England vs Italy: Sarina Wiegman fires ‘disrespectful’ warning as she slams ‘disgusting’ racism

The Lionesses face Italy in the Semi-final of Euro 2024 on Tuesday night looking to land a place in the final of the third successive major tournament, and are heavy favourites against a team they beat 5-1 in their last meeting

Sarina Wiegman warned against complacency as her England side look to book their place a third straight major tournament final on Tuesday night. The Lionesses have beaten Italy in both their meetings under Wiegman, including a 5-1 win in 2024, but neither meeting had close to this much on the line.

“It would be really disrespectful to think we are the favourites,” the manager said. “They [Italy] made the semi-final just like we did and that’s very impressive for any team.

“Complacency is the biggest mistake you could make. You have seen how they have played. I don’t think there is anything we can think that we might be the favourite, but we have to be at our very best to win the game.”

Wiegman said “something happens” to teams when they get this far in a tournament, and is ready for a very competitive clash – a view shared by midfield star Georgia Stanway.

“Tournaments are completely different,” Stanway said. “You turn up to a tournament and it’s just 90 minutes of… it might not even be [who was] the better team but just who put the ball in the back of the net.”

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When asked about Italy’s extra recovery time – they only need 90 minutes to win their quarter-final against Norway while England needed the full 120 plus penalties against Sweden – Wiegman: “We’re just really happy that we had an extra day compared to all the other games we’ve played so far.

“This extra day really helped us, we’re at the stage now where… we have to be ready.”

Captain Leah Williamson went off injured in that Sweden game, but appeared well-recovered from her rolled ankle when she joined her team-mates in training on Monday – and England’s manager spoke about what that says about the skipper’s resilience.

“It says she really wants to play, and she did everything she can to recover as quickly as possible and she has,” Wiegman said.

Williamson’s centre-back partner Jess Carter is also available, having announced on Monday that she was taking a step back from social media after receiving racial abuse.

“It’s really sad we have to be occupied by this,” Wiegman said. “It’s ridiculous and disgusting. It goes beyond football so we have to pay attention to that and support Jess.

“Of course she is not the only one to get abuse and [experience] racism and that is why she has addressed it. She is fully supported by us, the team and by myself.

“We have conversations. It’s a hard situation, but Jess is a very strong person, she wants to move on too. But she also felt she had to address this, she couldn’t just let it go, so she did – we did.

“Then we know there is a match, we want to perform, she is ready to perform and to compete. That says a lot about her and the team. The team wants to perform tomorrow [against Italy] but also felt it was important to send a message to the world.”

It’s Italy’s third match at the Stade de Geneve, and they have enjoyed partisan support so far – not least in their quarter-final win against Norway.

England have a loud travelling fanbase themselves, though, and Stanway has faith that they’ll be in fine voice once again.

“We know that they’ll [the fans] turn up, we have no doubt about that,” Stanway said. “We love football as a nation and the Lionesses fans never let us down.

“Hopefully we can get the majority in the stadium. I think it will be really nice because it’s a closer stadium. The last few games we’ve had the running track around, so I think it will be quite nice because it will be quite intense and hopefully there will be a lot of noise.”