Sarina Wiegman after a monster victory of 20-0: ‘This is not good for anyone’ Football

sport">Wiegman’s England has not lost any points after six qualifying matches. The goal difference is impressive: 53-0. Latvia is at the bottom of the group and had not scored a single point in the five matches before.

sport">Lauren Hemp scored the last goal in the 88th minute. It was her fourth goal of the evening. The English gala performance was opened in the third minute by Beth Mead. She scored two more times. Ellen White and Alessia Russo also scored a hat-trick. White is now England’s all-time top scorer with 48 goals.

sport">“I am very proud of Ellen,” Wiegman said afterwards. “She has had a great career and now she also holds the England goalscoring record. But this was also a real team effort. Of course, the opponent was not good, the difference in level was very large. But then you still have to make the match yourself and keep going. We did that, until the last minute we continued to play football with the right energy. I find that quite impressive.”

Challenging matches

sport">Wiegman later also commented on the moderate opposition. “You want challenging competitions and these are not,” said the Dutch trainer. “Of course we want to develop football in all countries. In the countries that are a bit further ahead and in the countries that are lagging behind. But the fact that the results are so high is not good for anyone. Nobody develops because of this.”

sport">The Belgian women proved last week that England’s 20-0 is not a rare outlier. They then won their World Cup qualifier against Armenia 19-0. That was a record in the European branch of the World Cup qualifier at the time. This record was broken by the English a few days later.

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