England head coach Sarina Wiegman felt the defending champions created their “own problems” after opening their Euro 2025 campaign with a 2-1 loss to France in Zurich.
The Lionesses were forced to regroup after Alessia Russo had an early goal chalked off following a VAR review for offside in the build-up and needed to dig deep after Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Sandy Baltimore scored within four first-half minutes.
But England struggled to get a shot on target, ending the contest with just two, and, while late substitutions sparked the Lionesses into life in the closing stages, Keira Walsh’s 87th-minute goal proved mere consolation.
“Of course, I’m very disappointed,” said Wiegman. “I think we started well. After that, of course we know France are very good, but we created chances (for France) by playing short passes all the time. We were a bit sloppy too.”
It was a first major tournament group-stage defeat for the Dutch head coach, who won the Euros with the Netherlands in 2017 before leading England to a maiden major trophy three summers ago.
She added: “When we built, we chose to do short passes and they were aiming for that.
“They were pretty good in midfield, so I think we had to go around at moments. On the right side, we had overloads where we could find that, but then you have to skip players and not play the short passes, but when you receive them you have to be tighter on the ball and be quicker.
“We played out of that press that developed too, so I think we caused a bit of our own problems, knowing that when you don’t do these things right against France, it’s a very good team so they can harm you.”
The Lionesses’ task does not get any easier, with the Netherlands on Wednesday now looking even more like a must-win game to avoid the genuine possibility of an early exit.
Lauren James, who returned from a three-month hamstring injury absence in a 30-minute cameo in their Jamaica send-off friendly on Sunday, was deemed fit to start and played an hour.
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The Chelsea forward looked a threat on the ball, missing a good chance in the first minute before her attempt to tee up a team-mate with a cross evaded several English heads.
Asked if it was an error to start the 23-year-old, Wiegman said: “No. I don’t see it as a mistake. It’s a choice and I think if she’d scored in the first minute and if the cross she made, we just couldn’t get a head on, I think it would have been a different conversation.”
Captain Leah Williamson told ITV she felt the Lionesses “defended cheaply in one-on-ones” and also lost the ball “cheaply, (so) you’re defending in an emergency”.
Fellow defender Jess Carter said: “I think we played like we were a little bit scared today, maybe we weren’t aggressive enough, we maybe were worrying about their threats in behind and what they can do rather than doing what we can do.”
But Carter shrugged off the suggestion England now have a big uphill battle, adding: “I don’t really think it’s any different, before the tournament even started we knew we had to win games and we set out to win every single game and that doesn’t change now.”
