I’m fed up with talking – Georgia Stanway wants ‘proper England’ to step up | OneFootball

Midfielder Georgia Stanway is “fed up with talking” and wants “proper England” to prove their doubters wrong in their critical Euro 2025 clash with the Netherlands on Wednesday night.

England’s 2-1 tournament-opening loss to France has put them in a precarious position and anything less than victory over the 2017 champions will mean that the Lionesses are in real danger of becoming the first defending champions to crash out in the group stage.

England have had plenty of time to unpack what Stanway says a friend encouraged her to view like a “bad night out”, a hangover they think will be best cured by returning to their roots in Zurich.

“I think what we want going forward is just to make actions,” said Stanway. “We want to stop talking, hence why I didn’t want to do the press conference today, because I’m fed up with talking.

“Now it’s time that we focus and we want to put things on the grass. We want to make sure that we put things right on the pitch. We want to create action from what happened on Saturday and the only way to do that is in the game on Wednesday.

“I think we’re all just dying for the game to come around as fast as possible because want to make sure that we’re stepping on that (pitch), knowing what we’ve experienced but also wanting to make change.

“We’ve spoken about wanting to be proper England and we want to go back to what we’re good at. We want to go back to a traditional style of football in terms of tough tackles, getting back down to the roots and remembering why we’re here, remembering playing for the little girl that wanted to be here.”

Should France defeat Wales and England lose to the Netherlands, both UK representatives will be eliminated from the tournament.

Asked about that scenario, Stanway simply replied: “It’s the reality.

“If we’re not good enough Wednesday, then we don’t deserve to continue in the tournament.”

The Lionesses have leaned on each other and messages from home in the aftermath of the opening defeat.

Stanway said: “If someone gets a message from their grandma, they’re straight up to say ‘my grandma’s wished us good luck’.

“And it’s like, everybody is watching and everybody cares and everybody is rooting for us, and it’s our job to be able to make that happen.”