Pinpoint Le Tissier assist helps Lionesses towards unconvincing win

Wednesday 30 October 2024

Maya Le Tissier was the provider as England claimed a 2-1 friendly win against South Africa last night.

The side had faced criticism after losing to Germany on Friday and coach Sarina Wiegman made eight changes as she continued to experiment.

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???? Read match-winner Grace Clinton's assessment of last night's win...

— Lionesses (@Lionesses) October 30, 2024

Le Tissier started and was rated as one of England’s better players.

Her cross in the 23rd minute was met by Manchester United team-mate Grace Clinton to give the Lionesses a 2-0 lead after Leah Williamson had opened the scoring.

South Africa halved the deficit through Thembi Kgatlana 10 minutes into the second half.

She twice came close to levelling the match, but England held on in Coventry.

Wiegman said: "At some moments we were sloppy. Those moments were not nice for us so we were sloppy and they made it 2-1. Also we had players in different positions and that's not easy to adapt them and get the right connections.

"We have to get through that and take the sloppiness out and keep playing forward and getting connected with players in different positions, so I am asking a lot of the players.

"What you saw today was different players to Friday and also other players in other positions which we wanted to see. This is the moment to do that. Some things I was happy and other moments of course we can improve.

"We all know we don't want to make those mistakes - they punished us and of course we want to take those moments out and if we want to be at our best we need to take them out."