Sarina Wiegman has iterated that England can’t be “arrogant” after they drew Greece in the first round of UEFA’s Qualifying Play-Offs for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Having missed out on automatic qualification, England must now go through the qualifying play-offs for the first time since 2010, which saw them beat Switzerland to qualify for the 2011 edition where they went on to lose to France on penalties in the Quarter-Finals after a 1-1 draw.
The Lionesses now will face Greece for the very first time at senior level across two first-round legs in October, with the winner then meeting Slovakia or Ukraine between 26 November – 5 December.
Head Coach, Wiegman, however has iterated her team can’t afford to go into these qualifying play-offs expecting to cruise through to qualification.
“We want to qualify and be successful at the World Cup. That’s not about being arrogant, it’s about recognising the quality we have within the squad. We believe we have what it takes, and that’s what we’re working towards.”
“We knew what the play-offs would look like and, while we’re pleased with the draw against Greece, the focus now is on making sure we’re really well prepared,” continued Wiegman as she spoke of her desire to see the team dominate games and possession.
“We want to dominate games and have a lot of the ball, and that’s something we will prepare for carefully. There’s still time, with players on holiday and then returning to their clubs, but we’re looking forward to coming together again, getting ready and performing with England.”
Wiegman also reflected on the league phase of the qualifying campaign as she admitted that the play-offs were likely due to the format’s structure.
“I think we had a very good qualifying campaign overall. We won five games and lost one, and of course at the start you always aim to win every match, so that was a good outcome for us.
“Ukraine and Iceland provided different challenges, and we also had two very competitive games against Spain, winning one and losing one. In the last match, we didn’t perform at our best and Spain were the better team on the day.
“But we always knew going into the campaign that only one team would qualify automatically, and the way the draw was set up meant it could be very difficult to reach the World Cup without going through the play-offs.”
The three-time UEFA Women’s Euro winning manager also credited her squad for their attitude as she noted that they managed to avoid carelessly dropping winnable points compared to recent years in the Women’s Nations League format.
“Of course, we would have preferred to qualify automatically but I think overall we showed real progress during this campaign.
“In previous UEFA Nations League campaigns we dropped points unnecessarily, and this time we didn’t. The toughest moment was away to Iceland towards the end of the game, but we kept the score and saw it through.
“I’m happy with that resilience, and we want to keep learning from every match. That’s why I still see it as a very good campaign, we were just in a really tough group.”