England secured a 3-1 first-leg victory over Greece in their Women’s World Cup playoff tie but were unable to produce the convincing performance they would have hoped for, against a hugely unfancied Greek side.
Georgia Stanway’s neat finish, Maya Le Tissier’s first England goal and Alessia Russo’s low strike were enough to give England control but a Ioanna Papatheodorou goal for Greece means that the tie is not definitively over, going into Tuesday’s second leg.
Facing a Greek side ranked 59th in the world, who have never qualified for a major tournament, England began as the overwhelming favourites, but Sarina Wiegman will have been fairly underwhelmed by her side’s first-half display. They dominated the ball but often appeared to be going through the motions, making hard work of breaking down Greece’s deep defensive shape. It would be too much of a stretch to describe it as a bad performance but, at the same time, England did lack a bit of their usual zip, charisma and urgency and their body language suggested they were focused on the job at hand, rather than giving off the impression they were enjoying themselves.
Perhaps the flat atmosphere was to blame for that. The Hellenic Football Federation had made the tickets free for this fixture but – despite that – only a few thousand turned up and there was scarcely any noise from the home supporters. Instead, around 500 travelling England fans were generating the majority of the noise in an otherwise quiet, often echoey ground in which it was frequently possible to hear the players issuing instructions to each other on the pitch, from high up in the stands behind the athletics track that surrounds the pitch.
It meant that the first 45 minutes were largely forgettable and lacking in real quality, aside from a few isolated moments such as a delicious chip from 25 yards out from Lauren James, which drew a gasp of appreciation from the away fans as it hit the net and they thought England had taken the lead. A VAR check showed that James had been offside.
England were playing with a back three when in possession, pushing Le Tissier very high up the pitch as a right wing-back, and with a back four when out of possession. They were largely untroubled defensively, except for a huge let-off at 0-0 when the Greece striker Papatheodorou struck the woodwork. She eased past Esme Morgan and Leah Williamson with alarming ease and her shot from range looked to have beaten Hannah Hampton, but smacked the bar.
England, who had gone close when Laura Blindkilde Brown shot straight at the goalkeeper, Lauren James curled a free-kick wide and Lauren Hemp drilled a low shot narrowly wide across the face of goal, eventually found their breakthrough when Blindkilde Brown played a quick ball to Russo, whose good touch to lay the ball off for Stanway allowed the midfielder to slot in low.
Beth Mead was introduced at the break, in place of Blindkilde Brown, to make the European champions’ shape even more attack-minded, and they soon created further chances, with Mead falling over in the box just as she looked set to shoot, and Le Tissier drawing a good save from Fafailia Petaloti. Moments later, Le Tissier powered in a strong finish after clever work from Keira Walsh to open up space.
When Russo tucked a low finish into the bottom corner to make it 3-0 four minutes later, England might have been hoping the floodgates were open. However, some limp defending allowed Rangers’ Kallisti Brouksair to pull a goal back, firing in a low finish after a hopeful, bouncing, high long ball was not initially dealt with by Morgan.
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England went close to adding to their tally, as James curled narrowly wide and the substitute Jess Park’s effort hit the bar, on a night when Erica Meg Parkinson and Grace Fisk were handed senior international debuts, late on.
Assuming they finish the job off on Tuesday in the second leg in Leicester, England would face Slovakia or Ukraine in the second round of the playoffs in the November-December international window. That tie would also be staged over two legs and England would need to win that too to secure their spot at next summer’s major tournament in Brazil.
They can feel unfortunate to even be involved in these playoffs, having won five of their six matches in their qualifying group, only to be pipped to top spot by Spain because of their superior head-to-head goal difference. The runners-up in the 2023 World Cup, Wiegman’s side are hoping to extend their run of reaching the past three major finals and to go one better than their defeat against Spain in Sydney three years ago. To do that, though, they know they will need to markedly improve on their cohesion and fluidity with the ball.
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