Former Tar Heels Footballer Leads England over the Netherlands

Former North Carolina Tar Heels soccer player Alessia Russo led England to a 4-0 victory over the Netherlands in the Euro 2025 tournament. Russo had three assists as England was dominant from the opening kickoff.

This game was very important for the Lionesses as they lost their opener to France 2-1. Russo told Laura Howard of Sportsbeat, who is covering the tournament in Zurich, that the team realized they can perform better and it showed against the Dutch.

“After the France game we looked at ourselves as individuals, and as a team, of how we can all be better,” she said. “Going into this game we wanted to start by setting the standards high and we did that. When that’s our standard as a team then the sky’s the limit.

“We’re at our best as a team when we stick together, we’re good on the ball, we create chances and we’re dominant at the back and we did all of that.”

The Brits were the first-ever defensing champion nation to lose their opening group stage game at a European Championship. The loss to France was also their first loss of the Euros since 2015.

Russo said the Brits did not get down on themselves after the loss and they regrouped to play their best soccer against the Netherlands.

“I knew that we were capable of performances like that and I know that we still are. That’s what we want. We’ve set the standards now,” she said. “We were obviously really disappointed after the result against France but we knew we needed to bounce back and we knew we needed to win at least two of the group games so the job didn’t change.

“We definitely put on a performance today that we were all proud of and that we want to continue with as well.”

Russo was named Player of the Match for her hat trick of assists in the victory. The award could have also gone to forward Lauren James who played brilliant and was on the scoring end of Russo passing.

“We see her do that in training all the time. When you see her in those areas you know she can hit it off both feet as well,” said Russo. “I want to find LJ in those areas as much as I can and as soon as she hit it I think we all knew it was going in. She’s a special talent.”

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