by On a bitter night in Glasgow when the thermometer dropped to -3C and the fog threatened to roll in from the Clyde, it seemed like high summer in France was in a parallel universe.
He also looked like a magnet, always drawing Lauren James, Lucy Bronze, Beth Mead and co to the top as they tried to get a chance in the hat for games not only in Paris but Marseille, Lyon, Nantes, Bordeaux, Saint-Étienne and Nice at next year’s Olympics.
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Moments before the final whistle, a team hoping to be re-mixed, temporarily, as Team GB in July and August, thought they were halfway there but, instead, late goals for the Netherlands ensured against the Belgium that the Dutch were top of their group in the League of Nations and qualified. for the playoff semi-finals in February.
Despite a heartbreaking 6-0 demolition of Scotland, England’s hopes of becoming one of two European teams to join the Olympic hosts next summer have dwindled. They won’t be returning to Nice as Team GB to relive happy memories of the sun on the beach during their run to the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup after all.
England and Scotland have been traveling in very different directions since Phil Neville’s Lionesses beat their northern neighbors 2-1 in a relatively close group stage game on a damp June afternoon in the hills above Nice four years ago.
It’s the kind of landscape where the luxury villas perched above the stadium look like they’ll slide down those steep slopes, but when England started at this point, England were even more alarmingly level.
When the Nations League went away to the Netherlands and Belgium the European champions had to face ignorance, prompting the normally restrained Sarina Wiegman to tell her players to “go wild” ” against Pedro Martínez Losa’s side.
It helped that after they missed out on qualifying for the World Cup last summer, the Scottish team managed to get relegated to the Nations League B looking in the grip of a big loss.
Martínez Losa’s defensive organization was abysmal as Mead reminded everyone how much the Lionesses had missed his dead ball skills by delivering a superb corner from which Alex Greenwood gave England an early lead.
Making her first international start since rupturing her anterior cruciate ligament 13 months ago was a major maneuver but Scotland’s failure to score did not inspire Greenwood to be confident of their ability.
Martínez Losa had clearly instructed his team to play out from the back but, against England’s aggressive press, that was a ridiculously high risk.
Scotland captain Rachel Corsie had described suggestions that her team-mates could throw the game in the hope of being offered places in Team GB as “horrible and disrespectful”, so goodness knows how many scores England would have if their opponents didn’t want to.
He points out that one of Scotland’s best openings came courtesy of a strong challenge from Bronze that sent Lisa Evans crashing into the penalty area.
While Barcelona’s right-backs did well in that one, Bronze is arguably one of Wiegman’s biggest problems and biggest assets. A right back who isn’t as quick as she was can be so gung ho, so reckless, that she gives opponents goals.
But when she is hyperactive, exciting and proactive, Bronze is still a game player, capable of raising the performance of those around her. That’s why Neville described her as “the best player in the world”. Wiegman’s predecessor also believed that she would change her international career by changing to a midfielder and her failure to do so may have reduced it significantly.
Perhaps she knew, at 32 years old with the scars on her knees a legacy of six operations, that the Bronze seemed to be fading here. High on adrenaline, she wasn’t so much a full-back hybrid as a full-on footballer, at one point bursting down the left wing. Scotland couldn’t deal with her.
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Ditto James. The sometimes unplayable Chelsea winger put England on course to restore the lead to the better Netherlands after seeing Lee Alexander’s chipped effort from outside the area deflect wide than the goalkeeper. Then, moments later, she went and did it again, expertly bending a shot between two defenders and into the top corner.
While Cuthbert, a lone star who is intelligently striving in Scotland’s midfield, was in no doubt that she was prioritizing her country over Team GB, Mead soon scored an emotional fourth.
When Fran Kirby capitalized on number five and Kirsty Hanson failed to capitalize on a Mary Earps error, France felt almost within touching distance. Then the Netherlands scored again. Bronze – who else? – tried to drive Team GB across the English Channel with a hugely challenging last-minute header goal but, somehow, it wasn’t enough. Suddenly, France became a cruel chimera.
