Lionesses eye glory in biggest Euros to date – the key talking points

The 2022 Women’s European Championship gets under way on Wednesday when hosts England take on Austria at Old Trafford.

Here, the PA news agency looks at some of the talking points around the tournament.

The 13th edition of the Euros returns to England 17 years on from the previous time it was held there, and is set to be some spectacle. The 2005 competition featured eight teams and five stadiums, all in the north west, with the highest attendance being the near-30,000 that watched the Lionesses beat Finland at the Etihad Stadium. This summer’s showpiece involves 16 sides and 10 stadiums located in various parts of the country, with the Old Trafford opener and Wembley final among the games already sold out. Overall, the record ticket sales have broken the 500,000 mark, more than doubling the tally of 240,000 for Euro 2017 in the Netherlands. While there has been some criticism of venue choices – Iceland midfielder Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir branded the use of the Academy Stadium, which will have a capacity of 4,700, as “disrespectful” – organisers have stressed their belief the “right mix of stadiums has been chosen to provide the tournament with a platform to fulfil its potential”.

The hosts head into the tournament as one of the favourites and hunting what would be a first piece of major silverware in their history. England have twice been Euros runners-up, in 1984 and 2009, while their best World Cup finish was third in Canada in 2015. That was the first in a sequence of successive runs to semi-finals at their last three major tournaments – at both Euro 2017 and the 2019 World Cup in France they lost in the last four to the teams that went on to lift the trophy, the Netherlands and the United States respectively.