Sarina Wiegman says it feels “strange” to be preparing for two crucial European Championship qualifiers in the middle of the summer off-season, but that her England team are fully focused on ensuring they qualify for next summer’s finals in Switzerland.
Wiegman’s Lionesses have been in her homeland, the Netherlands, since Monday for a training camp for the qualifiers against the Republic of Ireland at Carrow Road next Friday, 12 July, and away to Sweden in Gothenburg on Tuesday 16 July, knowing two victories would guarantee the defending champions automatic qualification.
The addition of a July women’s international fixture window has been a topic of much controversy because of concerns around player burnout, with the Norway striker Ada Hegerberg, for example, writing in the Guardian to express her “shock” at the calendar dates.
Despite finding the situation odd, Wiegman feels her team have been buoyed by their 2-1 away victory over France in their most recent fixture on 4 June, a performance which she hopes will now be a standard-bearer for her team.
“That was a very important victory, and necessary. What we proved [to] ourselves, again, is that we can play at the highest level and play very well,” Wiegman said. “So many things happened in between the last game and now, they had holidays, so now we’re getting back, and we said: ‘OK, so we can show that against France, that’s a top-level team, so that’s our new standard again.’ We want to push ourselves.”
On Thursday, England will face Wiegman’s former team, the Netherlands, in a behind-closed-doors friendly, and she said the priority would be on building up match minutes and fitness. The goalkeeper Mary Earps (hip) and the left-back Niamh Charles (calf) both missed June’s France trip through injury and are continuing to go through rehab, but Wiegman expects they and all of the players in camp will be fit in time for the visit of the Republic of Ireland.
The Bayern Munich midfielder Georgia Stanway is absent from England training this week because her club has already started pre-season training, and Wiegman added: “It’s a strange summer because we are preparing for two games and there is no football. [But] we’re professionals, we want to perform at the highest possible level on the 12th and the 16th and we will get prepared for that. That’s what we’re working on. All our attention goes to that. After that I’ll have some time off too. To be honest, it feels a little bit strange.”
