Sarina Wiegman said she is no closer to knowing her World Cup starting XI after England’s goalless draw with Portugal.
While Wiegman named an unchanged starting team during last summer’s Euros triumph, the absences of the captain, Leah Williamson, and Beth Mead with ligament ruptures, Fran Kirby with a knee injury and the retirement of Ellen White will force a quartet of changes. With only a behind-closed‑doors friendly to come against Canada between now and England’s tournament opener against Haiti on 22 July, all eyes were on Wiegman’s team sheet.
Rachel Daly was preferred to Alessia Russo as the central striker, Alex Greenwood deployed at left-back and Chloe Kelly on the bench. But Kelly and Russo impressed during second-half substitute appearances and Wiegman said selection will come down to the wire.
“I’m not closer,” she said when asked if she knew her starters. “I’m not sure if we get closer than this because in the end, we have to make decisions and in some positions it’s really tight.
“We have some time now. I’m not sure and this is not the time to make final decisions as we have some weeks to go.”
Wiegman said that after creating 23 chances she and her players were disappointed at their failure to beat a side ranked 21 in the world, but she preferred to focus on the positives: “My first thought is that I am – and also the team – very disappointed we didn’t win this game. But we also take a lot of learnings from it. I think at moments we saw the things we are really working on and wanted to show as a way of creating chances to score goals.
“The first half we were a little bit too slow, and we had too many players behind the ball or very close to the ball so when we broke lines, we didn’t have enough numbers higher up the pitch. We did that a lot better in the second half. We had players higher and created more chances, though we created a couple of chances in the first half. We just didn’t score.”
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England have failed to score in back-to-back games but one bright spot was the performance of Lauren James. The Chelsea winger dazzled on the right during the first half, before occupying a more central role after the break. “You can tell that she can play on the side but she can also play on the centre,” said Wiegman. “She’s tight on the ball, she’s very powerful and has vision.
“We could see someone who actually did really good things, and I also think you could see in some moments that she could make some decisions a little quicker. So, we’ll review that with the team later.”
