England Lionesses through to a third successive major tournament final

Image: Liondartois courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Welcome to the latest edition of The Rest is Football newsletter, your weekly round-up of some of the stories and debates shared by Gary, Alan and Micah over the past week, with a few extra bits and pieces thrown in.

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England Lionesses through to a third successive major tournament final

England’s rollercoaster Euro 2025 continued in ongoing dramatic fashion on Tuesday when they reached the tournament’s final this weekend by coming from behind against Italy. We’ll get into the detail of that later in this newsletter. It’s been one heck of a ride so far!

HOW many games did you play last season?

The inaugural 32-team Club World Cup (CWC) finished a week last Sunday, on 13 July, as a Cole Palmer-inspired Chelsea thumped PSG 3-0 to win the right to call themselves world champions.

There was lots of controversy we all know about, from the funding of the DAZN TV deal, effectively by Saudi Arabia at a time the Saudis were awarded the 2034 World Cup hosting rights. This became the tournament’s $1bn prize fund. Crowds weren’t great. Kick-off times often meant super hot weather. Storms disrupted some matches. And there was a wider question about whether the calendar has just become too congested.

It’s that latter point that the newsletter is going to consider today, in two different ways.

First, we’re going to look at the footballers around the world who played the most number of games for their clubs and countries last season, 2024-25, up to and including the “end” of that season, which was the end of the CWC.

Second, we’re going to look at what all of the  32clubs who took part in the CWC have been doing since it finished. For many of them, the event happened in the middle of their domestic seasons and they’ve already played lots of domestic games since leaving the CWC. Others are supposedly on holiday but are already in their countdowns to their new domestic seasons.

Lionesses do it AGAIN! And the drama continues…

England’s women’s team have reached a third consecutive major final, Euro 2025, having reached the final of Euro 2021 (in 2022), a tournament they won by beating Germany, and then the final of the 2023 World Cup in Australia, where they lost 1-0 to Spain.

And now, after a massively topsy-turvy Euro 2025 in Switzerland, they have reach Sunday’s final in Basel. Upon doing so late on Tuesday night, they knew they would face either Germany (who they beat in the Euro 2021 final) or Spain (to whom they lost in the 2023 World Cup final) in the Euro 2025 final. Germany and Spain played each other on Wednesday night in Zurich for the right to face Sarina Wiegman’s indomitable team.

Where to start with England’s semi-final, against Italy in Geneva on Tuesday? England had already ridden a rollercoaster to get there, losing their opening group game to France before thrashing the Netherlands 4-0 and Wales 6-1. But then in the quarter-finals they were 2-0 down to Sweden after 78 minutes before Lucy Bronze and teenager Michelle Agyemang levelled things by the 81st minute and England went on to win on penalties.

Italy went 1-0 ahead in the semi-final in the first half through Barbara Bonansea of Juventus and the scoreline stayed that way until the 96th minute (!!) before miracle worker Agyemang scored to take the game into extra time.

Penalties looked utterly inevitable in the extra period and there was just a minute left on the clock when second-half sub Chloe Kelly netted the rebound of a saved penalty.

Sarina Wiegman will be looking to win a third consecutive women’s Euros as manager, having done do in 2017 with The Netherlands and then with England in 2022.

Palace fight for Europe

In a special Ep on 16 July, Gary spoke to Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish about the decision by UEFA to demote Palace from the 2025-25 Europa League because of multi-ownership rules. Co-owner John Textor is selling his stake but the governing body believed there could still be a conflict of interest in him having owned stakes in more than one European club.

The story moved on this week as Palace launched an appeal against Uefa’s decision with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. As the linked BBC report says: “The rules of European football's governing body state that clubs owned, to a certain threshold of influence, by the same person or entity cannot compete in the same European competition.

”Uefa's rules set a deadline of 1 March 2025 to show proof of multi-club ownership restructuring - a deadline Palace missed.”

Textor also owns a majority of Lyon. Palace argue that the doesn’t have any meaningful control in Palace, a club where he is selling his stake anyway. A decision is expected by early August at the latest.