Jess Carter believes England’s chaotic 4-3 defeat against Germany came at the right time to help address their shortcomings before next summer’s European Championship.
The Lionesses will defend the title they won on home soil in 2022 in Switzerland next summer and rather than hitting the panic button after conceding four goals on Friday night, England are determined to use the loss as a learning exercise.
“It’s the perfect time,” said the defender. “None of us ever want to lose, but if we don’t lose, we’re never going to learn, and if we don’t play top opponents like Germany, we’re never going to be ready for the Euros. So unfortunately we’d all take days like this now rather than in however many months’ time.
“Germany’s movement was excellent and that was causing us a lot of issues. They were dragging us and we do want to be an aggressive pressing team. The rotation makes that a little bit hard, trying to get those lines of communication right.
“We had a lot of challenges and at times we managed to figure it out well and at times we clearly didn’t”
England’s defending was strangely disorganised as they conceded three first-half goals for the first time since another friendly against Germany at Wembley in November 2014. That ended in a 3-0 loss, but this Lionesses side did at least mount a comeback, inspired by the energy and industry of Georgia Stanway, who scored twice and appeared hell-bent on avoided losing to so many of her club teammates from Bayern Munich.
“The first 30 minutes are 30 minutes we want to try to forget,” she said. “We have to look at the bigger picture. It’s a process. This is a step forward and we know we’ve got things to learn.
“We needed to get compact in the middle of the pitch, that was causing us problems with their rotations, it was causing us to be a bit disrupted. As soon as we changed our shape, we got more compact and we were able to do that. But there’s still a lot of work for us to do. We need to get better defensively, we need to get better [in] attack, keep the ball better, which allows us to not be in the transition moments as much.”
Stanway, who has now scored 21 times in 72 senior appearances for her country at the age of 25, believes England’s rivals will all be stronger next summer than they were when the Lionesses won their first title in 2022.
“We knew Germany are going to be good, but that [game] just shows how good they are. It just shows that every nation is going to get better and better. Having won the Euros, we’ve got a massive target on our backs and we need to take our game to the next level and we can’t rest. We need to switch on. This camp so far has been intense, but it showcases that we’re not there yet and we’ve still got nine months.
“On the bigger picture, we just need to not be too disappointed. We just need to be calm. We just need to remain calm and allow this process to happen.”
England face South Africa in Coventry on Tuesday, before two more home friendlies, against the Olympic champions, the USA, on 30 November and the 2025 Euros hosts, Switzerland, on 3 December.
