Miedema hits 100th Netherlands goal to upset Wales’ grand debut at Euro 2025

Sometimes it really is better to travel than to arrive. After a thoroughly enjoyable journey to their first major tournament, Wales collided with the 2017 European champions and were left dizzy and disorientated. During the course of an instructive 90 minutes in the shadow of Lucerne’s Mount Pilatus, Vivianne Miedema scored her 100th international goal. Perhaps even more significantly Andries Jonker’s side did enough to suggest it would be thoroughly unwise to assume England and France are destined to fill Group D’s top two places.

After conceding three soft goals and regularly being saved by either the woodwork or their quietly impressive goalkeeper, Olivia Clark, Wales will almost certainly be watching the knockout phase on television. No matter; Rhian Wilkinson’s players should eventually come to look back on this chastening evening in central Switzerland with real pride at their part in a landmark piece of national football history.

At least the Wales coach was still smiling as she faced the media. “It was a tough, painful, game,” she said. “But this is a tough group, the big event, it’s intimidating. It’s also what we want, we want to play the biggest teams.

“We’ve got two more games and we’ve got to show up. We’ve got to cut out the defensive lapses and create more but my players have put in a massive shift, they’ve run their socks off.”

Wilkinson, one of the women’s game’s real rising managerial talents, had asked her players to turn into latter day Princess Gwenllians and, on that level at least, they did not disappoint. As a 12th-century Welsh warrior princess, Gwenllian led an army into battle against the mighty Normans and the Wales head coach spied parallels in the scale of the challenge her team faced against the Netherlands here.

Like Gwenllian they ultimately met a sticky end but for 45 minutes Angharad James and company put up a wonderfully defiant fight in front of the loudest of travelling Red Walls massed at one end of Allmend Stadion.

Wales supporters have registered the second highest ticket sales of any country involved in Euro 2025’s group stage and almost 4,000 were here. Many had overcome delays and flight diversions prompted by a French air traffic controllers’ strike action but, by Saturday lunchtime, downtown Lucerne was a kaleidoscope of Welsh red and Dutch orange.

About 3,000 Netherlands fans saw their side dominate possession from the off. With Barcelona’s excellent wingback Esmee Brugts worrying Josie Green down the Dutch left, Wilkinson was soon imploring her players to make the game more compact.

View image in fullscreen Wales fans turned out in their thousands to support the team against the Netherlands. Photograph: Alessandra Tarantino/AP

Yet as much as the Welsh back five spent protracted periods resisting hostile fire, the 38-year-old Jess Fishlock’s deployment as a false 9 blending indomitable industry with superior touch and vision sporadically ruffled the Netherlands.

Wilkinson appeared content to see her team deliberately slow things down, with Lily Woodham’s booking for time-wasting a prime example of the early disruption to Dutch momentum that featured Miedema being second-guessed well by Rhiannon Roberts, initially.

Jill Roord proved rather harder to pin down and, when she ghosted in behind Hayley Ladd, the Twente attacking midfielder unleashed the most vituperative of half-volleys which, having beaten Clark, ricocheted away off the inside of a post.

It was quite a reprieve for Wales but their luck could not last and it finally ran out in the psychologically debilitating dying moments of first-half stoppage time. Just as Wilkinson’s containment plan seemed to have worked, the Manchester City striker received the ball from Daniëlle van de Donk and proceeded to put Roberts firmly in her place.

skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Moving the Goalposts Free weekly newsletter No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women’s football Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion

Alarm spread across Wilkinson’s face as the much-decorated former Canada defender watched Miedema tease Sunderland’s new signing in from Real Betis by twice dropping a shoulder and feinting to shoot before finally swivelling imperiously beyond her bewildered marker. As Miedema’s perfectly calibrated 20-yard shot curved into a top corner, Welsh hopes dipped even lower than the early evening Swiss sun.

Jonker, who had taken the precaution of ordering every outfield player back when Wales earlier won a couple of corners, simply looked relieved. On the eve of the tournament the outgoing Netherlands coach had taken to the airwaves to express his surprise and disappointment regarding his impending replacement by Arjan Veurink, the assistant to the England coach, Sarina Wiegman. In a heated pre-match press conference Jonker was asked if he was treating his arguably unimpressed players like “puppets”.

As if to emphasise her team is well capable of rising above such creative tensions, Arsenal’s Victoria Pelova opened the second half by meeting Van de Donk’s lay off, taking a steadying touch and shooting unerringly beyond Clark. Wales had paid the price for being caught cold by a long ball over the top towards the advancing Van de Donk.

Suitably encouraged, Miedema once again turned Roberts inside and picked out Roord with the outside of a boot, but the latter hit the woodwork again.

It was purely a temporary stay of execution. When Jackie Groenen’s shot rebounded off the bar, Wales failed to clear properly, permitting Brugts to volley beyond Clark, before Lineth Beerensteyn evaded Clark’s reach only to see that effort disallowed for a tight offside.

“We suffered,” said Wilkinson. “But sometimes a game plan works, sometimes it doesn’t. You could see how tense we were but I’m not worried; these women will turn this round.”

Click here to read article