Group B Preview and More German Joy for Josy? (Josephine Henning interview)

Group B opens with Germany against Sweden, opponents who have met in a European, a World Cup and an Olympic final, Germany always edging it. Josephine Henning, fresh from a fourth Champions League title with Lyon, describes a German squad rebuilt after a wave of retirements and led by Steffi Jones, whose autograph she once collected as a teenager who did not know her country had a women’s team. Asked why Germany never seem rattled, she puts it down to belief you can read on team mates’ faces at any point in a match, and to what Jones calls positive arrogance; pressed for one word, she chooses discipline. Of captain Dzsenifer Marozsan she says football is everything after family, and that she leads by living it rather than talking.