It was a new-look England as Wiegman is managing the return of several key players from injury, while rewarding those in form.<\/p>\n
Manchester City’s Laura Blindkilde Brown was handed a rare start, while London City Lionesses defender Poppy Pattinson made her debut in the second half. <\/p>\n
The back four in the starting XI had fewer than 100 caps combined – with captain Leah Williamson earning 65 of them – as Maya Le Tissier was at right-back over Lucy Bronze, while Taylor Hinds started her third game in four matches at left-back.<\/p>\n
In-form Jess Park was playing out wide, as she has done for Manchester United so impressively this season, rather than in midfield where Wiegman has often used her.<\/p>\n
It was uncharacteristically experimental from Wiegman considering this was their first competitive fixture since Euro 2025 and it took time to take shape.<\/p>\n
England had 40 touches in the opposition box and 85% of the possession in the first half, but failed to score from their 15 efforts on goal.<\/p>\n
The tempo had dropped, Ukraine were defending well and England’s hopes of flying out of the blocks had not materialised. <\/p>\n
“They didn’t quite figure it out in the first half. They were a little bit stunned about what to do,” ex-England midfielder Fran Kirby told BBC Radio 5 Live Extra.<\/p>\n
“Ukraine defended really well. They were really tight between the lines and they made it very difficult for England. <\/p>\n
“They needed to have a little bit more composure in the box instead of crossing it for the sake of crossing it. <\/p>\n
“The second half showed that they learned from the first half in terms of what wasn’t working.”<\/p>\n
With a side stacked full of quality, the two-time European champions responded in the second half.<\/p>\n
Arsenal striker Alessia Russo netted two goals in four minutes to put England in control, before a double from Georgia Stanway took them out of Ukraine’s reach.<\/p>\n
Wiegman’s “clear win” was confirmed when Park also scored twice later on.<\/p>\n
“I think it took us the first half to break them down. We were still very good in the first half. They were defensively solid,” said Russo afterwards.<\/p>\n
“When the spaces opened, we took our chances. I wouldn’t say it was relief [when we scored]. We knew we had the quality in us and it was just executing it.<\/p>\n
“It was finding the final moment, the final pass and the final shot. You saw that in the second half.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a new-look England as Wiegman is managing the return of several key players from injury, while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-327850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}