Georgia Stanway urges Lionesses to get back to being ‘proper England’ ahead of must-win Euros clash | OneFootball

Georgia Stanway says she and her Lionesses team-mates want to get back to being the “proper England”.

After losing 2-1 to France in their opening fixture of Euro 2025, the Bayern Munich midfielder has belief her team can turn things around on Wednesday night against the Netherlands.

Stanway insisted England have to be brave and ruthless to overcome the Netherlands and remain at Euro 2025, where they are hoping to defend their 2022 title.

“We’ve spoken about wanting to be ‘proper’ England,” Stanway said. “We want to go back to what we’re good at. We want to go back to the traditional style of football in terms of tough tackles, getting back down to the roots, remembering why we’re here and playing for the little girl who wanted to be here.

“Sometimes it’s about blocking out the noise, getting on that pitch and getting stuck in. We are England. We’re full of English blood and we want to go out there and fight as much as we can and go back to the way that we know it.”

England are in must-win territory already and a loss on Wednesday would see them knocked out of the tournament if France beat Wales later that night, and Stanway admits: “If we’re not good enough on Wednesday, then we don’t deserve to continue the tournament.”

After conceding only two goals across their whole Euros campaign last time out, their loss to France has raised concerns, but Stanway insists England are more than ready for the challenge, however.

“We have to be brave and we have to be ruthless,” the 26-year-old added. “What we want going forward is, we just want to take action. We want to stop talking. Hence why I didn’t want to do the press conference today because I’m fed up with talking now.

“It’s time that we focus and we want to put things on the grass. We want to make sure that we put things right on the pitch.

“We know as individuals what we’re capable of, we know as a team what we’re capable of and we just have to do it. We’re all just dying for the game to come round as fast as possible.

“It was difficult. Everything that we wanted to happen didn’t happen. We know as a team and individuals that we underperformed.

“You are allowed that time after the game to be disappointed. The day after it was more about working on what we can do as a whole team. We had good conversations, meetings, and watched clips on how we can do it. The day after the game, as soon as you get on the grass you forget about everything that happened.

“I had a message from someone I know that said: ‘It is just like a bad night out and you want to forget it as much as possible. Move onto the next one.’ That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”