England star Georgia Stanway believes the Lionesses are simply finding their feet at the World Cup this summer after their uncomfortable opening victory over Haiti.
The Bayern Munich midfielder netted the only goal of the game from the penalty spot as England were forced to cling on to a victory which was supposed to be far more comfortable than it ended up being.
For Stanway, the difficult showing was simply a natural adjustment to life at the tournament, with the 24-year-old confident England will be back to their best soon enough.
“I think the most important thing to come out of it is the three points,” she stressed. “It’ s so important to win your first game, going into a tournament. It’s been a long build-up day and I think we’re kind of happy to just get over the line.
“They caused us problems, they were a threat on the counter attack, they were fast, they
were physical and they challenged us in areas that we probably didn’t really expect. Haiti are new to this tournament so we kind of didn’t really know what to expect either.
“I think credit to them, they put up a good, good fight and I think they”ll cause problems
within our group.
“Focus back to us, you can see the style of football that we want to play. We created, we got
balls in the box, we had some shots off, the keeper made some good saves and just happy that
the ball got into the net.
“I think it just takes a little bit to find your feet. I think coming into a major tournament, the pressure’s high, the build-up’s so long, and you do need them few minutes just to get yourself in the game, just settle and it took us a little bit of time to get into the game, but once we were in it, you can see the quality that we have.
“You can see the passes going in and just how much we work for each other but like I said,
it’s been a long process. We’ve been on camp for five weeks now. Been in Australia for two
weeks so we were just raring and ready for this first game.”
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Stanway’s strike came during a first half full of penalty shouts and VAR confusion. Chloe Kelly’s was felled and looked certain to be awarded a spot kick, only for the video official to pull play back and penalise an earlier foul from Alessia Russo on Tabita Joseph.
England got the penalty they deserved following a Batcheba Louis handball but Stanway actually missed her initial effort and was thankful to see the referee award a retake after the Haiti stopper left her line too early.
“To be honest, the first one I actually thought was a penalty just with the tackle on Chloe, she
came running straight up to me, ‘It’s a pen, it’s a pen,’ with a big scar down her leg but
thankfully she’s okay,” Stanway continued. “But that wasn’t given.
“And then, obviously I saw the handball in the moment, so it was just a matter of it being given. The first penalty was an unbelievable save. Obviously saved it because she was a little bit off the line which I was fortunate about.
“I just tried to stick to my process, do exactly what I usually do, and yeah, just happy to see it hit the back of the net.”
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