‘We can’t dwell on results’ – England have to move on from France defeat says Toone | OneFootball

England midfielder Ella Toone says that the team can’t dwell on their 2-1 defeat to France in UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 qualifying.

The Lionesses fell to a disappointing defeat in front of more than 42,000 fans at St James’ Park last night. Beth Mead fired England ahead but Elisa De Almeida levelled matters for France before half-time. The two sides fought out a keenly-contested second half with France grabbing the winning goal through Marie-Antoinette Katoto.

When speaking to the media after the match, England midfielder Toone said that the team must remain level-headed and quickly turn their focus towards their next fixture which is against the same opponents in Saint-Étienne on Tuesday.

“It’s really important [to keep calm],” Toone said. “We’ve got an experienced squad and we know what it’s like. We knew this group would be really tough. We can’t dwell on results, we’ve got to go again [against France] in a few days.

“As a team, we’ve got to make sure that we switch our mindsets, we recover really well and we learn from the game.”

Last night’s result leaves England in third place in their group, outside of the automatic qualification spots. The Lionesses still have challenging away games in France and Sweden to come. Toone believes that England’s experience can help them pick up some huge results in the second half of their qualification campaign.

She said “We’ve done it before, we’ve gone away and played in the World Cup finals against a host nation and we’ve won the game, so we know what it’s like to play against fans that aren’t ours.

“We’ve got an experienced bunch of players in that dressing room, players who have played in massive games, so I’m sure that we will go out with the same mindset as always and that’s to win.”

England have plenty of work to do in their bid to win back-to-back UEFA Women’s EUROs but Toone says that the aim is to be victorious in every game that they play.

She said “As England, we want to win every game that we step into. We know that we have a great team, a great manager. We want to go to the EUROs, we won the last one and we want to do the same thing [in 2025].”

England’s next UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 qualifier against France in Saint-Étienne takes place at 8pm on Tuesday evening.