When you try to quantify how good the Euro 2025 squads are, it’s interesting to see which teams the players play their club football with.
I’ve ranked the clubs in a simple way: Those who participate in the Champions League in their respective continent with direct qualification or via the qualifying round, and then for those who did not qualify for European tournament by league table ranking.
That way we have seven different layers defined as follows:
We can then have a look at the official UEFA file distributed to media and link the players to the club they were registered with when the list were submitted to UEFA. It is important to note that some players have since moved clubs, but I prefer to use as a point of reference the official UEFA data.
Here is the table and it suggests the strongest team is England, followed by Germany, Spain and France. Those four teams have more than 50% of their players playing for teams who have directly qualified for the UEFA Champions League League phase or the Concacaf equivalent.
England are the strongest team on paper as 69% of their squad qualified directly for the elite UEFA/Concacaf competitions. They are also only selecting players from the big 4 WSL teams alongside big teams from Germany and the USA.
Germany are ranked second, exactly like England they have 82% of the squad in the Champions League tournament via qualifiers or direct qualification, but have two players who play in lower team categories.
Funnily enough, Spain and France have also 82% of their squad playing in Champions League with the main difference being five or six players in the qualifiers for those two countries versus three or four for the top two nations.
Sweden and the Netherlands both have 47% of their squads playing for teams that have qualified for the UWCL League phase, quite a strong number.
Norway have overall more players in the elite UEFA tournament with 86% of their squad in the Champions League, but only 39% directly in the League phase. Portugal and Italy have also 39% of their squad with teams who have qualified for the League phase.
At the bottom of the table, Finland and Belgium have no player playing for the A teams, Wales have one Sophie Ingle who will leave Chelsea at the end of her contract.
And that ranking does tie up mostly with the teams that have qualified for the knockout stages: Norway, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Germany, France and England. Overall it is quite logical that teams with players with the most experience at the highest level go further in the tournament.
Quarter-final schedule
Wednesday 16 July
QF1: Norway vs Italy (Geneva, 21:00 CET)
Thursday 17 July
QF3: Sweden vs England (Zurich, 21:00 CET)
Friday 18 July
QF2: Spain vs Switzerland (Bern, 21:00 CET)
Saturday 19 July
QF4: France vs Germany (Basel, 21:00 CET)
Arsenal’s Frida Maanum (Norway), Stina Blackstenius (Sweden), Alessia Russo, Lotte Wubben-Moy, Beth Mead, Leah Williamson, Chloe Kelly, Michelle Agyemang (England), Mariona Caldentey (Spain) and Lia Wälti (Switzerland) are still in the tournament.