Sarina Wiegman says her England side have a lot to work on in front of goal which they cannot fix overnight, after the Lionesses booked their place at the European Championship finals in Switzerland next summer with a goalless draw in Sweden.
The defending European champions scored eight times across their six qualifying fixtures and have not quite been able to repeat the clinical performances they demonstrated when lifting the title in 2022, but Wiegman is now grateful to have almost exactly 12 months to remedy that.
“That is something that we absolutely have to improve,” the Dutch manager said. “The main things we have to improve are in the final third and in attack. It’s good you have a year as you can’t change that overnight.
“These top-level games showed us what we need to work on. When you play other teams from lower levels, then those things will not be highlighted as much as they are now. We know exactly where we stand and what we need to improve. We’ll start working on that pretty soon.”
The centre-back Millie Bright appeared to echo those sentiments and believes England will be ready by July 2025, saying: “It’s not about being ready now, it’s about the tournament. Now it’s time to defend our trophy and we’ve got a good chunk of time to work on everything we want to work on.
“We were not clinical enough and ruthless with our chances, [but] ultimately we’ve got over the line so we’re extremely proud. We showed our fight and our resilience.”
England were in a tough group alongside two of 2022’s European semi-finalists in France and Sweden, plus the Republic of Ireland, heralded as the “group of death”, and the attacking midfielder Ella Toone agreed with Wiegman that the difficult opponents will help England.
Toone said: “It’s all well and good playing teams and winning 10-0 but these are the games you learn from – the tough games. It’s great to get out of the group of death. It feels really nice.”
Wiegman also praised the outgoing England men’s manager Gareth Southgate, and – when asked about reports linking her to that vacancy – swiftly dismissed such a conversation as “inappropriate”, saying: “Firstly I’m disappointed that he’s going to leave. I really, really like Gareth as a human being but also as a coach. I think it is really inspirational what he has done with the England team. And to be honest I think it is really, really inappropriate to have that conversation because I’m with England’s Lionesses. I’m very happy and that’s top level.”
