Rhian Wilkinson wants Wales to bounce back from opening setback

Rhian Wilkinson has urged her Wales team to “keep pushing” in Euro 2025 following their 3-0 defeat to the Netherlands on Saturday.

Manchester City forward Vivianne Miedema broke the deadlock on the stroke of half-time in Lucerne with a fantastic curling effort to bag her 100th international goal.

Victoria Pelova then doubled the advantage just three minutes into the second half before Esmee Brugts wrapped the three points up as Wales slipped to defeat in their opening game.

Wales are the lowest-ranked side in the competition, but Wilkinson believes her team can take confidence from the loss in preparation for Wednesday’s meeting with France.

‘Hang on’

“I think all of us as a group are going to have learned something about how we have to suffer in moments of a game,” Wilkinson said in her post-match press conference.

“We have to hang on and we can’t capitulate our chains, our connection as a group has to be really tight. We saw moments where we just got a bit stretched and they took advantage of that.

“I do think the players themselves – it sounds strange when you lose 3-0 – but they’ll have gained a bit of confidence in this.

“We’d rather lose by three or four nothing and try and play than just sit back. You could say we were defensive in the first half, but it was for a real purpose, we had a game plan and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

“It almost got us to half, so in that way I don’t think it was completely off-base but we’ll keep pushing.”

Bottom

Wales are currently bottom of the Group D standings following their defeat, with Wednesday’s opponents France in second place after beating England 2-1 on Saturday night.

They conclude their group campaign with a clash against England and Wilkinson is hoping the team can take lessons into their upcoming matches.

She added: “We have to create more opportunities and make sure those moments of lapses get fewer and fewer.

“This is the world stage, this is the big event and it’s intimidating, it’s the first game, but equally this is what we want. It comes with lessons like this.

“We’ve got two more big games and we’ve got to show up again and hopefully learn from how we finished that game because we really stepped up in the last 20 to 25 minutes.”