Women's European Championship 2025: German players without goal threat – Sweden and the Netherlands dominate

Selecting players, compiling the final squad, and announcing it two weeks before the start of the 2025 Women's European Championship in Switzerland. Hardly any other team has had such a calm process in selecting its European Championship participants this year as Germany under national coach Christian Wück.

On the contrary: Wales announced its national team lineup for its first European Championship appearance on the summit of Mount Snowdon, the highest mountain in the British region, where Edmund Hillary is said to have trained for his climb of Mount Everest. Switzerland hosted a three-day treasure hunt, where fans had to reveal the players themselves. And Italy took a particularly long time to finalize the selection: the European Championship squad was only announced a week before the tournament began.

368 players from 16 nations are competing. Two teams are participating in the European Championship finals for the first time. However, the women from Wales and Poland are not the only players without experience in European tournaments.

Just over half of the nominated players have never played at a European Championship before. In Germany and Italy, this applies to 13 of the 23 women each.

However, there are some players, like Dutchwoman Caitlin Dijkstra (defense, VfL Wolfsburg) and Swiss player Livia Peng (goalkeeper, FC Chelsea), who are already in their second European Championship but have never played on the pitch. They were nominated for a previous tournament but did not play.

Portugal has the fewest newcomers to the European Championship (7), but Sweden is the team with the most European Championship experience. Peter Gerhardsson's team has played 6,350 minutes in 93 matches. Only the Netherlands have achieved a similar statistic (6,149 minutes in 89 matches).

However, the player with the longest European Championship appearance comes from Norway. For Maren Naevdal Mjelde, the tournament in Switzerland is already her fifth European Championship appearance. She has played more than 1,500 minutes in 17 matches. Only Sweden's Kosovare Asllani has played more matches. This is also her fifth tournament.

However, the Swedes also have the oldest European Championship team. The average age of the players is 28.5 years. Linda Sembrant (defense) is the second-oldest player in the tournament at 38. Only Finland's goalkeeper Tinja-Riikka Korpela is older, celebrating her 39th birthday in May.

Germany, on the other hand, is sending one of the five youngest teams to the European Championship. The average age of the team is just 25.8 years. At the World Cup two years ago, the players were on average half a year older.

Following Alexandra Popp's retirement, the most experienced member of the Wück team is 30-year-old Sara Däbritz with 108 international caps. Kathrin Hendrich (33) follows with 83 caps.

Dutch player Sherida Spitse has by far the most international experience of all players, having already worn the national jersey 244 times at the age of 35 (as of July 1, 2025).

Although many German players are under contract with major clubs like FC Bayern, Chelsea, or Olympique Lyon, none of them are among the most valuable players at the European Championship. Klara Bühl, with a market value of €800,000, is the most expensive player in the squad.

Only a few women even manage to break the one million euro mark. Spaniard Aitana Bonmatí, with a market value of 1.6 million euros, is the tournament's most valuable player. However, the two-time World Player of the Year award's role at this European Championship remains uncertain. Just a week before Spain's first match, the 27-year-old had to be treated in a hospital for meningitis. Bonmatí only arrived at the team hotel in Lausanne on Tuesday.

The most valuable defender of the European Championship field follows in tenth place: Spaniard Ona Batlle (26, FC Barcelona).

Compared to the market values ​​reported by transfermarkt.de for the men's football team, the sums for the women's team are – to put it mildly – ​​rather low. The Spanish squad is the most expensive. The team has a total market value of €12.5 million. By comparison, German players Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz have a market value of €140 million, making them more than ten times as expensive – each.

However, the data should be treated with caution. While the women's soccer portal soccerdonna.de does list market values ​​for a large portion of its players – unlike at the World Cup two years ago – club transfers in women's soccer are different than in men's, where players sometimes move to new teams for exorbitant sums. Many contracts simply expire, allowing new ones to be signed for free.

While Alexandra Popp narrowly missed the top scorer crown at the last European Championship in 2022, the German team's goal threat at the European Championships is currently rather bleak. At least for now. Only three players have scored a goal. The most dangerous team on paper, however, is England, who already have 17 goals to their name.

This is largely due to Beth Mead. The 30-year-old Arsenal player won the top scorer title in England's European Championship victory three years ago, providing more assists than Popp. Mead scored six times – statistically, once in every game.

In fact, there were games in the tournament where Mead didn't score at all. However, she did sink the ball three times in England's 8-0 victory over Norway in the preliminary round.

However, Mead is not the player with the best overall goal-scoring record in international matches. She scores in roughly every other game. The Dutch Vivianne Miedema is more dangerous. The 28-year-old from Manchester City has scored 97 times in 124 international matches.

Manchester City is one of the teams with the largest number of players for the tournament in Switzerland. Ten women are on one of the national teams. City rivals Manchester United have nine of the European Championship players under contract. A total of 34 players are under contract with FCB: 16 women come from FC Bayern, while FC Barcelona has the most players at the European Championship with 18 players.

And what about fairness? Well, of the 177 players who have already gained experience at the European Championships, according to data from soccerdonna, 125 have seen neither the yellow nor the red card.

Only two players were sent off once, each with a yellow-red card – Amber Tysiak of Belgium and Kathrine Kühl of Denmark. The tournament in Switzerland promises to be fair – and hopefully as calm as the German squad nominations.