Sarina Wiegman believes that England Women need to sort out their end product despite a 6-1 victory against Ukraine.
Braces from Alessia Russo, Georgia Stanway and Jess Park saw Wiegman’s Lionesses open their 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup Qualifying campaign with a 6-1 victory against Ukraine in Antalya, Turkey, despite Yana Kalinina’s consolatory goal having denied them a clean sheet.
Wiegman however was “happy” with England’s opening win which put them top of the group after Spain beat Iceland 3-0, but the Lionesses manager felt that their end product needs work despite their dominant control of the match in which they failed to score in the first half.
“I thought the performance was good. It was a big difference between the first and second half because we didn’t score in the first half when we should have scored.
“But I think we totally controlled the game and we did well, but just in the final cross, the positioning of the cross, the connections of the ball and the quality of the shot and final touch wasn’t good.
“We tried to create chances or get more at the edge in the half-spaces and be a little more patient and that got us shots from the edge of the box which we did a lot better in the second half.”
Wiegman added that she didn’t lay into her team at half time because she recognised the hard-working effort of the players in the first half, as she explained that her decision to switch Lauren Hemp and Jess Park to opposite wing positions in contrast to the first half improved their tactical play.
“There were no tough words, because we put a lot of effort in and played the way we wanted to, we just wanted to score more goals.
“We had shots on goals, but I think we had 14 shots on goal but only three on target, so we need to do that better.
“From where we had to cross and the kind of cross, we needed to change a bit. It helped that we swapped our wingers from one side to the other and came inside a little bit. That made it a bit easier for the team.
“At every moment we lost the ball, we were so on it, so that shows the mentality of the team.”
England will now face Iceland on Saturday 7 March at 12:30pm GMT, at the City Ground, Nottingham, in their first home match of 2026.
Leave a Reply