Georgia Stanway on the England Women’s future as team’s results have seen a downward spiral in recent times.
Georgia Stanway said it is “inevitable” that England will plateau after their huge success.
At Wembley on Friday night, the Lionesses defeated Germany 4-3 after rallying from a three-goal deficit. After a humiliating first half in which they were behind three goals and England was their own worst enemy, they fought their way back to a more respectable scoreline.
As teams have begun to figure them out, the sense of invincibility that has characterised Sarina Wiegman’s tenure—the squad won their first major international competition in Euro 2022 and advanced to the World Cup final in 2023—has faded. However, the side’s expectations are still very high.
“When the expectation is continuous, we are probably not able to live up to it,” said Stanway. “It’s inevitable that at some point you are going to plateau. We have been with Sarina [Wiegman] for four years now so we will get to a point where we can’t continuously win because teams will figure us out and are getting better.
“That’s where we have to work together to reinvent ourselves and change a little bit of tactics, change a little bit here and there and get the one up on the opposition again. As much as teams are evolving, we also have to evolve. We have to continue to make little tweaks to get that one up.”
During the international windows in October and November, England will play their second of four friendlies against South Africa in Coventry on Tuesday night. As she checks out more of her team, Wiegman has pledged to make alterations to Friday’s starting lineup.
“We will see different faces tomorrow,” she said. “You want more information, I’m not going to tell you, but you will see changes. We want to try out things to see players, connections and, at the same time, with so many games, is to manage the minutes too.”
“I would say look at the bigger picture, the game is improving, we’re playing better players too,” she said. “We have tough games all the time, which is good, you’ll be exposed when you’re not doing things right enough. Of course you don’t want to concede goals. We’re looking at how we concede goals and how we improve on these moments. Sometimes it starts with how we keep the ball, sometimes it starts with we want to press high and then when we press high, do we get the trigger moments right? Then the tactics come in and we’re working on that all the time.”