Sarina Wiegman said she is welcoming selection “headaches” as England meet Germany at Wembley in a repeat of the Euro 2022 final.
The Lionesses will step up their preparations ahead of next summer’s European Championship defence with four friendlies to close out the year, including marquee games against Germany and the United States at Wembley.
As much as the Germany game on Friday night will evoke memories of England’s historic win in the Euro 2022 final, Wiegman and captain Leah Williamson underlined the importance of “moving forward” as the Lionesses build towards Euro 2025 in Switzerland.
It was perhaps telling that Williamson appeared alongside Wiegman at St George’s Park, with the captain’s place in England’s defence uncertain amid competition from Millie Bright and Alex Greenwood.
Williamson has returned from an anterior cruciate ligament injury that forced her to miss last year’s Women’s World Cup but it’s been a difficult start to the season at Arsenal, with Jonas Eidevall resigning amid a poor run of results.
“That is absolutely a headache because they are all really good and really competing for minutes,” Wiegman said when asked about the competition between Williamson, Bright and Greenwood.
“But they are absolutely the headaches I want to have, so it’s a hard decision to make.”
There is also fierce competition in midfield. Manchester United’s Grace Clinton and Manchester City’s Jess Park have emerged to provide further options alongside Keira Walsh, Georgia Stanway and Ella Toone.
The biggest decision may come at goalkeeper, however, where Chelsea’s Hannah Hampton is in contention with Mary Earps to be England’s No 1. Earps, a two-time winner of the Fifa Best goalkeeper of the year, has struggled for minutes since moving to Paris Saint-Germain.
“The competition is really high and everyone really wants to show and wants to earn minutes,” Wiegman said.
“We want to try out some things and hopefully these four games gives us a lot of information. But we also know there’s six or seven months to go and things can change very quickly in football."
Wiegman also discussed if England had progressed enough since their Euros victory. “You always want to develop faster. The game has increased, the level of the league has increased, meaning international football has too,” Wiegman said.
“There is some transition in our team, the more experienced players are trying to help, and the main thing is we know where we want to be on July 2.
“The start of that is tomorrow evening and we want to play top-level opponents to find out where we are at. It’s really important to have this game against a top-level team to try out things to get information about where we are at and our individuals moving forward.”
England’s Euro 2022 final win against Germany was at a sold-out Wembley and there have been further record crowds for fixtures against the United States and Brazil in the Finalissa, but Friday is set to bring a decrease with 54,000 tickets sold.
Wiegman and Williamson said the attendance is still an impressive marker of how far the Lionesses have come since before the Euros and the crowd is expected to be bigger ahead of the United States match next month.
“It’s a real positive we play at Wembley twice with over 100,000 people coming to the stadium,” Wiegman said.
“Of course Wembley can have more people, so hopefully more people can come but we are thinking big and having the opportunity for people to come to the game, we are happy with the amount of people coming to the game.”
Williamson added: “If you take the perspective of playing two games at Wembley so close to each other a few years ago it wouldn’t have happened – 54,000 is still a lot more than most countries will host.
“We have a vision, we have always dreamt the biggest but it’s a step in the right direction and hopefully the way we play tomorrow will bring more people for the next games – that’s our job.”
Lauren James was forced to withdraw from England’s squad due to injury while Wiegman will be without Fran Kirby and Lotte Wubben-Moy for the Germany game.
