England handed Lauren James boost ahead of crunch Euro 2025 opener against France | OneFootball

Sarina Wiegman has suggested Lauren James could start England’s opening match of Euro 2025 against France, or could at least play a significant role in the game, after the forward recovered from a hamstring injury to be fit for the tournament.

James played the final 30 minutes of England’s 7-0 send-off win against Jamaica on Sunday, in what was the Chelsea forward’s first appearance in three months, and Wiegman said the 23-year-old “can play more than that” in Zurich against France on Saturday night.

“She’s in a good place,” Wiegman said. “She came on the pitch in against Jamaica last week and she's ready to get more minutes tomorrow.”

When asked if James could start, Wiegman was tight-lipped but replied: “I'm not going to give you the line-up, but she played 30 minutes last week, so she can play more than that, so I think that will say enough.”

Wiegman said England were “ready” for what will be a tough opening match against France, which may set the tone for further group games against the Netherlands and Wales in a difficult Group D.

“We had a last session this morning and everyone came through well,” Wiegman said. “I think we had some good weeks where we trained and we could do some tactics and I think we're very well prepared.

“You see the bonding in the team. We've worked really, really hard and I definitely think we're ready to go tomorrow.”

Wiegman, who has won the last two European Championships with the Netherlands in 2017 and England in 2022, revealed she has told her players to not focus on defending their European title, but to instead challenge themselves to go out and win another major trophy.

There are seven England players who will be making their first appearance at a major tournament and Wiegman has looked to motivate her squad by drawing a line under their past achievements.

“We absolutely cherish what we have done before,” Wiegman said. “We’ll never forget it and it was the experience of a lifetime for us and for our families and also for the fans, but you have to move on and you have to be on top of it.

“Things are changing very quickly, things are developing very quickly, so we have to do too. And we came together, it was actually in February and then we came to, to this day we said, yeah, it's a new challenge. The approach was there anyway, but we call it the ‘new’ England.”