Intensely private Sarina Wiegman has softened over England's chaotic route to the final and there are glimmers of hope against formidable Spain: IAN HERBERT

When Sarina Wiegman arrives to discuss the Lionesses' tilt at retaining their European crown, she sees a familiar journalist in flip flops, taking up a seat in the circle she is about to join. 'Have you come in from the beach?' she asks, the glint in her eye revealing that this is not censure.

The levity is a subtle illustration of this intensely private individual's slight softening, over four years as England manager. 

Even her players were surprised when she launched, full tilt, into a rendition of a Dutch song 'We Gaan Nog Niet Naar Huis' ('We're Not Going Home Yet') on the pitch after Tuesday's extraordinary win over Italy. They promptly sprayed her with water.

But the reluctant public figure is still very much there. It was evident early in the tournament when Wiegman was asked about England fans adapting The Champs hit 'Tequila' into a 'Sarina' chant. 

'It doesn't make me feel comfortable. But they were creative I thought, so I thought I would clap a little for them,' she said. Heading into a fifth successive tournament final, she is asked about all the personal attention. 'Yeah, I do find that awkward,' she says.

The conversation in the circle begins with her pointing out that the glare of the photographer's light is very bright and there is a telling moment when she reveals a wariness of the media which has never entirely left her. 

'I know that sometimes it's sometimes a bit hard, the discussion you have,' she tells us. 'The relationship sport has with media.'

The players and her FA staff are the ones who know the real Wiegman. An individual with empathy, certainly, and, as she put it on Friday, a maternal instinct which meant that 'sometimes, when people talk about 'the girls', I think, "Do they mean my daughters, or my team?"

But a coach with that very Dutch directness - and ruthlessness – which means that the respect in which players hold her is always tinged with slight fear. 

That's more than fair enough. Having players slightly on edge, not entirely comfortable, has been the managerial method of some of the greatest football coaches, including Wiegman's compatriot and friend Louis van Gaal. 

She also happens to hail from the Hague, when they're particularly well known for speaking their mind: having 'your heart on your tongue', as the Dutch call it.

One women's football executive, placed in a position which put them into direct conflict with Wiegman tells the Mail on Sunday how the situation became confrontational as the Dutch manager dug her heels in. 'She wasn't willing to budge,' says the executive.

If Wiegman can take England over the final hurdle here on the Swiss/French border, she will cement a record as the nation's most successful football manager, with an honorary damehood to follow. But the team's bumpy road to Basel's St. Jakob-Park Stadium does suggest a squad ready for a rebuild after this tournament.

There have been shining lights out here, of course – Lucy Bronze, Chloe Kelly, and the prodigious 19-year-old striker Michelle Agyemang. Yet so many of the personnel are unchanged since the 2022 tournament that the uncomfortable question, perverse though it might seem on the eve of a European Championship final, must be 'Where is the new generation?'

Some in the Netherlands observe in England a familiar pattern to their own experience, where Wiegman's reluctance to shift from her preferred starting XI as coach between 2016 and 2021 saw her team becoming predictable, more beatable and struggled after she had left for new pastures.

'You would dream her starting XI,' Amber van Lieshout, a Dutch women's football analyst tells the Mail on Sunday. 'With Sarina, the same Netherlands players always played and the young talents were always on the bench. Those young talents should be able to step up to become a starting player but they're not able to because they don't have the experience. And that makes it easier for her opponents. For us, the Netherlands team was not that good anymore. It's predictable. It's always the same.'

Some within women's football also feel that the inevitable lag between the FA's initial heavy investment in grassroots girls football and the emergence of elite players from that system could make the 2027 Brazil World Cup, Wiegman's last under her current contract, a very challenging one. It's telling that the last two consecutive record WSL transfers - American Naomi Girma to Chelsea then Canadian Olivia Smith's £1million move from Liverpool to Arsenal - have been non-English players.

The challenge Wiegman faces as she builds to that World Cup is heightened by the fact her assistant of eight years, Arjan Veurink, a relatively unknown yet hugely significant part of this story, will leave after this tournament to manage the Dutch side which has struggled since he and Wiegman left. 

Veurink, who at the age of 38 is 16 years Wiegman's junior, is seen by many as the tactical brain behind this run to the final. 'We've learned about each other so much that when we say one word, we know exactly what we mean,' Wiegman says of their relationship.

If Sunday is the top of this extraordinary hill for Wiegman then it would be some last peak. Whichever way you stack it, Spain look formidable: the team with most goals, possession and average chances created per game in this tournament. 

Though for anyone seeking a glimmer of hope, they are also conceding more chances per game than at the 2023 World Cup, when they emphatically beat England in the Sydney final. It was 4.71 chances per game in Australia and 5.8 here.

The stage really does seem set for Agyemang against a Spanish defence which has vulnerabilities, though Wiegman's innate conservatism tells us that the Arsenal player will almost certainly not start. We can only wait to see how much time the teenager will be given and what she might bring.

The chaotic way England have progressed to this final has imbued them with a psychological edge; a belief that they really are never beaten. That, too, should play for them, as will the general belief that Spain are favourites.

Wiegman, demonstrating more of that softening from over her England years, anticipates a richer kind of pleasure if things do end up going her team's way.

'What I've really wanted to do over all these years is try to enjoy it all a little bit more,' she says. 'You have to be focused in this job. You have to be focused. But you need to celebrate the moments that are good. It's really nice.'