Expert blog: The resilience behind the Lionesses’ run to the Euro 2025 final
With the UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 showdown between England and Spain just two days away, Ben Ashdown and Dr Mustafa Sarkar explore the role of resilience in the Lionesses’ route to the final.
By Ben Ashdown, Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology, and Dr Mustafa Sarkar, Associate Professor of Sport and Performance Psychology | Published on 25 July 2025
Categories: Press office; Research; School of Science and Technology;
As the Lionesses prepare for Sunday’s UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 final, their tournament has been defined by late goals, dramatic comebacks, and high-pressure penalties. While those instances have captured the headlines, one of the most compelling narratives throughout the tournament has been the team’s resilience.
Resilience is a term frequently used in football. It is often associated with last-minute equalisers or scoring in a high-stakes penalty shootout.
Media reports during the tournament have used such examples to champion England's resilience and their “ability to overcome adversity”. This also extends to the players and management staff. Following the semi-final victory over Italy, defender Lucy Bronze stated: “I do not think you will find a team in world football with more fight and more resilience than this England team”. This followed Bronze being praised by her manager for “that resilience, that fight” after scoring a critical penalty in the quarter-final shootout despite an earlier injury.
Such remarks reflect a growing awareness of the role that psychological resilience plays in the game. However, while these accounts of resilience are compelling, there is a risk that the concept becomes over-used and over-simplified. Resilience is not simply about grit or relentless persistence in the face of difficulty. Persisting without adapting can actually be problematic. And it is more than simply bouncing back from setbacks. True resilience involves flexible thinking and emotional awareness in-the-moment, and the ability to adjust both individually and collectively under pressure.
The ‘resilient moments’ that occur late in games only tell part of the story. Indeed, resilience is less about what happens at the end of the game and more about what happens during it. It can be seen in how athletes respond to mistakes and maintain clarity under pressure. According to researchers and sport psychologists, athletes who demonstrate resilience are those who use their personal resources, such as confidence and focus, to function effectively even when circumstances are difficult.
England manager Sarina Wiegman has repeatedly highlighted this quality within her squad. After the chaotic quarter-final win against Sweden, she described her players as “showing so much resilience”. But what does this actually ‘look like’ on the pitch?
Our research at Nottingham Trent University suggests that resilience is reflected in specific behaviours. These include how players visibly manage their emotions after setbacks, how they communicate and support each other during difficult periods, and how they continue to learn and adapt during matches.
Resilience is, therefore, not judged by the final score, but on how individuals and teams actually function in the face of challenges – something that can be observed in action.
At the team level, resilience is a collective process. It arises when a group is able to use their individual and combined resources to positively adapt together when under pressure. This requires shared leadership, a distinctive team identity and togetherness based on a selfless culture, high quality relationships which are often strengthened by collective experiences of adversity (e.g., Ella Toone and Beth Mead bonding over the grief of losing parents), and exposure to challenging training situations.
These are not accidental features of this England team, but the product of deliberate planning and leadership. Wiegman is known for designing training environments that test players’ problem-solving and composure under constraints. She also places significant emphasis on building a cohesive and connected group, where psychological safety and mutual accountability underpin performance.
Sunday’s final presents England with another opportunity to demonstrate this genuine kind of resilience. Having already come from behind twice in the tournament, the players know what it means to respond to difficult situations. However, their success will depend not only on learning from their past experiences, but on how they manage momentum shifts, recover emotionally from inevitable setbacks, and continue to operate as a focused unit.
They will hope to avoid relying on last minute heroics in the final. In reality, the most effective forms of resilience are often far less dramatic. They are typically seen in controlled responses, consistent and unified effort, having systems of social support, and effective communication when the pressure is on.
Whatever the outcome, the Lionesses’ have illustrated that resilience is measured not by results alone, but by how individuals and teams adapt and grow through challenges.