‘Cheap' defending cost England in Euro 2025 opener, admits Leah Williamson

The Guardian

2 days ago

Leah Williamson admitted England were not good enough on the ball and said 'cheap, one-versus-one defending' cost the Lionesses badly in their 2-1 defeat against France, but vowed her side would improve before facing the Netherlands on Wednesday.
The defending European champions looked second-best to France for large portions of their meeting in Zurich and the Lionesses captain said: 'When you're losing the ball really cheaply, and then you're in emergency defending, and when you've done four or five counterattacks in a row against quality like that, it is tough, but we hold ourselves to higher standards, in the individual battles.
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'The positive is that I've not seen us like that, in terms of turning over the ball so much, for a while now, so yes [while it is] really frustrating, I think that's how we'll take today. Tomorrow, back on it.'
The Arsenal centre-back added to ITV: '[It was] cheap defending one-v-one, we learnt from those mistakes in fairness and grew in the game, but on the ball, [we were] not good enough, we couldn't keep it in the areas that we needed to keep it, and we got better as they tired, we took advantage of that, but [it was] not enough in the end.
'I think, everybody [has to] take responsibility for themselves today, have a look at 'what areas could they have had an impact on the game more?' - I will. But then tomorrow, we have a new gameplan [versus the Netherlands], different spaces available, a different type of opposition, but we'll look at what we did today, and improve.'
England were 2-0 at the break after a dominant spell of pressure from France in the latter part of the first half, but after the game, their head coach Sarina Wiegman defended their decision not to make any half-time substitutions. When asked why she did not make any changes at the break, she replied: 'Because I had the conviction that having a short meeting at half-time [would mean] that we could do things better in the second half and I wanted to give them that opportunity. I think this team is capable so I didn't want to swap straight away.'
Wiegman also defended her decision to give Lauren James a first start since April, following a hamstring injury. The Chelsea forward had played just half an hour of football, against Jamaica last Sunday, before this tournament but Wiegman deemed her fit to face France. When asked if that had been a gamble or a mistake, Wiegman replied: 'No, I don't see it as a mistake, it was a choice. I think if she had scored in that first minute, and if the cross she made in the first half where we just couldn't just get a head on it [had gone in], I think we'd be having a different conversation.'
England defender Jess Carter said: 'I think we played like we were a little bit scared today, maybe we weren't aggressive enough, we maybe were worrying about their threats in behind and what they can do rather than doing what we can do. We didn't do as well on the ball, or off the ball.
'The only positive to take is that last 10 minutes, for me watching it from the side I really believed we would get a goal, I really felt like we could get a second goal. We have to focus on that 10 minutes that we did have at the end and take that over to the next game, the energy the subs brought on was incredible, really pressing and being aggressive. It's something to take to the next game.'
France, who reached the semi-finals in England three years ago, face Wales next, hoping to secure a place in the knockout stages. Their in-form winger Delphine Cascarino recognised that England had made a bright start but added: 'Yes, we got scared initially at the beginning but we remained calm. We managed to get to our goal and our objective. We complied with our gameplan and we really controlled this match, I believe.'