Sarina Wigman unfazed by criticism of England in friendlies – Irvine Times

Wiegmann’s side were 3-0 down inside half an hour against their Euro 2022 final opponents at Wembley on Friday, but rallied before eventually losing 4-3.

Preparations are underway for South Africa’s visit to the Coventry Building Society Arena as Wiegman gets another chance to experiment.

Wiegman insists outside noise doesn’t bother her in friendlies.

She told a press conference: “For me, it doesn’t matter how fair the criticism is, what we look at is what we wanted to do as a team and how we wanted to execute our plan.

“We wanted to do a high press and we didn’t get it right, and against a top-level team like Germany we were exposed and that happens – some things went well and some didn’t.

“You don’t want to lose 3-0, but how we fought back and got better. It’s a step, we got a lot of information and tomorrow we go again – we go out there to win.

“There’s criticism from outside but we know exactly what we’re working on and where we want to go, outside it’s a bit too much about results, so what would it have been if it was 4-4? We always see the bigger picture, it’s a friendly game.”

Georgia Stanway scored twice for England in the first half on Friday and went on to play the full 90 minutes.

The 25-year-old knows expectations have risen since the Lionesses’ European Championship win two years ago and knows they must continue to build.

She said: “When the expectations are continuous, we’re not able to live up to them, it’s inevitable that at some point it’s going to hit a plateau and I feel like we’ve been with Sarina for three years and we’re going to get to a point where she’s not going to be able to continuously to win.

“Teams will understand us and get better, they insist, and this is where we have to work together to reinvent ourselves, to change tactics a little bit to get ahead of the opposition.

“As teams evolve, so do we have to continue to evolve to do so.”

It is 14 years since England and South Africa last met when the Lionesses won 1-0 in February 2010 in the Cyprus Cup.

An entirely new opponent will provide a different challenge for Wiegman’s team, and she admitted there will be changes.

She added: “We expect a very fast team, a physical team, very unpredictable and very quick.

“We want different styles against us. As we don’t have many opportunities to play friendlies, I think this is a great opportunity to play South Africa, it will be another learning moment for us and how we can approach it. We experienced this at the World Cup as well.

“Tomorrow you will see different faces. You’re going to see changes, that’s what we said, we want to try things out, we want the players to see connections and so many games coming after the camp.”