Sarina Wiegman insists England ‘not panicking’ after costly defeat in Belgium
Sarina Wiegman insisted England are “not panicking” after a 3-2 defeat away to Belgium took control of their Nations League group and Olympic qualification out of the Lionesses’ hands.
“That’s life, and so that’s football too,” said the England manager. “So, we’re not panicking or anything. You could see that we were trying hard, we were trying to find the space and we were trying to have different crosses and play a possession game into the final third, but we just missed in the final perfect touch … although we did create chances to really score goals.”
Wiegman also confirmed that Alex Greenwood was OK and walking around but has concussion after the defender had to be taken off on a stretcher while wearing a head brace and requiring oxygen following a nasty clash of heads with Jassina Blom during the first half here.
“She’s fine,” said Wiegman of Greenwood. “I haven’t spoken to her yet. I also haven’t spoken to the doctor about it yet, but I heard she’s walking around. Obviously she has a concussion, but it’s good news that she’s walking around and doing fine.”
England dominated against Belgium but failed to make the most of it and were punished on the counter.
Wiegman said she was “disappointed and frustrated” with the result.
“Very disappointed, we are frustrated too, I think this was unnecessary,” she said. “What we wanted to do was to play better than Friday and we won Friday [1-0 in the reverse fixture].
“There were a couple of things we wanted to do better today, but in the end we were too sloppy. They had more counterattacks than they did on Friday, so they did that well and I think we could have done better.”
On England’s hopes of securing a qualifying place for Team GB at next summer’s Paris Olympics, Wiegman said: “It’s very tight … we can only do what we can do, so we know what we have to do. We play at Wembley [against the Netherlands], that’s always very exciting, so we’re looking forward to that.
“But we also want to show again what we are, and that we can do better, against a top opponent of course, too. We have to win and we have to win by more than one, and then we have to win [against] Scotland, so [the task] is very clear.”