England’s Mark Sampson ramps up mind games for France Euro 2017 clash | Louise Taylor


The Lionesses have not beaten France since 1974 but their bullish coach is confident of quarter-final victory on Sunday

A late Gothic weigh-house sits in the middle of Deventer’s handsome main square. Alongside it hangs a copper cauldron once used to perform gruesome executions involving miscreants being submerged in boiling water.

Happily behavioural norms in this charming former Hanseatic trading town on the river Ijssel in the Netherlands are much modified these days. Even so, should the simmering verbal contretemps between Mark Sampson and Olivier Echouafni spill over into the technical area on Sunday night, there would surely be few objections to a vat of iced water being chucked over the pair.

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