Women’s World Cup 2019: England must take risks and shake inhibitions to beat Norway

The Independent‘s World Cup columnist previews the Lionesses’ quarter-final

There’s no doubting that Norway will be England‘s toughest test of the tournament so far. The Cameroon match and the saga that came with it was great preparation, but Norway pose a different type of threat altogether. They’ve got a history and traditional style to their play. They’re exceptionally strong and robust and are spearheaded by two truly world class strikers in Caroline Graham Hansen and ​Isabell Herlovsen.

It’s a World Cup quarter-final and, at this stage, you can’t expect mistakes to go unpunished. In the group stage, England were sometimes afforded that luxury when we allowed our opponents to get on top of us. This time around, we cannot make any errors, and as the pressure of the occasion mounts, I’m sure the girls will know that.

If you want to win a World Cup, you’ve got to be willing to take risks and shake your inhibitions. Our style of play won’t change; it’s the 4-3-3 – a pivot with two attacking box-to-box midfielders – and we throw numbers forward to score. Of course, the by-product of that is that you can leave yourself open. Japan picked apart space between our defence and midfield and we saw how Cameroon caused England problems on the counter-attack. Against Norway, we really need to focus on pressing high up the pitch to stifle that threat.

One of the greatest assets in modern football is being able to instantly shift mindset from attack to defence. If we’re able to cancel out the threat of breakaways at the source, we can keep possession and force Norway to chase the ball. Then it becomes a physical battle, as well as a game of technique, and if we can uphold that style of play for 70 minutes, using attack as a form of defence, we can tire Norway’s players and create that edge for ourselves.

If Steph Houghton is unable to play because of the ankle injury she suffered against Cameroon, there’s no use pretending it’s not a huge loss. We all know she’s a massive part of the team and a real leader on the pitch. But as a team, the girls have grown so much together over such a short space of time since they arrived in France.

Going through hardship or extraordinary events – as they did against Cameroon – forges an incredible tightness within the group. Those moments grow the team and their spirit in a way you can never emulate or recreate on a training pitch. It unites them subconsciously and that will help them immeasurably going forwards at a stage where each game can be decided by the smallest of advantages.

I think the key to breaking Norway down is to use our pace. I’ve played against Maren Mjelde when I was at Manchester City, she’s a fantastic player, but I think at centre-half we have the skill to expose her. The runs that Sam Kerr made for Australia in the last round really opened up Norway’s defence and the likes of Ellen White or Jodie Taylor can replicate that. If we target the flanks and feed our strikers through the channel, we can catch their defence on the half-turn and get in behind.

England can expose Norwegian captain Maren Mjelde on the turn (Getty)

The team have had two days on the training pitch to get to grips with that game plan. It might seem like a quick turnaround but it’s comfortably enough time to implement it. By now, everything is formulated and ready to go. The players will be rested and raring to execute that strategy.

On paper, it’s a true 50-50. But it’s played out there on the grass and the girls have got what it takes to put Norway under pressure and make them crack.