The Manchester City midfielder Laura Coombs has said her England call-up, eight years after she got her second of two caps, was a “shock”. “As far as I was aware, I’d never even been on standby before this camp,” said the 32-year-old from St George’s Park on Tuesday.
“I was surprised. It’s been so long. I didn’t think about the international stage any more. I was thinking I was going to get a break but I am really happy to be here. It was a shock but now I’m here, I’m ready to get to work.”
Coombs made her international debut in October 2015 under Mark Sampson, playing a couple of minutes in two games in the China Cup. In 2020 she was called up to Phil Neville’s final training camp of the year but did not play. She is oldest member of Sarina Wiegman’s 26-player squad for the Arnold Clark Cup, with South Korea up first on Thursday night in Milton Keynes, five months out from the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
When Coombs received a call from Wiegman she ignored it, with the number unrecognised. “She called earlier on my way in [to City’s training ground] and I didn’t have the number,” Coombs said. “I don’t answer calls from numbers I don’t know.” When she did take the call, she was in an ice bath with her teammate Khadija Shaw. “She’s been teasing saying: ‘I said you should’ve been in the international squad.’ She was like: ‘I told you.’”
Coombs’ first impressions of Wiegman have been good. “We’ve had a couple of meetings, she seems really approachable as a manager,” she said. “That’s what you want: someone you can go and feel comfortable speaking to. We’ve only had one training session so far, so I’m excited to see what she’s like going forward.
“She’s told me the type of player she sees me as. I’ve got a good idea of how she wants me to play. It’s more a case of bedding into the team and how the team wants to play. It will be slightly different to what I’m used to with club. I need to open myself up to what she wants me to do.”
Coombs’ two-year contract extension with City was announced on the day of her call-up. “Mad day,” she said. “I didn’t know either of those things were being announced on that day. I hadn’t given up. In my early years, it’s all I wanted. After so long, you have to park that and focus on club, otherwise you get disappointed and it starts to affect you negatively. It wasn’t what I was working towards.”
She is “not yet” thinking about a place at the World Cup, though. “I’ll see how this camp goes,” she said. “Three games, I hope I can play a part, show what I can do and maybe then I’ll start letting those thoughts in.”
