Yesterday saw the start of the England Women’s European Championship campaign against Italy, and unfortunately for the team it started with a 2-1 defeat. Following the defeat Boston Breakers defender Alex Scott (pictured, bottom far left) reflected upon the result and looked ahead to the match against Russia, on Friday.

After just 28 minutes the team went down to 10 players following the sending off of Casey Stoney but Scott felt that the defeat couldn’t be entirely contributed to this incident. “We didn’t do the basics right, we didn’t play how we know we can play and that allowed Italy to stay in the game. So even with 10 players we are very disappointed with our own performances.”

The fact that the team went 1-0 up, thanks to a Fara Williams penalty, not long after going down to 10 players only went to emphasise Scott’s point. She also pointed out that their disappointment at losing despite having a player sent-off proves that there is still much more left from them. “I think it sums up the team that we expect so much from ourselves that even with ten players we know we should have played a lot better. There is a lot more to come from us.”

This swiftly turned Alex’s attention to the forthcoming qualifiers – namely the match against Russia, on Friday. “We’re focused on Russia, and I think they may be harder test than Italy were on Tuesday. But it’s about us now, we need to step up to the plate and take ownership of our performances. We know we have to deliver more than we did against Italy.”

 This will most certainly have to be the case as England look to record their first points in the Championship but as Alex says “there’s 2 games, everything to play for and it’s still early days in this tournament.”

We couldn’t agree more and will be looking forward to the match against Russia this Friday.