Sarina Wiegman likes to look on the brilliant aspect of issues. In April, England’s 30-match unbeaten run was ended with a 2-0 loss to Australia. However Wiegman, the workforce’s Dutch coach, intentionally targeted on the positives.
“It sounds actually unusual, and also you all the time wish to win, however I feel this defeat additionally introduced us so many studying classes,” she defined a couple of weeks later throughout an interview at England’s coaching facility in St. George’s Park. “It has, most of all, confirmed us the urgency to do some issues higher.”
It’s an fascinating time for the England girls’s workforce, which arrives on the Girls’s World Cup as one of many event favorites but in addition in maybe its most unsure state after two years of largely clean crusing underneath Wiegman.
The Lionesses are the champions of Europe, a triumph claimed on house soil final yr that has precipitated a sea change for girls’s soccer in England. By no means-seen-before viewing figures. Report attendances and a vibrant home league. Victories previously yr over the reigning World Cup champion (america) in addition to World Cup contenders like Germany, Sweden and Spain. And ever-rising expectations that that is simply the beginning.
“With this England workforce,” Wiegman mentioned, “everybody expects us to win.”
However the England that enters this World Cup is, arguably, a weakened champion. Within the months since claiming its European title, what started because the lack of one key starter to harm, striker Beth Mead, has grow to be three. Midfielder Fran Kirby will miss the World Cup, too, after having surgical procedure on her knee. Leah Williamson, who captained England because it conquered, has, like Mead, torn a knee ligament. Her substitute captain, defender Millie Brilliant, has solely lately recovered from a knee harm of her personal, and was a query mark when the workforce boarded its flight to Australia.
Current outcomes have proved equally worrisome: The loss to Australia was adopted by a lackluster 0-0 draw towards Portugal, a recreation through which a annoyed England unable to transform any of its 23 makes an attempt on purpose. A goalless attract a behind-closed-doors pleasant towards Canada, England’s final recreation earlier than the World Cup, was the workforce’s third straight scoreless efficiency.
But Wiegman stays pragmatic and steadfast. Time and again in her current interview, she returned to the identical questions which have grow to be touchstones for her and her workforce: “What will we wish to do? How will we wish to play? What are the roles and the duties within the workforce?”
She has insisted on a game-by-game strategy, and communicated to her gamers that ways and, maybe extra vital, minutes can be selected a day-to-day foundation. That fluidity, Wiegman mentioned, has its personal motivating worth, providing “alternatives for different gamers to play, to take accountability, and to point out who they’re.”
“That’s why we then come again to: ‘OK, that is our subsequent recreation’,” she mentioned. “After which we’re within the now.”
Gamers, after all, have their very own ambitions.
“We’ve all bought goals, and all of us wish to win,” ahead Lauren Hemp mentioned. “We’ll see how the event goes. Nevertheless it’s one thing that we’re striving towards clearly, coming off the again of the championships and profitable the Euros. It makes you hungry to wish to win extra.”
The 22-year-old Manchester Metropolis defender Esme Morgan is among the many new faces vying for recreation time. “That’s actually been emphasised, to be sincere, that there’s no set locations within the squad,” she mentioned after going 90 minutes within the draw towards Portugal. “There’s a lot competitors in each place throughout the pitch. Actually in coaching you possibly can see that: The usual is so, so excessive.”
Lucy Bronze, one of many workforce’s most senior gamers, noticed her personal historical past as a information. “I went into 2015 as a younger participant not anticipating to play a lot and I ended up enjoying in each single recreation, scoring targets, and I compelled myself into the highlight and broke out somewhat bit,” she mentioned. “Something can occur in a World Cup.”
Wiegman harbors her personal hopes for the squad. “We’ve excessive expectations, too,” she mentioned. However true to her directions, she is staying within the now. She is just not excited by discussing a possible rematch towards Australia within the spherical of 16, or a attainable collision with america, or Germany, or anybody else if England can navigate deep into the knockout phases.
“Let’s first see, ‘OK, we wish to get out of the group stage,’” she mentioned. “Then you definately come to the subsequent stage and we see who’s in entrance of us. It’s going to be very powerful. And if we’d get to the ultimate, hopefully we do.
“It actually doesn’t matter who’s in entrance of us. You simply wish to win each recreation.”