‘Not many best friends can say they play for England together’ – Toone hails Russo’s impact for England at Euro 2025 | OneFootball

Ella Toone is hitting her stride at the right time for England at Euro 2025, and she is doing it alongside her closest friend Alessia Russo.

The Manchester United forward starred again as the Lionesses thrashed Wales 6-1, continuing her standout form in Switzerland.

Even better, Toone got to share the moment with Russo, assisting her best friend’s first goal of the tournament.

“Oh yeah, it’s mint,” the 25-year-old said. “Not many best friends can say that they play for England together and that they assist each other so it was nice for her to assist me and it was nice for me to repay the favour.

“She really deserves that – she’s worked so hard for us, she’s created a lot of chances for us and it was nice for her to finally get that goal and I was just praying that I wasn’t offside for her.

“I’m really happy. I feel like I’m really coming into my form and really enjoying the football that we’re playing. It’s falling nicely for me at the minute and really enjoying it and hopefully I can keep up with the form that I’m in.

“I’m really enjoying playing and today was a nice 45 minutes for me to assist and score a goal. It’s always nice to help the team and I wish I could have stayed on a bit longer.”

England lost their opening match of the tournament 2-1 to France, but went on to thrash the Netherlands 4-0 and Wales 6-1 to secure qualification to the quarter-finals.

They now face Sweden, a team looking to get their revenge on an England side that beat them 4-0 in the semi-final in 2022.

“Of course they [Sweden] are going to want to beat us but we’re the same,” Toone added. “We want to beat them, we want to beat every team that we play against and we know that it’s going to be a tough game.

“They’re having a really good tournament so far so we’re really looking forward to it and we’ve just got to take the confidence and the performance that we’ve put into these last two games into the next one.

“[The France game] was a good lesson. I think you always learn so much from the games that you don’t win and we definitely did that.

“We had a lot of conversations, but the good thing is that we turned it into actions and we’ve really shown what English football is about. We work hard, we’ve got that fight and we’ve got that togetherness. And yeah, that’s definitely what we’ve put into these last two games. Proper England.”