England captain Leah Williamson has been ruled out of the Women’s World Cup qualifying matches against Spain and Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The Arsenal defender, 29, will be absent with a hamstring injury, despite having followed a rehabilitation programme that she hoped would enable her to play.<\/p>\n
Sarina Wiegman’s side can qualify for next year’s World Cup in Brazil if they avoid defeat in Spain on Friday (20:00 BST).<\/p>\n
They sit top of their group with four wins from four matches and have a three-point advantage over world champions Spain.<\/p>\n
England take on Ukraine at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium on Tuesday, 9 June (20:00 BST).<\/p>\n
Williamson, who led England to back-to-back European Championship victories in 2022 and 2025, has started just two Women’s Super League games this season.<\/p>\n
She had knee surgery following England’s Euro 2025 victory and has played only three games for her country since.<\/p>\n
Liverpool captain Grace Fisk has been called up to the squad to replace Williamson, while Brighton goalkeeper Sophie Baggaley also joins the Lionesses.<\/p>\n
Baggaley will provide cover as Manchester City’s Khiara Keating will miss the Spain game as she follows the return-to-play concussion protocols.<\/p>\n
Keating missed Sunday’s victory over Brighton in the FA Cup final, at which Baggaley was on the bench for the opposition.<\/p>\n
A further assessment will determine whether Keating can be available for the Ukraine game, though regular number one Hannah Hampton is expected to start.<\/p>\n
The squad arrive at St George’s Park on Monday before travelling to Spain later in the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England captain Leah Williamson has been ruled out of the Women’s World Cup qualifying matches against Spain and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-708370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}