Impressive cohesion despite new faces
It is rare for any team to make a huge number of changes without paying a price performance-wise. The most impressive aspect of the Lionesses’ trip to Spain was that Sarina Wiegman and her staff experimented with the starting XI and made numerous substitutions against both Austria (7-2) and Italy (5-1) but were able to maintain cohesion and fluidity in their play. “I think that has to do with the quality of the players, we have been together the whole week, we’ve had a lot of football conversations,” said Wiegman. Clubs following similar strategies helps too: “They have all the tactics at clubs, and some are more similar [to ours] than others, but we’re all talking about decision-making and creating overloads and I think that really helps. What I’ve seen, and what I like, is that everyone wants to play to win and they want to take action … when you take action and there’s energy in the team to play and they’re trying out the things we’ve spoken about, then things like today can happen.”
