Arsenal forward Beth Mead is not getting carried away with England’s chances of success at next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup on the back of Friday’s 2-1 victory over world champions, the United States, at Wembley.
Goals from Lauren Hemp and Georgia Stanway helped the Lionesses claim a rare victory against The Stars and Stripes and that result has contributed to further rising expectations amongst fans and media alike.
England return to action this evening when they take on a Czech Republic side who are ranked 28th in the FIFA Women’s World Rankings. The two sides last met in an international friendly in 2019 when England needed a late Leah Williamson goal to run out 3-2 winners in České Budějovice.
When speaking ahead of the match, Mead said that she is not getting carried away by England’s recent successes whilst indicating that the Czech Republic will be tough opponents in Brighton this evening.
“We’ve still got 10 months until the World Cup,” Mead said. “Yes, we’re in a good place right now but we’ve got to keep building on the blocks that have been put in place.
“We’ve played the Czech Republic a few times and they’re actually a difficult team to play against, so it’ll be interesting to see how we get on against them.”
England go into the game 23 matches unbeaten but the Arsenal forward believes that the Lionesses can still get better.
She said “For us, we can always continue to work on different things, we can get better at different things.
“We’ve reviewed the last game, we’ve looked at things, I think we got exposed in certain areas and we have to address that and again, we have to keep improving.
“We will always look back and still want to get more from ourselves.”
England’s international friendly against the Czech Republic is the last game to be played on home soil in 2022. The Lionesses will end the calendar year with fixtures against Japan and Norway on neutral territory in Spain next month. Tickets for this evening’s game remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.
By Ciaran Morrison
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