{"id":4757,"date":"2026-04-14T22:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T22:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/4757\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T22:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T22:04:09","slug":"sarina-wiegman-feels-england-produced-something-different-to-beat-spain-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/4757\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarina Wiegman feels England produced \u2018something different\u2019 to beat Spain \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarina Wiegman felt England required \u201csomething different\u201d to secure their 1-0 win over Spain at Wembley and take a huge step forward in the World Cup qualifying campaign.<\/p>\n

The Lionesses needed a penalty shoot-out the last time the frequent foes met, in the 2025 European Championship final, when England successfully defended their title against the World Cup holders.<\/p>\n

This time it was Lauren Hemp\u2019s opener \u2013 just two minutes and 34 seconds in \u2013 that made the difference as England moved three points clear of Spain at the top of the Group A3 table.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think as a team we really fought today,\u201d said Wiegman. \u201cI think we\u2019re always ready to fight, but most of the games we have played recently, we have a lot of the ball ourselves, and this demanded something different from us than we have recently shown.<\/p>\n

\"Tiernan<\/a>\"Masters<\/a>\"LaurenLauren Hemp (right) scored an early goal (John Walton\/PA) <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we did that very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The contest\u2019s lone goal was brilliantly teed up by Alessia Russo, who had been knocked to the ground in the scramble from Alex Greenwood\u2019s corner, but, flat on her back, still managed to scoop it up and over to Hemp, who hooked it over the line.<\/p>\n

Hannah Hampton\u2019s excellent save late in the second half ensured England would walk away with all three points.<\/p>\n

Only the winners from each of the League A groups will earn direct passage to next year\u2019s tournament in Brazil.<\/p>\n

The Lionesses next travel to Iceland on Saturday, where they will look to maintain or even extend their advantage in their 500th international fixture.<\/p>\n

\"KeiraKeira Walsh captained England (Nick Potts\/PA) <\/p>\n

\u201cOf course it\u2019s a very good result,\u201d Wiegman continued. \u201cWe\u2019re really happy but we need to keep that significance by getting a result on Saturday. Tomorrow we really need to have a mindset shift straight away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keira Walsh celebrated a century of England caps and took the captain\u2019s armband in place of Leah Williamson, who is making her way back from a hamstring issue and trained in the build-up, but was ultimately ruled out of the clash.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said we didn\u2019t want to take that risk,\u201d Wiegman explained. \u201cShe actually was in a very good place, but having the conversation we thought it was not the right thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom having trained to straight away in the world-class, highest level games we didn\u2019t think that was a smart thing to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut she\u2019s in a very good place, and we hope she is available for us Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarina Wiegman felt England required \u201csomething different\u201d to secure their 1-0 win over Spain at Wembley and take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3378,313,3379,2379,2380,1743,17,841,1908,2381,369],"class_list":{"0":"post-4757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-england-women","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-lauren-hemp","11":"tag-lionesses","12":"tag-sarina-wiegman","13":"tag-soccer","14":"tag-spain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-womens-football","17":"tag-womens-sport","18":"tag-world-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}