Wiegman Insists England Must Embrace Painful Setbacks To Fuel World Cup Ambitions

England manager Sarina Wiegman says her “hurt” squad need difficult moments like their heavy defeat to Spain to drive genuine improvement.

The Lionesses were beaten 4-0 by Spain in Majorca on Friday, a result that has severely damaged their hopes of automatic qualification for the 2027 Women’s World Cup.

England had been in a commanding position after beating Spain 1-0 at Wembley in April, with anything other than defeat in the reverse fixture enough to secure their place at next year’s tournament.

Instead, Spain now hold the advantage in the head-to-head record, and England’s World Cup fate is largely out of their own hands heading into Tuesday’s final qualifier.

“You don’t want these moments, but at some point you need some setbacks to get even more urgency to improve and to do better now, when you have the time to do that,” Wiegman told BBC Radio 5 Live.

Wiegman drew parallels with the period building up to Euro 2025, when a difficult run of friendlies forced the squad to reassess and refocus before going on to succeed in that tournament.

“We had these moments before Euro 2025 too, when we had friendlies and we tried out things. It gave us a big setback, and we thought ‘OK, what can we do better?'” she said.

England face Ukraine at Hill Dickinson Stadium on Tuesday at 20:00 BST, simultaneously with Spain’s match against Iceland, where they must hope the world champions drop points.

Only the group winners secure automatic qualification, meaning one of European champions England or reigning world champions Spain were always going to face the play-offs.

Wiegman confirmed she will make “some changes” to the side that faced Spain, with all 24 players having trained at Melwood on Monday afternoon ahead of the crucial fixture.

A member of Wiegman’s staff will monitor the Spain versus Iceland scoreline but will not relay that information to her players, who are focused solely on beating Ukraine.

“Of course it doesn’t feel nice and it should be like that because this is not what we wanted. There was disappointment and there was hurt,” Wiegman added.

“We’re a competitive team. We want to win. We were really disappointed – it’s a big setback. At the same time, we had a day of disappointment and then we move on.”

England forward Lauren Hemp admitted that sleeping on Friday night was “very hard” as the squad came to terms with the scale of the performance and its consequences.

Hemp pointed to England’s victory over Spain in the Euro 2025 final as proof that the gap between the two sides is not as large as Friday’s result suggested.

“It wasn’t a great performance from us. We know every individual is better than what we showed the other day,” Hemp told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“It’s not time to panic as we know we can perform at higher levels. We proved that only a month ago. It’s important we keep showing up. There are no excuses.”

Hemp stressed that the manner of the performance against Ukraine on Tuesday will matter just as much as securing the three points in terms of restoring confidence within the camp.

“We will go out there with a great mentality. We know how to bounce back from that. The performance will be just as important as the result,” she added.

The post Wiegman Insists England Must Embrace Painful Setbacks To Fuel World Cup Ambitions appeared first on Football Express News.