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The Guardian
37 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Jule Brand's stunner gets Germany off to perfect start against stubborn Poland
As Jule Brand collected the ball on the turn on the corner of the box with her back to goal, she knew the assignment. Germany needed something special to break through Poland's stubborn resistance. Within a blink of an eye, the net was bulging and Germany were making a winning start to their campaign. A well-coached Poland side can be proud of their performance but, once Brand's stunning strike went in in the 52nd minute, the result looked inevitable and Lea Schüller headed in Germany's second to give them a perfect springboard to the tournament. The record eight-time European champions have failed to reach the final only twice since the first time they qualified in 1989, but it was not until the second half when they were able to demonstrate why so many pundits are tipping them to go deep into the competition yet again. They were by no means perfect, but a pleased player-of-the-match Brand said: 'We do have room for improvement, especially with our final pass, but the first game of a Euros is really difficult. That's why it's great we got the three points.' With St Gallen lying less than 15 miles from the German border, this was almost a home fixture for the 2022 runners-up and their supporters brought energy and passion to the streets of the seventh-century city, surrounded by rolling green hills on another picture-perfect, warm evening in Switzerland. After the hosts, German citizens have bought more tickets for this tournament than any other nation, and it showed, as they paraded in vast numbers through the streets towards the stadium before kick-off, eager to see if their team could continue their formidable run of five straight victories in which they had scored 24 times. The determined and hard-working debutants Poland, however, had nothing to lose and executed their gameplan impressively in the first half. Without the ball, they often appeared to be playing with a back six, but they proved tricky for the Germans to break down and then, in the transitional moments, they had the pace of the Barcelona striker Ewa Pajor in attack to worry the Germany back four. Emilia Szymczak volleyed wide of the far post when unmarked at a deep free-kick, before Ann-Katrin Berger tipped a Pajor shot over the crossbar, although the offside flag was raised. Such was Christian Wück's frustration, he sent his team out for the second half more than three minutes early. Brand responded with the moment of individual quality that was needed, cutting in on to her left foot and driving her strike past Kinga Szemik. The sea of white shirts behind the goal erupted. Sjoeke Nüsken inexplicably headed wide when a goal seemed certain, before Schüller's far-post header made the win safe. Poland did not give up and Pajor was thwarted by a fine reaction save from Berger and while Germany did not quite send out the same statement that Spain stamped across the competition on Thursday, they are in form. Sign up to Moving the Goalposts No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women's football after newsletter promotion The only dark cloud came in the in the first half when their right-back and captain Giulia Gwinn was forced off with a worrying injury. She looked devastated, fighting back tears as she limped off the field. Wück confirmed that Gwinn will have an MRI scan on Saturday morning in Zurich, while Brand said: 'When Giulia lies on the pitch, that is never good, because usually she gets up straight away. I think you noticed a bit of a downer. But we got the three points for her.'
Daily Mirror
39 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
Lionesses star makes blunt admission as Euros hopes already left in jeopardy
England face an uphill struggle to reach the knockout stages of the Women's Euros after suffering defeat to France in their opener and skipper Leah Williamson admits the Lionesses were not good enough Leah Williamson admitted England were 'not good enough' as they lost their Euros opener against France. The Lionesses weren't able to recover after conceding twice in quick succession at the end of the first-half as Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Sandy Baltimore took advantage of some weak defending, and Keira Walsh's late goal wasn't enough to spark a dramatic comeback. "We lost the game [with] poor defending one v one,' captain Williamson said. 'We learnt from those mistakes in fairness. "Not good enough with the ball, we weren't good enough. We got better and took advantage of that but not enough in the end. "Sometimes it happens. The positive is I've not seen us like in terms of turning over the ball so much for a while now. Tomorrow, back on it and there were some really good stuff towards the end.' It might have been a different story if England hadn't suffered from a marginal offside call at 0-0, with Beth Mead straying off in the build-up to a disallowed Alessia Russo goal. There was even hope at the end, with manager Sarina Wiegman gambling by throwing on an extra forward and causing panic in the French defence, but the damage had been done much earlier. Williamson's centre-back partner Alex Greenwood saw the disallowed Russo goal as a turning point after a bright start for the holders. "Honestly I thought we started the game really well,' Greenwood said. 'The first 10-15 minutes I thought we put them on the back foot and then after the VAR goal we just lost our way a little bit which is disappointing. And when you concede two goals you've got an uphill battle. "I need to watch the game, I need to reflect on the game, it's going to take a day to do that but of course right now I'm just disappointed with the result.' England will take on the Netherlands in their second group game on Wednesday, knowing only a win will keep their fate in their hands. The Dutch began with a comfortable 3-0 win against Wales in Saturday's earlier game, with Vivianne Miedema setting them on their way with a stunning opener. Another defeat for England on Wednesday would see their Euros challenge end early, providing France avoid defeat against underdogs Wales on the same day. Wiegman knows full well that there's no margin for error, and her team will now need to perform under extreme pressure. "I think we can do better. We know France is really good but we caused our own problems. We could have scored in the first minute. We could have made it easier," Wiegman said, referring to an early Lauren James effort which flew over the bar. "We have to step up and tomorrow we will review and recover and straight on to the games against the Netherlands on Wednesday. We will have recovery and talk to each other and move on."
