“From a Spurs point of view, we have players scattered across different groups, which is exciting. From an England point of view, it’s arguably the toughest group with the Netherlands and France, but I think you’re also looking at Group B, as two of what you’d usually describe as the ‘group of death’. But looking around the whole tournament, this will not be one where you go and pick one or two teams in every group and feel like they’re guaranteed to go through, I think there will be some big upsets along the way.”
Dark horses?
“I think Norway are a really interesting side. They’ve got a number of brilliant players who you think could cause damage to pretty much any team in the tournament, including Caroline Hansen, Ingrid Engen, Guro Reiten and Celin Bizet, who we all know from her time at Spurs. However, their manager, Gemma Grainger, is interesting. She’s the former manager of Wales and she took the role at Norway at an interesting time, so it was a bold decision to leave Wales, but it looks like they’ve really bought into what she’s trying to achieve. So, I feel Norway could be a fun team to watch. I also think, in Group D, the Netherlands have a number of fantastic players as well. If you look at that squad, similar to the men’s national side, we always talk about players in their team and they’re stereotypical dark horses, but I think they have such wonderful talent in their team that it is hard to overlook them.”