BRIGHTON, England — As the goals rained in, first two in the first 15 minutes, then two more in quick succession, then two more, all before half-time, it was hard to believe England didn’t send a message.
Its inaugural win at the European Women’s Championships this summer was satisfying enough, a solid if unspectacular first step towards a major prize it has never won. But while the Lionesses had scored just one goal, England’s top rivals for the title filled the nets and upped the ante.
Norway scored four goals in their first game. Spain and Germany quickly did the same. After France fired five against Italy on Sunday, maybe, just maybe, the tournament’s host country felt they had to show they were capable of it.
So England scored eight.
In a tournament with rivals but little clarity in less than a week, England’s 8-0 win over Norway on Monday night – played on a warm night before an enthusiastic crowd in a holiday resort on the country’s south coast – might have the ticket may be the most surprising result so far.
Women’s football in Europe is changing rapidly, but meetings of its best teams remain so infrequent that it can sometimes be difficult to judge which teams are ahead. A great player does not make a great team. A great team doesn’t necessarily need a great player. And with the few clashes from the top powers – the last Euro was in 2017, an eternity in the ongoing evolution of women’s football on the continent – data is still hard to come by. After all, you can’t learn much from a one-sided victory. A 20-0 win reveals even less.
Spain arrived at the tournament as one of the favorites but quickly saw their hopes dashed by the loss of World Player of the Year Alexia Putellas to a knee injury. France left two of their best players at home. Germany brought depth, but no brand stars.
England vs Norway was supposed to be something else entirely: a true test of strong teams, a rare meeting of equals. And then it wasn’t.
“Everyone feels devastated,” said Norway coach Martin Sjögren after the game. “I feel really terrible for the players to be out there and lose 8-0 in a game we’ve been looking forward to for a while. We thought we had a good plan and we played well at the beginning. The last 85 minutes were terrible.”
Georgia Stanway opened the scoring in the 12th minute and converted a penalty after Ellen White was dragged to the ground in the 18-yard box. Three minutes later, Lauren Hemp scored the second, feeding in a cross from Beth Mead. After that, the gates were blurry. After undressing a defender, White first sauntered in alone. Mead scored her first in the 34th minute with a header and her second in the 38th with some decent footwork from close range.
White had the crowd and her team-mates holding their heads in their hands as she scored her second and sixth English goal in the 41st minute, which landed at the back post. But England weren’t done yet: Alessia Russo replaced White in the 57th minute and she was on the arch nine minutes later.
Norway went back to a five-man chain after that, but that hardly mattered. By the time England finished 8th and Mead completed their hat-trick with a rebound, it was over for the Norwegians: Ada Hegerberg, a dominant striker who never sniffed the goal, and playmaker Caroline Graham Hansen had already been withdrawn, drawn to live , to fight another day. Guro riding, a cunning wing, went soon after.
“We made it a bit too easy for them,” said Sjögren, “to lose the ball in dangerous places. We made some very, very bad mistakes.”
It was hardly the result either team expected. Both had opened the tournament the way they wanted: England started with a win over Austria in front of nearly 69,000 fans, the largest crowd ever to see a women’s EURO match, and Norway debuted a day later with a 4-1 win -Victory over Northern Ireland. Like England’s one-goal win, Norway’s longer lead somehow missed the winners’ dominance.
The matchup offered a rarity in this tournament: a meeting of equally respected teams, teams that have traded victories in recent encounters, it seemed like a good game.
England have eliminated Norway at the last two World Cups, including a 3-0 win in the 2019 quarter-finals in France. But this was a very different Norway: talented, yes, but missing the predatory Hegerberg, who left her national team for several years to protest what she saw as second-rate treatment by the country’s football association.
A lengthy layoff due to a knee injury prompted a change of heart earlier this year and her return has brought changed expectations for both her and her country.
They stay as they are. But Monday was England’s night, from start to finish after finish to finish.