Sarina Wiegman has said England are having to work hard to find the right balance between taking care of players and performing at the highest level with the international calendar not set to change until 2026.
“We can’t change it,” she said. “So, you’re trying to do the best to take care of the players and at the same time perform to the highest level and take out the highest risks of getting injured, in collaboration with clubs. The clubs and we as the FA don’t have any control over the calendar.”
Speaking before friendlies in Marbella against Austria on Friday and Italy on Tuesday, Wiegman criticised a schedule that means that even without a major tournament this summer her players will have little rest. Team GB missed out on a place in the Paris Olympics.
“There’s no tournament so that should be an opportunity to get some rest, but because of the window in June and the window in July how are you going to take some time off?” she said. “After that there is some time off, because in England the WSL starts later [21-22 September], but round one of the Champions League starts in early September, which takes away the summer for those players.
“That’s what we need to take care of and we’ve asked Fifa and Uefa to look at that and change that in the future so players can have some rest. It’s great that we have players who love football, but we have to take care of them too, so we have to do something about the calendar.”
For Bayern Munich’s Georgia Stanway this year – Covid notwithstanding – will be the first summer since 2015 that she will not been playing at a tournament. “There was the 2016 Euros [Under-17], then we went to Jordan with the Under-17s [World Cup, in 2016], then there was a Euros [Under-19s], the England midfielder said. “Then there was the France [World Cup in 2018] with the Under-20s, France again [2019 World Cup] with the seniors, then Covid, then the Tokyo Olympics [2021], Euros [2022] and World Cup [2023].”
There was obvious disappointment at missing out on the Olympics, but the chance for a proper break initially looked like some compensation. “We realised that it’s not quite as simple as that,” said Stanway. “But the best thing you can do is work with the country and clubs to find out the best solution and hopefully the best solution is giving us a good amount of rest. But also, the most important thing now is that we want to qualify for Euro 2025.
“As players [we want] the decision taken away from us. That’s something that we spoke about last year, allowing the team above us to make the decision and then we can just go with it. It is a potential burnout. But we play football, we love football, football is our life. Everything we do is to be successful on the pitch. And we know that we’ll put ourselves in the best possible position for Euro 2025 because that’s the trophy that we want to maintain.”
