England & Wales bid to survive 'toughest group of all'

England and Wales are flying the flag for the home nations at Euro 2025 this summer.

But the two teams have found themselves paired together in the trickiest group, alongside the Netherlands and France.

That means three of the four teams in the group are in the top 11 of Fifa's world rankings.

Wales take on the Dutch (17:00 BST on Saturday) in a game you can watch and listen to across the BBC, before England face France (20:00), with radio commentary on 5 Live and BBC Sounds and live text updates on the BBC Sport website and app.

But what makes Group D so difficult and who is most likely to make it through?

'The most lopsided draw I have ever seen'

Group D, according to Netherlands boss Andries Jonker, is the "toughest group of all" at Euro 2025.

And Opta have backed up his claim, with the stat experts' supercomputer predicting there's a 37% chance a Group D team will win the tournament.

That's 7% higher than the second-favourite group.

"It's the most lopsided draw I have ever seen," football journalist Tom Garry told the Football Daily podcast.

"The doomsday scenario for England and Wales is that they could both be out before they play each other in the third game."

Two former champions

England arrive in Switzerland as the defending champions while the Netherlands won the previous tournament in 2017 - both were managed by Sarina Wiegman.

Both teams won all three of their group-stage games when they won the title.

The defending champions have never failed to progress past the group stage at a European Championship.

"Straight from the beginning, we need to be really sharp and strong but that's also the case for the other teams," England head coach Wiegman said when the draw was made.

The Lionesses have won their past 14 group-stage matches at major tournaments while the Netherlands are unbeaten in their past 13.

Jonker said: "This is the toughest group of all with three top countries. We have to accept this and go for the challenge and believe in ourselves.

"We are not coming to participate, we think we can beat every country."