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Sarina Wigman Defended his decision not to give some new faces a chance during England’s 8-0 defeat China,
Some familiar names were on the scoresheet in the one-off Wembley friendly match georgia stanway scoring a hat-trick, beth mead The quickfire double hit and Lauren Hemp, Ella Toon and Alessia Russo were also in the crosshairs.
The Lionesses were 3-0 up after just 16 minutes and five ahead at half-time when Wiegman made three changes, bringing in three more members of her successful Euro 2025 squad in the form of Chloe Kelly, Jess Park and Lotte Wubben-Moy.
However, Wiegmann did not take this opportunity. England Youngsters like Freya Godfrey and Anouk Denton made their debut.
“We take every game seriously,” Wiegmann, in charge of the Lionesses, said after his 50th win. “And when we’re three players down at half-time, I think that’s enough.
“We have a squad of 25 players and there are a lot of players who are really knocking on the door. Everyone wants to play.
“Some players are just coming into the team and they’re really finding their groove. Other players have played for us and are doing a really good job and they’re competing for starting positions. That’s how I look at the game.”
The huge Wembley crowd of over 70,000 got Stanway’s first international hat-trick, including a penalty, after Mead scored two goals in three minutes to open the scoring.
Hemp found the net in his first England match since Euro 2025, before Toon and Russo completed the scoring late on.
“It’s always incredible to come here and then with this amount of fans, it’s really incredible,” Wiegman said.
“I never take it lightly. Of course, today it became a little easier. I think what we wanted to do is come here, show who we are, perform very well and I think that’s what we did today.
“What we really wanted to do was get off to a good start and they played a little different shape than we expected. So it took a minute or two.
“And after that, I thought we started playing really well, we got a little more time on the ball and then you can see how good we are.
“We really connected and created a lot of good chances and I thought we scored some very good goals.”
England wrap up another memorable 12 months with a final friendly against Ghana at St Mary’s on Tuesday – and continue to prepare for next year’s World Cup qualifiers.