Rhian Wilkinson urges Wales to ‘up their performance’ against Sweden

Rhian Wilkinson believes Wales must “up their performance” against Sweden to put their first Nations League points on the board.

Wales opened their League A campaign with a 1-0 defeat in Italy on Friday but face potentially a far tougher test in Wrexham on Tuesday night.

Sweden are fifth in the FIFA world rankings – 25 places above Wales – and finished third at the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

Tests

Wales boss Wilkinson said: “Sweden are a fantastic team, really strong in a lot of areas.

“We’re going to have to not only put in a similar performance as against Italy, but up our performance against Sweden.

“All of the games in League A are going to be fantastic tests. Sweden are a very good team, I’m surprised they didn’t finish as first seed in the group.

“Anyone could have been first in our group, it was tight.

“The results from the last game day, there was only one goal in all of the matches. Football in the women’s game is getting tighter.”

There were plenty of positives for Wales in Monza as their preparations for this summer’s Euros in Switzerland began in earnest.

Wales recovered from conceding a fourth-minute header from a set-piece to control large parts of the game against opponents ranked 13th in the world.

Manchester City defender Mayzee Davies, 18, was handed her first start, winning the Welsh player of the match award, and 17-year-old Manchester United midfielder Mared Griffiths made her debut as a late substitute.

‘Massive testament ‘

Wilkinson said: “We said early on that we wouldn’t qualify for the Euros if the least experienced members of the team didn’t feel as worthy of qualifying as the most experienced.

“That is a hard thing to do. These women have been trying to achieve this goal for years.

“It’s a massive testament to the more senior players on the team for how they’ve made them feel such an important piece of the team very quickly.

“We have young players stepping on the field and they don’t play frightened.”

Angharad James will resume her captaincy duties after Hayley Ladd wore the armband against Italy on the occasion of her 100th cap.

“It was important to me and to Rhian that we gave that opportunity to Hayley to do that,” said James.

“But my message for the group is while we’ve got one eye on Switzerland, each game is a test for us too.”