‘Sloppy’ England give Sarina Wiegman questions to answer despite win

Sarina Wiegman admitted her side were “sloppy” as England narrowly beat South Africa 2-1 in Coventry.

The Lionesses were in cruise control as Leah Williamson marked her 50th cap with the opener before Maya Le Tissier picked out Manchester United team-mate Grace Clinton to give England a 2-0 lead heading into the interval.

But they were far from perfect in the second period as South Africa got one back courtesy of Thembi Kgatlana’s neat finish beyond Mary Earps.

Kgatlana caused problems throughout and thought she had equalised when she hammered into the top corner, but the offside flag saved England’s blushes as they returned to winning ways in unconvincing fashion following Friday’s chaotic loss to Germany.

Wiegman thought her side were far from their best after the half-time break.

She said: “At some moments we were sloppy.

“Those moments were not nice for us so we were sloppy and they made it 2-1. Also we had players in different positions and that’s not easy to adapt them and get the right connections.

“We have to get through that and take the sloppiness out and keep playing forward and getting connected with players in different positions, so I am asking a lot of the players.

“What you saw today was different players to Friday and also other players in other positions which we wanted to see. This is the moment to do that. Some things I was happy and other moments of course we can improve.

“We all know we don’t want to make those mistakes – they punished us and of course we want to take those moments out and if we want to be at our best we need to take them out.”

Wiegman’s side will play two more friendlies in the next international break against the United States and Switzerland as they continue preparations for next summer’s European Championships.

The England head coach admits she still has questions to answer following a loss and a victory from this international camp.

Wiegman added: “We still have more questions, this is what we said before we started this camp.

“We won’t need to have that now, we have two more games and are trying to get as much information as possible.

“Of course to see more players who are knocking on the door, some have to be a little bit more patient than others but we need these games to try out these things to be in a better place later on.

“You want to have opponents in front of you who give you different challenges.

“These challenges give us the experiences we can learn from so that’s why we are happy with these high-level games and different opponents from different continents.”