Soccer
Sarina Wiegman defends call not to hand out England debuts in China thrashing
Sarina Wiegman defended her decision not to give some new faces a chance during England’s 8-0 drubbing of China.
Some familiar names were on the scoresheet in a one-sided Wembley friendly, with Georgia Stanway notching a hat-trick, Beth Mead hitting a quickfire double and Lauren Hemp, Ella Toone and Alessia Russo also on target.
The Lionesses were 3-0 up after just 16 minutes and five ahead at half-time, when Wiegman made three changes, bringing on three more members of her successful Euro 2025 squad in Chloe Kelly, Jess Park and Lotte Wubben-Moy.
However, Wiegman did not take the opportunity to hand England debuts out to the likes of youngsters Freya Godfrey and Anouk Denton.
“We take every game seriously,” said Wiegman after her 50th win in charge of the Lionesses. “And when we sub three players at half-time, I think that’s enough.
“We have a squad of 25 and there’s many players that are really knocking on the door. Everyone wants to play.
“Some players are just coming into the squad and they’re really finding their feet. Other players have played for us and are doing a really good job and they’re competing for starting positions. That’s how I look at the game.”
A bumper Wembley crowd of over 70,000 were treated to Stanway’s first international hat-trick, including a penalty, after Mead had begun the rout by scoring two in three minutes.
Hemp found the net in her first England match since Euro 2025 before Toone and Russo completed the scoring late on.
“It’s always really incredible to come here, and then with these amount of fans, it’s just really incredible,” added Wiegman.
“I’ve never, ever taken it for granted. Of course, today it went a bit easier. I think what we wanted to do is come here, show who we are, put a very good performance in and I think that’s what we did today.
“What we really wanted to do was start well and they played in a little different shape than we expected. So that took one or two minutes.
“And after that, I thought we started playing really well, we got a little bit more time on the ball and then you could see how good we are.
“We were really connected and created chances very well and I thought we scored some really good goals.”
England will round off another memorable 12 months – and continue the build-up to next year’s World Cup qualifiers – with a final friendly match against Ghana at St Mary’s on Tuesday.
