Wiegman 'not worried' about World Cup preparation despite England's unbeaten streak ending

Written by Sports Desk. Posted in Football. | 12 April 2023 | 434 Views
Tags: Football, Australia Women, England Internationals, England Women, Leah Williamson, Samantha Kerr, Sarina Wiegman

England manager Sarina Wiegman was "not worried" despite seeing her team's undefeated streak end at the hands of Australia.

The Lionesses went into the friendly on a 30-match unbeaten run, but lost 2-0 at the Brentford Community Stadium on Tuesday thanks to goals from Sam Kerr and Charlotte Grant.

It came just days after the European champions won the first ever women's Finalissima against Brazil on penalties, but Wiegman is not concerned as England prepare for the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, which gets underway in July.

"I'm not worried. I don't worry very quickly," she said after the game. "We know we have to be at our top level and that's when we go into the World Cup too.

"Every game we get some warnings – against Brazil we got some warnings in the Finalissima. We know where we want to go to and what we have to do.

"I don't think we're losing momentum, I think it's building. There's 100 days to go and everyone's really excited to go to Australia and this is just a very big learning moment for us that we need to get to a higher level to win these games."

On losing the undefeated streak, Wiegman added: "I haven't been focused on that ever. We just want to win every game and you remind us all of the time [about the unbeaten run] but we don't talk about that in our camp.

"We talk about the next game and we want to improve every game and try to adapt to the opponent.

"I would've loved to have had a 31st win but sometimes you win and sometimes you lose."

Captain Leah Williamson saw a mistake punished by Kerr to open the scoring, and she told ITV: "Yeah. That first goal probably made it worse for me than everybody else but the whole team feels really, really rubbish about losing. It hurts."

She added: "[It's] absolutely not a setback [before the World Cup]. Sometimes you have to take blessings in disguise and I think maybe that's not the worst thing that could've happened to us.

"We wanted to learn this whole time, we wanted to be pushed to our limits and we need to take it up a new level.

"In the past, we won those games, we turned them around but actually tonight to lose it gives you a bit of fire."