On Tuesday 4 June 2019 the plane carrying the England football squad to the Women’s World Cup in France descended low over the Côte d’Azur and seemed to skim across the Mediterranean.
It was on final approach to the spit of reclaimed land cantilevered above the sea that serves as the runaway at Nice airport and the water beneath its wings shimmered in the early evening sun.
Five days later, and three miles inland, Phil Neville’s side kicked off their tournament by beating Scotland 2-1 at the Stade de Nice. If the red-roofed villas built into the spectacular Alpine foothills soaring above the stadium appeared in peril of sliding down the vertiginous slopes, the Lionesses seemed reassuringly sure-footed.
Four years, and a pandemic, later that precedent begs the question as to why Sarina Wiegman’s England are flying to Brisbane for this summer’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand quite so early.
The Lionesses are scheduled to take off on 5 July, heading for a pre-tournament training camp on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast in advance of their opening match against Haiti in Brisbane on 22 July.
Admittedly France was considerably closer, England won’t land in Australia until 7 July and it will take about four days before their recovery from jet lag is deemed sufficient to allow full training sessions.
Yet that still leaves 11 days before the Haiti game. Moreover, before boarding the plane, Wiegman’s players will have been in camp at England’s St George’s Park base from 19 June, with a couple of weekends off offering their sole respite.
It was different four years ago when the domestic season did not finish until mid-May and the squad could not convene until late in that month but lack of fitness was not the reason why, two days into July, English tears swelled the Rhône. Several factors prefaced the arguably unlucky 2-1 semi final defeat by the United States in Lyon, with mental fatigue possibly playing a part.
This increasing problem explains why Claire Bloomfield, head of women’s football at the European Club Association, had hoped European football associations would convene their World Cup squads somewhat closer to Fifa’s 10 July mandatory release date.
If, given the formidable travel logistics involved, 10 July was always rather unrealistic, England’s insistence that players enter camp on Monday, has understandably annoyed WSL clubs.
That dictated key Lionesses had only two full weeks off after a demanding domestic season, with individual fitness plans being followed this week. As Bloomfield said: “The issue of early calls-ups is a hangover from the game in its amateur form and is detrimental to the future success and growth of women’s football.”
An ardent Middlesbrough fan, Bloomfield knows all about Patrick Bamford. Many Riverside regulars thought it was a mistake for Boro to sell the gifted striker to Leeds for £10m and watched enviously as, under Marcelo Bielsa, he started scoring Premier League goals for fun. But then Bamford seemed to run through one brick wall too many, suffering apparent burnout, involving repeated injuries and fast-evaporating confidence.
The failure of successive managers to restore him to former glories this season represents a big reason why Leeds were relegated. It should also be a warning of the danger of overloading England players including Barcelona’s Lucy Bronze and Keira Walsh, who played in the Champions League final in early June.
Wiegman should also consider the impact of a relentless playing and training schedule on her squad’s decision-making capacity. As the former Leeds caretaker and, briefly, England manager Sam Allardyce recently pointed out “brain space” matters.
“All the rubbish saying you have to keep players at the training ground for six hours a day is the biggest load of poppycock,” he said. “They need time off. If you shut their brain space down, players will shut down; they won’t be able to perform. When a footballer sometimes can’t run properly people say they’re not physically fit but it’s because they’re mentally shot.
“The top players have the best football brains, the best decision-making abilities. You can have much more skilled players lower down whose brains don’t work as quickly. But all brains need rest.”
It also may not help to be putting a growing distance between leading Lionesses and the public they once mingled with. England’s choice of two fairly remote World Cup bases, initially on the Gold Coast and then, for the tournament, in Terrigal, 90 minutes’ drive north of Sydney, dictates that boredom could exacerbate mental fatigue, particularly during a potentially chilly southern hemisphere winter.
Given that those locations were selected in January 2022 when Covid restrictions reigned, England are likely to find things very different from Canada 2015, where they enjoyed freedom to explore and enjoy assorted cities including Montreal and Vancouver. Four years later wanders through Nice and Deauville proved highlights of their French tour.
As the former England midfielder Fara Williams reflected, the consequent engagement enhances morale. “At Canada 2015 we shared a hotel in Moncton with France but they weren’t allowed out and we were,” she said, remembering that England’s then manager, Mark Sampson, arranged for the dog-loving left-back Claire Rafferty to relax by taking a local’s canine for walks. “We enjoyed meeting Canadians and it helped us do well.
“Downtime at tournaments is very important. If you just sit in hotels you don’t enjoy it so much. In order to relax and play well some people need to go out and do their own thing.”
