England manager, Sarina Wiegman expects Netherlands to produce “intense” opposition in their crucial second Group D match at UEFA Women’s Euro 2025.
Keira Walsh’s late strike couldn’t prevent the reigning champions suffering a 2-1 loss in their opening group match against France, which means that they must avoid defeat to the Netherlands or their title defence will be over with a game to spare.
Wiegman though revealed in her press conference yesterday (8 July) that she knew that the group was going to be tough, but is focused on executing her gameplan against the Dutch, who she led to UEFA Women’s Euro 2017 glory on home turf.
“It’s going to be an intense game and we knew this was going to be a hard group. What we are focusing on is our gameplan and just executing that and doing your task and having conversations with players, sticking together, talking to each other and that’s what we want to do in the game too.
“What we are occupied with is playing football, executing a task, sticking together and getting the right connections, working really hard and doing everything to win the game.”
Wiegman also confirmed that she had held discussions with the squad about their defeat to France, pointing to mid-game as where they lost the match.
“We’ve had conversations with the team, we watched some clips and what we spoke about is that we actually started really well that game and we finished really well but in between, we didn’t do good enough.
“We want to execute better, we want to be less sloppy and we want to make better decisions. But then you move on to the next game, so we talked about our gameplan, we trained it a bit and tomorrow, we’ll go.”
Striker, Alessia Russo joined Wiegman in the press conference and explained that the conversations allowed them to discuss the importance of playing with as little fear as possible, with focus on playing expressive football.
“That’s some of the conversations that we’ve had within the team. We have so many great players and we want everyone to be as free as possible out on that pitch tomorrow night and going forward.
“It’s a big part of what we are as a team. We have players that can create something out of nothing. I think making sure everyone is in a good headspace going into that game tomorrow is important.”
Russo also revealed that adaptability and learning will be key lessons that the team can take from their tough start to the campaign, whilst experience is helpful in high-pressure games like this clash.
“Every tournament makes me learn something different and brings out different parts of my game and mentality and things like that. You have to adapt and you learn a lot from these kinds of experiences.
“We’ve also got players like Lucy and Alex who have been to lots of major tournaments and have a wealth of experience. We can lean on them in times as well.
“It’s a different scenario but one that we as a team are ready for and looking forward to. We’ve played in high pressure moments before and ultimately, we know this is one of them too.”
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