"We Don't Want to be Looking Back." - England Press Conference

Ahead of tomorrow’s fixture facing the reigning World Champions, Sarina Wiegman

and Alessia Russo spoke to the media about their thoughts and feelings towards the

game.

To begin with, Wiegman stated “the squad is completely fit. Lucy Bronze is also fit” setting

the squad up fully coming into this game.

Whilst discussing the fact England haven’t won a game by a big score line for a while,

Wiegman identified “No game is easy anymore so we are adapting” as women’s football

continues to evolve, but “other teams are adapting too” to this growth.

To people, this fixture could be deemed as a chance for “revenge” from England as Spain

lead them to a 1-0 defeat in the World Cup final in 2023. However, Russo believes “Revenge

reflects on the past. We’re a new team, we don’t want to be looking back” but will no doubt

still show up to the occasion.

This summer, England will head to Switzerland for the Euro 2025 tournament where they will

face the toughtest and most talented nations from over Europe. In preparation for this,

Russo stated “We want to be the best ready for the Euros, playing against top nations and

our Nations League group does that” by coming up against the most talented, like Spain.

Arsenal and Spain’s Laia Codina was reportedly bugging her club teammates to get to the FA

Cup final to give her the opportunity to play at Wembley Stadium. To this Russo responded,

“Codina was buzzing when she found out this fixture was at Wembley”, demonstrating that

the buzz around Wembley being an “iconic” football stadium is recognised internationally.

Speaking to Russo, she was asked about who she thinks would be “most dangerous”

towards England to which she said there’s “A lot to pick from.. playing with Mariona

[Caldentey at Arsenal] as attacking player we know she has a lot of tools and qualities but

we have quality in our team too”.

England head into this game after an underwhelming 1-1 draw with Portugal whilst Spain

back from 2-0 down to beat Belgium 3-2 after a difficult week off the pitch.

A lot has changed since that final in Sydney both on and off the pitch, including “a lot of new

faces in the squad” for England, said Wiegman, so will make for a competitive night under

the lights.