Sarina Wiegman has to make biggest fix yet as England go into Women’s World Cup quarter-final without Lauren James Having taken the long flight from London to Sydney, I’m here to catch the World Cup from the quarter-finals. And when I looked at the final eight, I’d say the four teams with greatest clarity were on the same side of the draw: Sweden, Japan, Spain and the Netherlands. You don’t need to second-guess them, they’re confident and know their roles so well. On the opposite side, each team have improvements to make, including England, where Sarina Wiegman is still searching for the tactics to bring the best from her players.Availability is so important. England are without the suspended Lauren James...
Manager faces a tactical and personnel conundrum going into quarter-final with Colombia – but she is nothing if not prepared Michelle Alozie’s butt is fine. We can probably stop talking about Michelle Alozie’s butt now. As the Nigeria defender put it herself, the time has probably come to draw a line under the warm potage of takes and judgments that followed her fleeting brush with notoriety during Monday’s game against England. You might think that a woman with a degree in molecular biology, a job as a researcher into childhood leukaemia and four appearances at the World Cup would be remembered for something other than being Lauren James’s temporary carpet. But that is not yet the world we live in.Nevertheless,...
England beat Nigeria on penalties at the Women’s World Cup and while research has showed that going first can be decisive, there is a lot more to itAs soon as Millie Bright won the coin toss and chose to kick first in England’s last-16 World Cup penalty shootout against Nigeria, it became an advantage for the Lionesses. Even after Georgia Stanway missed the opening spot-kick, England still had a very good chance to go through and it is likely the players were aware of that.“Before the penalty shootout starts, it is not a 50-50, rather a 60-40 advantage towards whichever team goes first,” explains Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, a professor at the London School of Economics who has long researched the science...
There is no easy answer to the question of how to return one of the world’s best strikers to a cohesive team against France“I’m going to be honest,” offered coach Tony Gustavsson on Monday night, after the Matildas’ last-16 victory over Denmark was capped off with the return of captain Sam Kerr. “I could sit here and say it was easy, but it wasn’t. Those decisions are big.”The return of Kerr in the final stages of the second half in Sydney was a symbolic moment – the return of their “spiritual leader”following her calf injury on the eve of the tournament. Kerr began to warm up with her team holding a slender one-goal advantage; she was brought on after Hayley...
For all the talk in recent weeks of the Matildas missing Sam Kerr, another of the world’s best attackers has been playing all alongIt was a perfect case study in the brilliance of Caitlin Foord. When the Matildas forward gained possession midway through the first half against Denmark night, she was deep in her own team’s half. This would have come as no surprise to her colleagues, who regularly hail Foord’s defensive work ethic.The forward quickly dispatched a crisp pass to Mary Fowler. And then she took off. Foord has variety in her attacking arsenal. She can outwit defenders as she runs at them with the ball; she can pass her way through most midfields. But Foord is at her...