This disappointment means the European champions will not qualify for the Olympics, though a free year does give the coach a chance to fix some issues
Margins don't get much finer than those that denied England a place in the Women's Nations League finals, and thus killed their Olympic dream, on Tuesday night. There were three minutes between the Lucy Bronze header that seemed to have given the Lionesses top spot in Group A and the late Netherlands goal, some 700 miles away, that ensured the Dutch progressed to the next stage of the competition instead.
It was a dramatic finale to a group stage that has been very up and down for Sarina Wiegman's side. After the game in Scotland, which saw England thrash their neighbours 6-0, Beth Mead admitted that the team had "let ourselves down maybe earlier on in the competition", with defeats to the Netherlands and Belgium ultimately costing them, rather than the inability to get a seventh goal in Glasgow.
It means that the Lionesses won't compete in the Nations League finals in February and, as a result, cannot secure a place for Great Britain in the Olympic women's football tournament next year, either. In a sport with far too many ACL injuries and a severely imbalanced calendar, a summer off has some benefits, but the reigning European champions, a team that reached the World Cup final earlier this year, will see it as a missed opportunity to win a major title.
There is plenty for Wiegman to ponder, then, with the extra breathing space she will get before England's next big tournament comes around, at the European Championship in 2025. What, though, did she learn from her side's final international camp of 2023? GOAL picks out the winners and losers from the Lionesses' final games of the year…
GettyLOSER: Sarina Wiegman
For a long time, it felt like Wiegman had the Midas touch. Everything she touched seemed to turn to gold. After leading the Netherlands to victory at a home Euros and then to a World Cup final two years later, she repeated the trick on both counts with England. It took her 31 games, even, to taste defeat as head coach of the Lionesses.
However, the last few months have seen questions raised of the Dutchwoman and her work. She temporarily fixed issues during the World Cup in the summer with a change of formation, but in this Nations League campaign, many of those problems reared their ugly heads and contributed to what is ultimately a failure, to not qualify for the finals or get Team GB into the Olympics.
At the end of the day, everything falls on the coach and that means, in this case, it falls on Wiegman. This is the biggest disappointment that she has tasted on this stage – but she is still one of the best coaches on the planet. It is a setback, but it will be fascinating to see how she goes about bouncing back from it across 2024, a year where there will be so much more room to tinker and try things given the lack of a major tournament.
AdvertisementGetty ImagesWINNER: Beth Mead
The ultimate outcome of this international window for England was a hugely devastating one, but there were also a lot of positives in a week that saw them overturn a 2-0 half-time deficit to beat the Netherlands before they then thrashed Scotland 6-0. One of the biggest ones was the return of Beth Mead from a cruel ACL injury.
Back in the squad for the first time since last November, the Arsenal star came off the bench at the break in that first fixture at Wembley on Friday night and helped change the game, so much so that the Lionesses emerged 3-2 winners against all the odds to keep their Nations League finals hopes alive. Then, in Glasgow, she made her first England start in over a year and marked it with her first goal for her country in 15 months.
Mead's world-class talent gave the Lionesses a real boost during this window, and Wiegman will be delighted to have her back in the long-term, as she looks to get this team firing on all cylinders again.
Getty ImagesLOSER: Alessia Russo
England needed to score a lot of goals in this camp. Ideally, against the Netherlands, they wanted to win by a two-goal margin to give themselves a better chance of progressing when they met Scotland on Tuesday. After going 2-0 down in the game, they were happy enough to come away still alive, having scored three second-half goals to comeback from the brink. Four days later, they knew they needed to have their shooting boots on again to thrash their neighbours in Glasgow to top the group. For both challenges, Alessia Russo was benched.
This is a player who has been almost immovable as England's No.9 since Ellen White retired after the Euros in 2022. Despite Rachel Daly's Golden Boot-winning Women's Super League season last term, Wiegman kept faith in Russo, and it certainly paid off during the World Cup, at which the 24-year-old scored so many important goals en route to the final.
However, when the Lionesses were in need of goals in this window, Wiegman changed things up, playing Manchester City winger Lauren Hemp as a centre-forward for both games.
Russo has long kept her place in the team because of how much her all-round play contributes to the team performance – but she is not the most clinical forward at Wiegman's disposal. She is a very talented player, but there are members of this squad that are more ruthless than her in front of goal. Perhaps trying to figure out what her best role is in this team while still having a clinical feel to the attack is one of the things for Wiegman to ponder.
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GettyLOSER: Rachel Daly
Daly, meanwhile, saw just four minutes of action in this international window, brought on for the very final stages of the 3-2 win over the Netherlands. If you had said that Russo would be benched for these games, most would have assumed that Daly – who has netted on nine occasions already this season despite Aston Villa's struggles – would have taken her place. However, her involvement was extremely limited, which was a surprise given the goals England needed to score.
Once again, it raises questions of how the Lionesses get the best out of the 32-year-old. Throughout her international career, under different coaches, Daly has been played out of position and rarely given the chance to shine as the prolific No.9 she is. Wiegman started to give her more opportunities in her preferred position last season, which was a no-brainer given her form, but she still ended the World Cup playing as a wing-back.
In Daly, England have a ruthless forward, someone who presses with incredible energy and has fantastic poaching instincts in the box – but she isn't used in the way she should be. Again, figuring out what to do with her should be on Wiegman's agenda for the New Year.