England Defeat Hosts Australia To Reach First Women’s World Cup Final

The European champions, England won the second semi-final against host nation Australia in Sydney to reach their first Women’s World Cup final where they will meet Spain on Sunday.

A 71st-minute strike from Manchester City’s Lauren Hemp and a late breakaway goal by Alessia Russo decided a see-saw semi-final played in front of yet another attendance of 75,784 at Stadium Australia, the fourth time the record for a women’s soccer time has been set at this tournament.

Employed as a front two in the absence of the suspended Lauren James, both Hemp and Russo scored their third goals of the tournament so far with similar cross-shots across the Australian goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold on the counter-attack.

For England, it was to prove third-time lucky after agonizing defeats at the semi-final stage in the previous two women’s World Cups. On both occasions they were defeated 2-1 by the reigning world champions, Japan in 2015, and the United States in 2019.

A fulminating first-half strike by Manchester United’s Ella Toone gave England the half-time lead as The Matildas struggled to gain a foothold in a game in which the Lionesses dominated possession.

Hosts, Australia, playing in their first-ever World Cup semi-final, went into the game having not conceded a goal in over five hours of action at the tournament. Their success at the tournament has been based on a tight defence and rapier-like counter-attacks.

Their all-time record goalscorer and captain Sam Kerr had missed her country’s first three games at the tournament after sustaining a calf injury on the very eve of the championship. Slowly integrated into the tournament, she started a game for the first time tonight and repaid the faith and adulation showed for her by equalizing on the breakaway with a stunning strike which deflected slightly off her Chelsea team-mate, the England captain Millie Bright.

In the absence of Leah Williamson, Bright will now become the first captain to lead a senior England team into a World Cup final since Bobby Moore in 1966. There, they will play Spain, who the Lionesses defeated on their way to winning the UEFA Women’s Euro last summer following a dramatic quarer-final which went to extra time. The winner will become only the second nation, after Germany, to become a champion of the men’s and women’s World Cup.

England coach Sarina Wiegman has now remarkably led teams to the final match of four of the five tournaments she has contested as a manager. Having previously led her native Netherlands to victory in UEFA Women’s Euro in 2017 and the 2019 Women’s World Cup final, she has repeated that extraordinary achievement as coach of the Lionesses.

In doing so, Wiegman has also become the first-ever coach in the history of the sport to lead different nations to the World Cup final. In 30 previous editions of the men’s (22) and women’s (8) World Cup, the champion team has never been coached by a foreign national. After defeat in the 2019 final to the United States, Wiegman will have a second opportunity on Sunday to cement her place in World Cup history.