ADELAIDE – Sarina Wiegman was 13 years old when she first met Johann Cruyff.
Versed in the Dutch philosophy of total football from a young age, Wiegman once pinpointed the adaptability of the Cruyffian manual as the key to making teams more dynamic. Players would move into unfamiliar positions, strikers would be expected to track back, and defenders encouraged to roam forward in possession.
It is an education the England head coach has been forced to draw upon at this World Cup out of necessity, but the revolution of her approach against China paid off tremendously.
After the national anthems, the Lionesses seemed to wait until the last possible moment before retreating into their positions. Rachel Daly, in particular, hovered around the halfway line to a backdrop of head-scratching as to what the formation would be.
With the personnel named, it could have been a 3-4-3, a 4-4-2 or even a 4-2-3-1. It transpired that a 3-5-2 was the key to unlocking Lauren James’s barrels of attacking magic. The easy answer would have been to start Laura Coombs with Georgia Stanway in a deeper role, the quick fix used to plug the gap in the second half against Denmark following Keira Walsh’s knee injury.
Nobody would have blamed Wiegman if she had opted for that solution – even if it had gone badly. Resources were already stretched by long-term injuries to Beth Mead, Fran Kirby and Leah Williamson before a ball was even kicked at this tournament and when Walsh fell too, expectations were suddenly lowered.
Yet Wiegman has unlocked a new superpower here in Australia: flexibility.
If there was one criticism which has been levelled at her in the year since England’s European Championship final, it was an over-reliance on her key players, who have had to balance a huge workload for club and country.
Walsh, for example, did not miss a single England game in 2022, starting 19 of 20, and before China she had only missed one match in 2023, when she was ill for the Arnold Clark Cup victory over South Korea.
In all of Wiegman’s international management career, including with the Netherlands, she had never made more than two changes for a game until Tuesday night.
Throughout last summer’s Euros, she did not alter starting XI once. It was not a problem – all that mattered was the trophy lift at the end. But teams move in cycles and the bricks and mortar of that squad began to crumble. Ellen White and Jill Scott retired, Williamson, Kirby and Mead were sidelined.
It is one thing to rebuild a side over many months, more impressive still to totally rethink their set-up within the space of four days, all while instilling in her players that the rewards would outweigh the risks.
“Everyone really believed in it [the formation] straight away and you could see that on the pitch,” Wiegman said.
“They were really excited about it. We want to use the qualities of the squad as optimal as possible. The team showed they were really adaptable.”
It is academic now, given the manner in which China were emphatically blown away, but things could have gone awry.
With Katie Zelem making her World Cup debut and Lucy Bronze and Daly deployed as wing-backs, England could have been hit on the break and Millie Bright and Alex Greenwood may have been left exposed. There was a contingency for that, falling into a back five when China had the ball, and that was very little of the time regardless. The Asian champions had just 26 per cent possession.
We have already seen the most dramatic of upsets at this World Cup, many of them the result of obstinacy or low morale.
Spain, marred by in-fighting, were humbled 4-0 by dark horses Japan. The USA failed to top their group for just the second time in history after a stalemate with Portugal; increasingly, there is a sense that Vlatko Andonovski has allowed senior players, the likes of Megan Rapinoe, Kelly O’Hara and Alex Morgan to go on one tournament too long.
England, by contrast, are gaining momentum at just the right time and now believe the World Cup is “anyone’s for the taking”, said captain Bright.
Perhaps that is Wiegman’s blessing. After Walsh’s injury, it was put to her that England had never had a back-up plan without the midfielder. Now, there is no choice but for this squad to be malleable, unpredictable. Whatever iteration her England side takes in the last 16, Nigeria will have no idea what to expect – other than that Wiegman always has a “Plan B”.
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