The bulk of England’s issues seemed to stem from midfield as Georgia Stanway and Walsh were overrun and their opponents were devastating on the break. <\/p>\n
Wiegman admitted sloppiness in possession played into France’s hands as they pressed hard and took advantage of individual errors.<\/p>\n
Captain Leah Williamson was visibly frustrated at full-time and described the errors as “some cheap sort of emotional defending”. <\/p>\n
France winger Sandy Baltimore won her individual battles with her Chelsea team-mate Lucy Bronze – the England defender losing six duels, the most by any player.<\/p>\n
And until Walsh’s 87th-minute strike, the Lionesses had not achieved a shot on target.<\/p>\n
“I think we played like we were a little bit scared,” said Carter.<\/p>\n
“Maybe we weren’t aggressive enough, maybe we were worrying about their threats in behind and what they can do rather than doing what we can do. <\/p>\n
“We didn’t do as well on the ball, or off the ball. The only positive to take is the last 10 minutes. I really believed we would get a [second] goal.”<\/p>\n
England’s level seemed to surprise French media, who had largely written off their side’s chances when key centre-back Griedge Mbock was ruled out through injury.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t think the French could play at this level already and I didn’t think England could be so disappointing like they were for an hour,” French journalist Julien Laurens told BBC Radio 5 Live.<\/p>\n
France manager Laurent Bonadei admitted England’s explosive start, that saw Lauren James create a handful of chances, took them by surprise. But he felt his side controlled proceedings after that and “physically it was not easy for England”.<\/p>\n
James’ apparent free role certainly looked exciting at the start – but did it leave her side exposed in midfield?<\/p>\n
Wiegman’s response to that question was emphatic. <\/p>\n
“[James] didn’t have a total free role. We got exposed by losing balls in moments where we didn’t want to lose the ball,” she said. “That was the main topic we wanted to find a solution for.”<\/p>\n
Following the introductions of Chloe Kelly, Grace Clinton and Michelle Agyemang, the Lionesses responded, but too late to change the outcome, and former midfielder Karen Carney was far from impressed.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t good enough. We were bullied all over the pitch. We didn’t win enough duels. We looked like we’ve never played together,” she told ITV.<\/p>\n
“This is our trophy and that wasn’t good enough. We played into their hands a little bit too much.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bulk of England’s issues seemed to stem from midfield as Georgia Stanway and Walsh were overrun and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[94,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-241900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114804614450922257","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}