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Dressing rooms can be a refuge — how football clubs cope with tragedy
Liverpool begin pre-season on Tuesday and in the dressing room at the AXA Training Centre there will be an empty seat between Harvey Elliott and Kostas Tsimikas. Missing will be not a friend to two people but a friend to everyone. His name is Diogo. Conor Bradley will not have the big brother who helped him settle when he arrived from the academy, who played the Fifa video game with him and went with him to Cheltenham races. Alexis Mac Allister will be without the smile he loved, Darwin Núñez the companion. Luis Díaz won't have the guy who, in his hour of need, when his dad was in danger, scored a goal and held up a 'Díaz' shirt. For Tsimikas the pal who joined the club the same summer, back in 2020, won't be there. They had their own banter. 'You cross, I score,' Diogo would joke — and gloriously at Nottingham Forest that's exactly what happened moments after they both came on as substitutes. For Andrew Robertson, missing is maybe his best mate in the whole squad. Robbo was at Cheltenham with him too, and the darts, and at his wedding only two weeks ago. He was that type of friend, Robbo posted, who makes your life better and their goodbye is too soon and hurts so much. Someone who worked with Diogo Jota says he was 'one of the last truly selfless players' and Michael Caulfield, Brentford's psychologist, thinks it's always worth keeping in mind that 'even the older footballers are young'. And they are. Liverpool's squad, from fresh-faced Bradley to seasoned Mohamed Salah, are all young men dealing with a type of loss no one should face at a young stage of life. 'They'll want each other,' Caulfield says, 'they'll want the sanctum of the dressing room.' They will also not want to be regarded as a priority. To a man, in heartfelt social media messages such as Robertson's, they have reminded us the most important people at this time are Jota's family. But those players need looking after and both Liverpool's performance psychologist, Lee Richardson, and club chaplain, Bill Bygroves, are former footballers and relatable types with a light-touch approach. Every two or three weeks Richardson, 56, asks players to complete a questionnaire about their mental health as a low-key way of prompting reflection and getting them to 'check in with themselves'. He believes psychologists should 'not work on but work with' those who use them and seeks to create a 'safe circle' for players that wasn't there when he was a pro. In October, Liverpool made a 25-minute film for World Mental Health Day, which involved Richardson and a squad member speaking about the importance of airing feelings. The player who volunteered to take part was Jota and watching it is poignant now. Jota spoke about the importance of talking and the desire to be a strength for his kids but mostly he listened to what Richardson had to say. You get more than a glimpse of the intelligent, open, others-first person he was. The release that playing can provide cropped up in their conversation. 'Obviously everyone has things going on in their lives, business or family or whatever. I still feel like when I enter the pitch everything clears,' Jota said. Liverpool's first pre-season friendly is away to Preston North End on Sunday and no final decision will be taken until players are assessed but, as it stands, the fixture is expected to go ahead. The coming weeks are a road that can only be taken step by step and there is a unique pain to every loss. Yet there are examples of football clubs processing grief that might make people at Liverpool feel less alone. When Thursday's unimaginable news broke that Jota, 28, and his brother, André Silva, 26 — who is being mourned at Liverpool too — died after a car accident in Spain, many will have thought of Jimmy Davis, the former Manchester United and Watford forward, killed after a collision on the M40 aged 21 in 2003. By all accounts he was a similar character to Jota: a down-to-earth, warm, family-focused person whose positive company left others smiling. One who fitted Arne Slot's description of Jota as 'a friend not to two people but a friend to everyone'. Danny Webber came through the United ranks with Davis and was at Watford when Davis joined a month before his death. They were very close mates. Webber is not sure how he would have got through the bereavement without the compassion of Watford's manager, Ray Lewington, and director of football, Terry Byrne, and the support the players gave each other. 'A huge consideration for everyone was protecting Jimmy's family and remembering first and foremost the family have suffered the biggest loss,' Webber says. 