November 21, 2024
Mistakes remain, but England friendlies are valuable – Sarina Wiegman

Mistakes remain, but England friendlies are valuable – Sarina Wiegman

There were a lot of changes against South Africa, as Wiegman promised this week, and she said that led to some of the sloppiness on display.

England fell behind on several occasions in defense, with Williamson not the only one making mistakes.

“We traded players in different positions, so it’s not easy to adapt to that and make the right contacts,” Wiegman said.

“Maya le Tissier moved from the right side to the left side and Ella Toone moved into a different position [in midfield]. This takes some time.

“I’ve seen some difficulties, so we have to get through this and try to clean up the sloppiness.”

“We want to continue to play forward and network better with players in different positions. I ask a lot of them.”

Earlier this week, Wiegman said England had to deal with criticism as expectations of their team had risen.

They not only won the 2022 European Championship title on home soil, but also reached the final of the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

While these two friendly performances failed to reassure fans that they will be in top shape when Euro 2025 kicks off next July, there is certainly no need to panic.

England have two more friendlies this year against Olympic champions USA – led by former Chelsea coach Emma Hayes – and Euro 2025 hosts Switzerland on November 30 and December 3 respectively.

Wiegman insists she wants to use these games to “gather information” that will help them at Euro 2025 and is happy with what she has gathered so far.

“I think we have more questions, but that’s what we told each other before this camp. We don’t have to have all the answers right now,” Wiegman said.

“We still have two games [this year] and we just try to get as much information as possible. We want to see more players.

“Some players need to be a little more patient than others, but we are making progress and need these games to try different things to get better later.”

“We used players in other positions that we wanted to see [against South Africa]. This is the moment to do this.

“I was really happy with some things, but of course in other moments we can improve.”

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