England Women lose Euro 2025 Opener: Leah Williamson says that Lionesses was ‘not good enough’ against France

Women’s captain Leah Williamson of England said that the lion ribbons “were not good enough” because they lost their Euro 2025 more open to France.

England was the first defending champion to lose their opening match of the next tournament, with 2-1 beaten by the impressive French in Zurich.

There were several problems in the Lionesses game, including defending on both wings that led to goals from Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Sandy Baltimore.

Reflecting on the reasons behind the bottom edges of England, Williamson said ITV Sport: “We have lost a game. Cheap defend one-vs one. Not good enough. We could not keep it in the areas we needed to keep it.

“We learned from those mistakes in honesty and grew out in the game, but we were not good enough on the ball. We got better the tired, we benefited from it, but not enough.

“Sometimes that happens, the positive thing is that I have not seen ourselves in terms of the ball for a while. It is really frustrating, I think we are taking it that way, but tomorrow we will be back.

“I think everyone today takes responsibility for themselves, taking a look at what the area was that they had more influence on the game.

“I will do that, but I think we have a new game plan tomorrow, different spaces available, different types of opposition.”

Wiegman: We played ourselves from the game

For her side, English head coach Sarina Wiegman Did not believe that the defense of both wings was the biggest problem in England, and added that the overall fantasticity also contributed to the result.

She told ITV Sport: “I am very disappointed about the result. I thought we started really well, scored a goal and unfortunately it didn’t count.

“Then we played ourselves out of the game by playing short passes, which really helped them and were not tight enough. We had to go out of the first press and skip it and I think that was a bit damaged to us.

“The broad areas were not the biggest problem. We started really well and then we started playing short passes, and they wanted that because they wanted to press. So we had to come in behind them and try to skip the press, but we lost. We were too sloppy and that didn’t help us.

“Then we know how good they are in the counterattack. They are powerful and fast players. That’s what they really did well.”

England now has to win their next group D match against the Netherlands on Wednesday to keep itself in the race for a place in the knockout rounds.

Wiegman knows that her side can no longer afford any errors, but must quickly continue with another game in four days.

“I think we can do better,” she added. “France is really good, but we have caused a bit of our own problems and and we could have scored in the first minutes.

“We can certainly do better, and we have to make it a little easier for ourselves. We can’t afford to make more mistakes in the future? That’s right.

“Those are the facts, we have to perform, and tomorrow we will assess, we recover, and then it is directly to the match against the Netherlands on Wednesday. Now we have to stay together, do the recovery and continue.”

Bonadei surprised by England -approach

France head coach Laurent BonadeiWho took over the team from former coach Herve Renard last year, said his team was surprised by the approach of England.

“England is really a good team,” he said. “They are fifth in the world ranking and have won the last euros, so we have to respect this team.

“They started really well and practiced us from the kick -off. We were a bit surprised because they normally play with building Keira Walsh in midfield, so it was really difficult because we were under pressure, and we admitted. Fortunately for us it was excluded.

“When slowly, step by step, we came back with our forward players and we had our fantastic goal on the right. Physically it was not easy for the English team because we played more directly in midfield. We kept calm and scored a second goal.

“In the second half we checked the match because they only had two shots on goal. At the end of the game you saw that England could score at any time and we played under pressure in the last five minutes. My players were doing really well and kept the result.”