'But what really stood out to me when Jim passed was even people who hadn't known him for a long period were affected because he built an affinity with people.' Davis died on the eve of a match with Coventry City and Webber says: 'I remember walking into the dressing room and the news was raw and the game had been cancelled. And I'm watching people, and I kept my sunglasses on because I was crying, and I'm thinking, 'Wow, it has deeply affected everybody.' Even senior pros who had only known him a few weeks were in tears but some people are infectious and Jota strikes me as that type of character. When you lose people like that, then it's about your community.' Webber, now 43, reflects, 'We were just young people,' and thinks of Lewington and Byrne continually checking in and keeping an eye on how he was coping. 'I remember being on the massage table and they'd spoken to Wayne, the masseur, and Wayne took it on himself to help in terms of relieving the stress. That's really important. I didn't identify where I was really struggling. I tried to do a lot of things to honour Jimmy, like wore a vest with his name on, but everything comes with weight because of the emotion attached to the person, you know? 'So I just think one of your biggest helps is the footballing community. You realise the magnitude of the person from the people who turn up and there was such an array of people at Jota's funeral [on Saturday] and Jimmy was the same — David Beckham flew back from Real Madrid, the whole Man United team turned up, the Swindon team [where Davis spent three months on loan].' With his own family in Manchester, Webber found the dressing room a nurturing and necessary refuge. 'I was down there by myself. So if I went home, I was in my own head, I was in my own thoughts. Sometimes I'd lose six, seven, eight hours and not realise where I'd gone. 'I only realise on reflection how important the dressing room was. Everybody came together. Everybody cried together, laughed together, smiled together, talked together. Talked about it. 'Sometimes it was as simple as, 'Are you OK?' And some days you'd want to talk, some days you wouldn't, and then there's also that ability, within a football dressing room, to shut off and go in and physically exhaust yourself and get rid of some of the angst you might be feeling.' Webber says Lewington and Byrne demonstrated great emotional intelligence. 'I was — how can I put it? — carrying ten rucksacks with weights on my back while playing football and once we got safe Ray just said to me, 'Go home and be with your family.' It was two, three weeks before the end of the season and exactly what I needed. Being back in Manchester helped and then I went to Vegas and blew off some steam.' Webber's heart goes out to Jota's wife, Rute Cardoso, their three children and his parents, and says one of the most important things is that football keeps checking in on the family. It can help by continuing to honour Diogo and André. 'There were a couple of things we did at Watford. As his initiation song Jimmy sang Gangsta's Paradise. It was his favourite and everybody loved his performance. 'All the years Watford had come out to Z-Cars, but we changed and walked out to Gangsta's Paradise. You'd have goosebumps because you knew what it meant but it was a blessing and a curse because it actually came with a heavy thought at the beginning of every football match. 'But then you would always rationalise it and be like, 'Yeah, flipping heck, it's Jimmy, he's here with us, it's the right, kind thing.' 'I think as a collective we found it heavy that season. We nearly got relegated but, in terms of remembering, what I do know is that Jimmy's family hold dear that they're still invited to things. 'The overwhelming thing, as I say, is how the football community was very warm in checking in on Jimmy's family and making sure they were looked after. To this day United still check in and I still speak to Jimmy's mum, sister, brother and best mate. I feel so deeply for his family, I can't even tell you. It's something that never leaves you.' Fifteen years ago Swansea City suffered the loss of Besian Idrizaj, a former Liverpool player, who died in his sleep of a suspected heart attack at home in Austria aged 22. The 2009-10 season had just ended. Garry Monk was club captain and a pillar of strength, as was the experienced forward Shefki Kuqi, who had a close bond with Idrizaj because of their Kosovan heritage. Kuqi flew to be with Idrizaj's family and help his father with the Kosovan press and Monk rang round players while liaising with the club. 'I remember having to communicate a lot with Shefki because he was incredibly upset and you go into organisation mode, speaking to the players, speaking to Kevin Johns, our club chaplain,' Monk says. 