‘We never lost trust’ – England boss Wiegman reacts to victory over The Netherlands | OneFootball

England head coach Sarina Wiegman said that her side never lost belief as they defeated The Netherlands 3-2 at Wembley last night in a UEFA Women’s Nations League fixture.

A poor first half performance left the Lionesses trailing 2-0 going into the break. England’s hopes of qualifying for the UEFA Women’s Nations League semi-finals looked to be over but goals from Georgia Stanway, Lauren Hemp and Ella Toone helped swing the game in the hosts’ favour.

When speaking in the post-match press conference, England head coach Wiegman was not overly critical of the first half performance and said that the Lionesses never gave up hope of getting back into the game.

“I was very disappointed that they scored the second goal because I didn’t think we played bad,” Wiegman said. “The first time they came up our end of the pitch was in the 11th minute and they scored straight away. That was a good goal but the second goal was unnecessary. We didn’t play bad (in the first half) but we definitely needed more, especially at 2-0 down.

“I truly believed that we could turn it around if we could score a goal. The players truly believed it too in the dressing room at half-time; if we scored one goal, they would be shaky because we did have some good press moments on them. We never lost trust.”

Wiegman went on to praise her players for the way that they stepped up to the challenge in the second half.

She said “I think everyone really stepped up. We needed to step up as a team and we said that at half-time. Everyone did it and it brought energy to the team and the subs bought extra energy, that’s exactly what we needed. We showed up again both as individuals and as a whole team and that makes us strong.”

England must now defeat Scotland at Hampden Park on Tuesday evening while goal difference may also come into the equation. Wiegman wants her side to focus on the controllables when they face The Tartan Army.

“We will do some recovery and prepare for Tuesday,” she said. “We want the team to perform like we did in the second half and in the first 10 minutes of the first half before we conceded because we did really well.

“First of all, we will need to win the game then you want to score as many goals as possible and we will see what happens. That’s what we can control, we can’t control what The Netherlands do against Belgium. We can give our everything to get a good win and see what happens after that.”

England’s final UEFA Women’s Nations League group match against Scotland kicks-off at 7.45pm on Tuesday evening.