‘Like a bad night out': Georgia Stanway wants to ‘forget' England defeat to France

Independent

5 days ago

Georgia Stanway compared England 's opening defeat to France at Euro 2025 to a 'bad night out' and has promised there will be a response when the Lionesses take on Netherlands on Wednesday with their title defence on the line.
England will be knocked out of the tournament if they lose to the Netherlands and France take at least a point against Wales and Stanway, who said that she was 'disappointed' with her own performance, said the Lionesses have had honest discussions over the past 48 hours.
But the midfielder said a hurt squad is 'fed up of talking' and admitted the holders had to go back to being 'proper England' after being outworked and outfought by France for long spells of their opening defeat, which Stanway is keen to move on from.
'It was difficult. Everything that we wanted to happen, didn't happen,' Stanway said. 'We know as a team that we underperformed and as individuals that we underperformed. It was a really helpful meeting. We watched clips but there was a lot of communication. We had a lot of discussions which are also super healthy.
'What we want going forward is to make actions and stop talking. I didn't want to do the press conference today because I'm fed up of talking now. It's time that we focus and we want to put things right on the pitch in order for us to be able to talk.
'We want to create action from what happened on Saturday and the only way to do that is the game. We want the game to come around as quickly as possible. We want to make change.
'We've spoken about wanting to be 'proper England' and going back to what we're good at and our traditional style of football – tough tackles and remembering why we're here. Sometimes it's about blocking out the noise and getting on the pitch and getting stuck in.'
Stanway views herself as a leader in the England team and her desire to lead by example is why she was so 'disappointed' by her own performance in midfield. But the 26-year-old, who recovered from a knee injury to start the opening game, has said England have to put the defeat behind them and focus on their response on Wednesday.
'We had good conversations, good meetings, we watched clips on how we can do it,' Stanway said. 'And then I think the day after the game, as soon as you get on that grass, you kind of forget about everything that's happened.
'I had a message from somebody that I knew, and it was like, it's just like a bad night out, you want to forget it as much as possible move on to the next one. That is exactly what we're going to do.'
Stanway accepted that England are in 'must-win' territory and said: 'It's reality - if we're not good enough on Wednesday we're not good enough to be at the tournament. We have to be brave and ruthless. You can see, even in spells against France, that urgency and desperation towards the end. We need that for 90 minutes.