'Kev played a real big role. Privately, with the players, he led some prayers and then had a service with fans. The main thing was making sure Besian's family were respected.' Idrizaj was in players' minds all season and a constant motivation. Monk often spoke about him in team talks, reminding everyone how lucky they were and to seize what moments they had on the pitch. Swansea retired Idrizaj's shirt number of 40 and won their first game without him 4-0, scoring in the 40th minute after fans held up a '40' mosaic. After winning the Championship play-off final nine months later at Wembley, the team lifted the trophy wearing T-shirts in tribute to him. 'I made sure, along with Sue, the kit lady, we had T-shirts printed with his name and picture because we knew his family would be watching and wanted them to know, in that moment of success, we were thinking of something more important — we were thinking about Besian,' Monk said. Honouring a person, looking out for their family and just talking was Leyton Orient's route to dealing with the sudden death of their manager, Justin Edinburgh, shortly after he steered them back to the Football League in 2019. Martin Ling was, and remains, their director of football. Being the close season, he had to inform the players via a difficult, emotional group video call. Once they were in training, looking out for them was easier. 'We let them know there's places to go if you need to go through any type of grief [counselling] and one of the biggest things I remember is, I don't go on the training pitch every day but just felt it was really, really quiet around the place. I went out and said, 'Justin is gone but if he was here today, what would he expect of you?' and you could hear the level of conversation start to go up a bit,' Ling says. 'You need to help people get things off their chest. You're never going to bring it straight back to normal so it's just about making it as normal as you can. When the lads are out playing football and the ball's running around, that's probably the time they're thinking about it least.' There is no manual for grief; everyone has to make their own way, Ling reflects. He was helped enormously by the League Managers Association and tried to use previous experience of dealing with personal mental health issues to help players. He's proud to work out of an office in what is now the Justin Edinburgh Stand at Brisbane Road and, as Orient continue on an upward trajectory, continually reminds people 'this all started with Justin'. Thinking of Liverpool's players, he says: 'I just think they need support. They need people to allow them to grieve, they need time to understand. 'I can't dress it up or say it any other way — time does heal. It allows you to understand and cope. In the way Justin has been with us since he passed six years ago, I think they will carry Jota. Liverpool will always carry Jota.' A colleague (from outside the sports section) haughtily speculated football people wouldn't know what to do faced with tragedy like Jota. I think it's the very opposite. Football is a world where facing and feeling and sharing emotion is unavoidable. In dressing rooms people are, to use two words that recurred in Liverpool players' posts about Jota, companions and brothers. No office is like that. 'Football is the harshest environment in life. But it's also the kindest place to be in life. In moments like these you find football at its most giving. Deep down players share a bond — they all come from remarkable backgrounds, have been through remarkable challenges to get here and understand how precious it all is,' Caulfield says. 'And this is Liverpool. Look how Sir Kenny Dalglish handled Hillsborough. He had zero training but it was the greatest act of compassion I've ever seen.' You won't find a business leader capable of the kind of message Slot posted about Jota, or speaking with the raw power the manager Chris Wilder did after the passing of the former Sheffield United defender George Baldock in October. Wilder wanted to honour Baldock as a 'culture carrier' and empathise with what Baldock's former team-mates were going through. Baldock was described by Wilder as a culture carrier and emblematic of what he wants the club to look like MATT WEST/SHUTTERSTOCK 'Players see more of each other than possibly their families because they're in at eight o'clock, leave at four o'clock and do that five days a week and travel together and have match day. George represented me, and what I wanted our club to look like. His journey was amazing, from MK Dons to the Premier League and becoming an international player, and he was the lad who cared about the whole group and the wider club,' Wilder says. That seems to have been Jota too. At his funeral in Gondomar his best friend, the Portugal midfielder Ruben Neves, helped carry his coffin and players from Wolves, Manchester City and Manchester United attended. Virgil van Dijk carried flowers in the shape of a red shirt bearing Jota's number, 20, Robertson carried one bearing Silva's number, 30, and behind them, in line, walked Liverpool staff and present and former players. Walk on. That's all the bereaved can do.
