(Football news) England Women secured an emphatic 8-0 win over Norway in their second group game of Euro 2022. It was the first time in history that a team has scored eight goals in the European Championship in the men’s and women’s category and assured England a place in the quarterfinals after topping Group A. The Lionesses had a nervy start to their campaign with a narrow 1-0 win over Austria but managed to silence all doubters after five different players got on the scoresheet at the Amex Stadium.
Despite the incredible result, it was Norway who had the better start for the first ten minutes but England soon found their rhythm and there was no looking back. The Lionesses scored their first goal when Manchester United defender Maria Thorisdottir fouled Ellen White in the box and Georgia Stanway found the back of the net in the 12th minute. It just took three more minutes for England to double their advantage when Beth Mead slid the ball across the face of goal and Lauren Hemp’s backheel attempt went into the back of the net. The goal was wrongly given offside but a VAR check corrected the mistake.
Just before the half hour mark, Ellen White also found the back of the net, scoring her 51st England goal with some sloppy defending from Thorisdottir once again. Beth Mead scored the fourth goal in the 34th minute and then went on to score her second and England’s fifth five minutes later after dinking the ball past Julia Blaksted and Thorisdottir. Ellen White also scored her second just before half-time after receiving an assist from Fran Kirby’s cross, resulting in an incredible 6-0 scoreline in just 45 minutes.
In the second half, Alessia Russo found the back of the net 10 minutes after coming on as a substitute with a majestic header. To make matters worse for Norway, Beth Mead completed her hattrick with Thorisdottir at fault once again, resulting in the eighth goal for the Lionesses. The result meant that England will now face the front-runners of Group B next Tuesday at the Amex Stadium.
Speaking after the match, England head coach Sarina Wiegman said “The great win. But also the way we played and kept playing the way we did in the second half, we were already up 6-0 but we still kept the ball going. I did not expect to win 8-0, absolutely not. They changed their shape, but we had an answer for that too. I'm really happy with the performance of the whole team and happy to go into the next round. We hope they enjoyed it and hope to make the nation proud. We've had two games now, we are trying to play our best game and today we did.
“We were 2-0 up pretty quickly. Then we got momentum so we could play the possession game, but they had a hard time getting pressure on the ball and we just had so much space to score goals. You could really tell that the players enjoyed it, the ones on the pitch and the ones that came on. We saw after the game that the whole team enjoyed it. It was very nice and we will stay grounded. We have seen some big scores, some very good matches so I don't know. I've seen a couple of very good teams that can play at a high tempo, lots of power. So they might be impressed with this performance, but we've seen our opponents have done really well too, so we can expect some very good games coming soon."
Also read: Euro 2022: Germany Women defeat Denmark while Spain overcome Finland
