a lot of new, young players, inexperienced players, that are doing so well. I think it would be so hard to say. Also, Emma would fully prepare us for a tournament, and tournament mode. So it'd be a little bit different than what we've been doing, and how we've been playing."