England head coach Sarina Wiegman says that her side couldn’t have completed their FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia and New Zealand 2023 qualifying campaign in a better fashion.
The Lionesses signed off with a 10-0 victory over Luxembourg in front of almost 25,000 fans at the bet365 Stadium in Stoke-on-Trent last night.
England had already qualified for the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia and New Zealand 2023 before last night’s match but the result meant that the Lionesses ended their qualification campaign with 10 straight wins. If that wasn’t impressive enough, England scored 80 goals over those 10 qualification matches and kept clean sheets in all of them.
When speaking in the post-match press conference, Wiegman said that she couldn’t have hoped for anything better from her side.
“I don’t think it could have been much better than this so I am really happy,” Wiegman said.
“I also think that this camp after the EUROs seems like a hard one because we’ve reached very big heights but I think that the team have done a tremendous job coming out of the summer.
“We knew that we were so much better than Luxembourg but we still had to make the tempo of the game and keep the energy in the game. That’s what we really wanted to do and I think that’s what we did most parts of the game, 10-0 is really nice.”
Wiegman wanted a performance from her side last night and she admitted that she was pleased that England were able to balance a solid display with player load ahead of the start of the new domestic season this weekend.
She said “It was really nice. You want to perform and when players come into the team, you want to keep rhythm. It was about striking a balance – performing and managing load a little bit and I think that worked well, everyone came out fit and they can now go back to club and perform there.”
The England squad will come back together in early October ahead of their next match against the United States at Wembley on Friday 7 October.
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