During the final training session, the German soccer players looked wide-eyed through the wide expanse of Wembley with its 90,000 red seats.
"The stadium is impressive even when empty. The anticipation is very, very great," said vice-captain Svenja Huth before the dream final of the European Championship against England this Sunday (6 p.m. CEST / ARD and DAZN).
Wembley an "overwhelming" backdrop
The record European champions from Germany can win the title for the ninth time, for England it would be the first triumph at an international tournament. Irrespective of the outcome of the final of the 13th European Championship, the DFB women have managed to return to the big stage with a convincing tournament so far: in 2017 at the European Championship and 2019 at the World Cup, the Olympic champion from 2016 was eliminated in the quarter-finals and won the Tokyo missed games.
National coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg has already won four European titles as a player. The feeling of being able to play against England in Wembley after three sometimes difficult years was overwhelming for her, at least on Saturday.
"I was sitting in my hotel room this morning, with my back against my bed, and I thought: Wow! That's really true. And when we just got here and I saw this stadium: Yes! It's true," reported them at the closing press conference on Saturday.
Wiegman: "Both teams are under pressure"
Sarina Wiegman knows what it's like to be a European champion as a coach. In 2017, the Dutchwoman triumphed with the Oranje team at the European Championships at home, now she can win the trophy with the English.
The fact that Voss-Tecklenburg put the greater pressure on the hosts, since the vast majority of the 87,000 fans admitted will support England - Wiegman wanted nothing to do with that. "Both teams are under pressure, both teams want to win. We don't feel any more pressure than Germany," said the 52-year-old. 3000 German fans got tickets at short notice.
The national coach, on the other hand, didn't want to hear the question of whether the DFB selection around captain Alexandra Popp had already achieved so much that she had nothing left to lose. "Of course we have something to lose. Namely a game that we don't want to lose," said the 54-year-old. How will their players deal with the backdrop? "I can't quite estimate how quickly we can push that aside," said Voss-Tecklenburg.
Apparently, Svenja Huth was already very impressed at the press conference in a kind of cinema hall in Wembley's stomach. Sitting next to Voss-Tecklenburg, she turned the tables and photographed all the media representatives with their cameras, microphones and laptops. "Our perspective," she wrote with two emojis.
