Crisis: Sarina Wiegman took the word on board and countered it with a dismissive laugh, almost perplexed it had been introduced to the conversation.
Why even go there? She had addressed the big talking point – the decision of three stalwarts to withdraw from her squad – and wanted to look to the future. Wiegman was right to say nothing gets achieved by looking back and her focus was purely on peaking on July 5 in Zurich.
The problem for her at St George’s Park on June 5, though, was the fact the cards she had been dealt left her with the kind of hand that would cause a national coach, regardless of gender, nightmares on the eve of a tournament. To the casual observer, it looked like this ship was about to run aground.
‘There is always noise,’ Wiegman countered, as she thanked the retired pair Mary Earps and Fran Kirby and offered words of support to the mentally and physically drained Mille Bright. ‘We expect noise until we go into the tournament.’
She can expect the noise to increase now the tournament has started. Group D was always going to laced with jeopardy, each match in this mini league containing The Netherlands and Wales resembling a roll of the dice in a game of snakes and ladders.
Get the right combination and England would be up, up and away; get it wrong and slithering back down to the brink was an omnipresent danger. For Wiegman in Zurich, as France bullied the reigning European Champions close to submission, a false step has taken her team towards the trapdoor.
Sarina Wiegman tried to laugh off talk of a ‘crisis’ after England’s nightmare Euros opener
The Lionesses suffered a 2-1 defeat by France, who bullied them close to submission in Zurich
A lot of new eyes will be on the England team in the coming weeks, casual observers with big expectations
Nobody will forget the glorious summer of 2022, when Wiegman masterminded the campaign that ended in a blaze of glory, but situations change and things move on and the reason “crisis” became a topic with which she had to deal was due to the narrative that was beginning to develop.
Wiegman hated it when a comparison was made with the men’s team but if Thomas Tuchel, a keen observer in Zurich next to his starstruck Chief Executive Mark Bullingham, had been hit with three key withdrawals then served up an anaemic opening tournament night, the noise would deafen.
A lot of new eyes will be on the England team in the coming weeks, casual observers with big expectations, and anyone tuning in for the first time will have been perplexed why Wiegman was powerless to stop a chasm appearing in sobering opening 45 minutes.
It was in that one-sided half that France, with their well-timed tackling and relentless running, took the game away from England. Wiegman berated the fourth official about decisions that never went her team’s way but it was camouflage, a distraction from the serious shortfalls in front of her.
You would hope that, privately, Wiegman knows what is wrong and what needs to be addressed but with The Netherlands up next in Letzigrund on Wednesday but tournament football doesn’t give a coach much time to come up with solutions.
So, yes, crisis was the right word then and it is the right word now. A false step against the country of her birth and they will fall down the ladder to the point of no return.
