'We weren't good enough' - Williamson laments England's losing start to Euros title defence

Leah Williamson said England "weren't good enough" after they began their Euros title defence with a 2-1 defeat to France in Zurich on Saturday.

Two quickfire goals for France ultimately did the damage, as England lost their first match at a European Championship under Sarina Wiegman.

Despite struggling to trouble France for large parts of the game, England thought they had taken the lead through Alessia Russo, who fired in the rebound of Lauren Hemp's saved shot, but it was ruled out for an extremely tight offside against Beth Mead in the build-up.

France responded well to that decision and took a deserved lead 36 minutes in as Marie-Antoinette Katoto poked home from close range. It then took just three minutes for Sandy Baltimore to double their advantage.

Keira Walsh gave England late hope with a stunning long-range strike in the 87th minute, but the Lionesses could not find an equaliser, as Lauren Hemp saw a stoppage-time effort cleared off the line.

The defeat means that England are the first team ever to lose their opening match at a UEFA Women's EURO tournament as the reigning champions.

And Williamson did not hold back as she acknowledged the issues that plagued England in their opener.

"We lost a game. Cheap defending one-v-one. Not good enough. We couldn't keep it in the areas we needed to keep it," she told ITV.

"We learned from those mistakes in fairness and grew into the game. But on the ball, we were not good enough. We got better as they tired; we took advantage of that, but not enough.

"Sometimes that happens, the positive is that I've not seen us like that in terms of turning the ball over so much for a while now. It's really frustrating, I think that's how we take it, but [on Sunday] we are back on it.

"When you lose the ball, and you're that expansive and losing it cheaply, and then you're in emergency defending, and when you've done that four or five counter-attacks in a row against quality like that, it's tough, but we hold ourselves to high standards. In the individual battles throughout the game, I think we improved on that."

This was the first defeat that Wiegman had suffered at a European Championship, having won all 12 of her previous outings, having also led the Netherlands to the title in 2017.

In fact, she suffered only her third defeat in 27 major tournament games as a manager (W23 D1 – World Cup/Euros), along with the 2019 and 2023 World Cup finals.

England created just 0.9 expected goals (xG) to France's 2.3 and managed just two shots on target from their 12, with both of those coming in the final 10 minutes of the match.

"I'm very disappointed about the result," Wiegman told ITV. "I thought we started really well, scored a goal, and unfortunately, it didn't count.

"Then we played ourselves out of the game by playing short passes, which really helped them, and not being tight enough. We needed to get out of that first press and skip, and I think that harmed us a bit.

"I think we can do better. I think from what we know, France is really good, but I think we caused a bit of our own problems, and we could have scored in the first minutes.

"They could have scored, too. I think we can do better, definitely, and we have to make it a little bit easier for ourselves. We can't afford to make any more mistakes going forward.

"Those are the facts: We have to step up, and then we review, we recover, and then it's straight to the game against the Netherlands on Wednesday. Now we must stick together, do the recovery and move on."

England now face a tough task to get out of Group D as they face the Netherlands next, with the Oranje currently top of the group, having beaten Wales 3-0 earlier on Saturday.