England Women’s manager, Sarina Wiegman has called for more “improvements” in her players.
Braces from Alessia Russo and Lauren James plus Georgia Stanway’s header saw England beat Greece 5-0 in the second leg at the King Power Stadium, Leicester, which sealed a 8-1 aggregate victory after they had initially claimed a 3-1 away first-leg win.
“I saw a lot of good things,” explained Wiegman post match on the Lionesses’ “ruthless” display which met her wish for an improvement on the first-leg performance.
“I think we wanted to do the things that we’re trying to do better than Friday, and I think we’ve shown a lot better. Still, there’s always improvements, but we’ve scored some great goals.
“We had an early goal. They pressed high in the beginning, and they did on Friday too and were very courageous, I would say. But then we got the first goal very quickly, that’s very helpful.
“We had some more big chances and of course, we want to be ruthless all the time, but 5-0 is a pretty good score.”
Wiegman made two changes from the first leg as she revealed that the aim now is to revolutionise England’s style of play to keep them unpredictable for opposing teams.
“What we’re trying to do is improve our game and we’ve played the system we did for a long time and we tried to improve that,” said Wiegman on plans to “evolve” their style of play and continue to challenge for major titles.
“But now after the summer, we thought, okay, how can we evolve our style of play to become better?
“The football world is going so fast and we want to keep developing and taking our game to the next level. I also think that we have players to do this.”
England now will meet Ukraine in the final play-off round to secure their spot at the Women’s World Cup in Brazil next summer, having already beat them home and away in the league phase this year and Wiegman has vowed to review those two games as part of her preparations.
“We will review that, and we have seen them now,” commented Wiegman on the challenge of facing Ukraine twice more and has vowed to raise England’s level further.
“We’ll just see what do they do, and how can we take out their strengths and show their weaknesses. And we want to improve our style of play again too.
“We expect that we’ll be on the ball a lot again and we’ll be in the final third a lot, so we can continue what we tried today.
“You want to improve your defending too but I do expect from the team and the quality we have, compared to Ukraine, that we will be in the final third a lot.”
Lexi Potter, Erica Meg Parkinson and Freya Godfrey made their debuts in across the two legs against Greece, with Wiegman considering the trio as “huge talents,” and was pleased with the performances.
Wiegman praised Godfrey for her attacking impact as a second-leg substitute with “great runs”, during which she forced a save from Styliani Katergiannaki.
“That run and the pass was really good when she went one-on-one with the goalkeeper. Unfortunately, she didn’t get that but you can see the talent so just give them a little bit of time.”
Wiegman meanwhile admitted that Potter was ready for a call-up last season but she opted against rushing her development, which she considered the right decision given how impressively the 20-year-old has settled into the senior squad.
“Lexi has done so well with Chelsea and she was ready last year. Of course we kept an eye on her, and now she’s starting for Chelsea.
“She did really well and in our camp, she did really well straight away. But you can also tell, of course, in your first start for England, that’s a big moment.
“You can tell with the positions she picks up, and she scored that goal and unfortunately it was disallowed, but nice for her.”
Leave a Reply